a letter to myself...

      Sunday 18^th November 2012

Dear self,

This is hard. I so desperately want to be better - I don't want to hate myself for eating anything – however tiny or healthy, or be constantly number-crunching in my mind to the extent that I'm not fully present in my daily life...I don’t want how I see myself be determined by the verdict of the scales each morning; I don’t want to sit with my head down a toilet having a panic attack because I ‘ate too much’. I don't want to force myself to miss social events to be alone in my room and do jumping jacks so long I get carpet burns on the soles of my feet, or ‘have to’ keep running even though everything hurts and I have blurred vision and a spinning head.

. My BMI is still by some criteria technically in the healthy weight range. But I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And my eating disorder is impacting a lot on my health at this weight – so I hate to imagine what it would be like at an ‘unhealthy’ one. In the last week, I’ve thrown up blood; been horribly dizzy and nauseous; had palpitations and panic attacks; fainted (having eaten a perfectly healthy amount that day); had a constant headache and have just felt exhausted in every way. I don’t want to be like this anymore.

But I keep lying to myself. Saying ‘you can really recover when you’re sick enough to recover’; ’when you’re thin enough to recover’; ‘when you get to x-weight’; ‘when you beat your lowest weight by enough’; ‘when  you can see another rib; and another’… it never ends. I’m realising that I’ll never be ‘thin enough’…and even if it was it’d just have to be a longer and longer road to recovery when I actually start…because here’s the thing:

With an eating disorder there are two options: recovery or death. You can be stuck in the in between misery of just going through the motions of life with it for a while, but ultimately you either recover or die... I’m pretty sure which option I want to pick!!

I love life. I love God and my family and my friends. I love church and worshipping my amazing God, and I love Autumn (and Spring, Summer and Winter!).  I want that John 10:10 life back. I need to stop being so ambivalent and ultimately choose recovery. It’s so hard, but I need to start making better decisions. I hope this letter can motivate me to make those decisions…

With love,
Me