When Your Eating Disorder Comes Back For A Visit

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Some days I wake up and for a while I almost forget. I get dressed without too much thought, go off to work and drink a cup of coffee. And then someone starts eating cereal, and I remember that I didn’t have breakfast that morning. I remember that I haven’t had breakfast for years.

While I’ve been in recovery for my eating disorder for quite a while there are certain habits I never gave up. And not eating breakfast is one of them.

Some days I can almost forget that I have an eating disorder. I am in “recovery” so I should be able to forget. But it doesn’t really go away, and you don’t really forget.

There are days where I can function almost normally. Months even where food and weight don’t take up too much of my brain space. And sometimes I can almost pretend like I’m fine.

But then there are times where I can’t forget.

There are days where I feel like I am right back where I was 5 years ago. Where all of my thoughts revolve around food and weight. Where all I can think about it is what I ate today and how I look.

The days where it takes me nearly an hour to get dressed because I hate the way I look in everything. Looking in the mirror I see how much weight I’ve gained, and it’s hard to remind myself that that’s a good thing.

The days where I snap at everyone because I’m so in my head that I can’t focus on anyone else. I just want to be left alone to obsess about food.

The days where I find myself using behaviours that I’ve managed to not use in nearly 2 years. And using them again almost feels like a homecoming. Like no matter how long you’ve been away it’s still comforting.

The days where I don’t want to eat dinner because there was a little bit of oil on the food. And I can’t let myself have oil.

The days where all I want to do is go home so I can spend hours exercising to work off all the extra weight I see on myself.

The days where I want to shut off my mind because this is all too much and I worry that if today was bad tomorrow will be bad too and it will never stop.

I am supposed to be “recovered”. But I’m not always strong enough to be recovered.