Dear Bee,
Eating disorders aren’t boring illnesses. Instead of an abusive relationship with someone else, you’re just in one with yourself. And abusive relationships may be turbulent, volatile, toxic, emotional, and intense, but boring? No. How can you be bored when you are constantly on edge, walking on eggshells, stumbling in fear, insecure, and obsessive?
In my highly-unscientific opinion, I believe humans are the only creatures who actually have the cognitive capacity to experience boredom. And yet, we fear it like the plague. We assume a life beyond frenzied chaos and corruption will be lackluster. For some, including myself, the words contentment and even peace bring a sense of…blah!
Addicts who are sick in their diseases worry sobriety may drive their glamorous lives to this screeching halt. Where the substance once brought spontaneity, abstinence from it brings predictability. Where the altered consciousness created allure and amazement, the sober state, therefore, must induce…boredom.
I relate to all these fears, because they absolutely come true. For many people.
Being a dry drunk is boring. Stopping eating disordered behaviors without changing anything else is also boring. It is also incredibly painful. Dry recovery makes sickness look enticing and irresistible. Dry recovery also makes us feel like we are constantly hanging on this thin thread. Without the willingness to truly and deeply examine the emotional malady driving our sicknesses, we may always feel one compulsive mistake away from spiraling down the dark rabbit-hole known as relapse.
In other words, recovery has to be more appealing than sickness in order for it to be effective. But achieving such clarity is no easy feat, especially when we only want to examine what lies on the surface.
I know my eating disordered voice, and five months ago, I named it Bee, because I wanted to personify the intrapsychic conflict occurring within me. By writing to my eating disorder, almost as if it were a completely different person, I figured I could unravel the underlying, subconscious layers about my sickness, and subsequently notice patterns, triggers, behaviors, attitudes, and reasoning. I struggled to openly talk about my issues in therapy and OA, but I knew that I loved to journal. It was on those scraps of paper that I could best describe my weaknesses, fears, and worries.
I decided to make a public blog because I noticed the evident lack of documented “authentic” pro-recovery, in-progress journeys. Most stories I read comprised of either bubbly, happy-go-lucky, I’m completely recovered and this is how I did it sagas, depressing accounts with the nonstop it’s never getting better, and I’m a failure at life reel or pro-anorexic or bulimic, omg, I just ate dinner. Please tell me I’m a fat cow and that I need to go throw it all up accounts.
I cannot pinpoint the specific date when I decided to ”recover,” because I never wanted my eating disorder in the first place. I always resented my weirdness around food. I always wanted to stop feeling “abnormal.” The only time I felt a sense of pride about my attitude towards food and eating was when I tried starving myself for six months my senior of high school and dropped significant weight. I considered my tendencies to restrict and compulsively overexercise as “good” techniques to offset my “bad vice” of bingeing.
I did not understand what recovery entailed. I thought I just needed to tighten my control and willpower, find a diet worth committing to, lose another five pounds, stop bingeing (tomorrow), and exercise my way into the perfect body.
For years, I didn’t even know I had a diagnosable eating disorder. I just thought I had a problem around food, specifically with the bingeing, and that as long as I could just “stop that,” everything else in life would fall into place. If I reached that magical number on the scale, all would be well in the world.
Maybe I could have stopped bingeing forever overnight. Maybe one of those times that I promised myself, this is the last time, it really would have been. As, I reflect on the timeline of my disorder, I finally realize that wouldn’t have been enough. Because any eating disordered behavior is merely the tip of the iceberg. All that lies underneath the water consist of the real issues at stake. And had I failed to address all that existed underwater, even if I stopped bingeing or compulsive exercising or whatever overnight, I would have likely found some other compulsory action, be it sex, drugs, gambling, alcohol, etc.
In a way, my entire life was driven by compulsion. I just called it “being Type-A.” And undoing years of these deeply-engrained habits is rough, but I cannot emphasize my gratitude for being able to do it. For even having the chance to experience the trial-and-error process of recovery. For having support. For knowing that every step, even the ones that are backwards, are still STEPS leading to me the place I need to be.
Tomorrow night, I will be the speaker at an OA meeting. For twenty minutes, I have the opportunity to share my story and express the experience, strength, and hope I received in my program. OA or not, knowing that I can share just a glimmer of my recovery process and insight to others makes me feel so humbled. That’s why I keep this blog. These letters are tangible markers that are literally changing my life, rewriting my identity, documenting my strength, weakness, concerns, and ambivalence day in and day out. Being able to openly share that journey with others? What a blessing.
These letters are part of me, Bee is part of me, and everyone reading this right now is a part of me. Recovery, however, is not part of me anymore. Recovery IS me.
