I have been struggling to get back to where I need to be with food. The struggle has taken the form of bulimia (and naming it still remains hard). It had been scarily easy to revert to old forms of behaviour (2 years of recovery have very little on 17 years of illness) and scarily easy for the damage to re-emerge. A bloody mouth and shaking hands are worrying but not quite enough.

For the first few months, I tried to return to the strategies that helped me recover the first time round. Planning, preparation, distraction, pick a date, share your intention, put things in place. The strategies didn’t seem to work this time; and, more worryingly, I seemed to kick back against my attempts to enforce a structure. It has taken me a while to realise what this backlash was about.

The first phase of my recovery bound me in structure and routine; and, whilst this swaddling kept me alive, it did not let me fully live.

So this is the tension and the question. How to find recovery in the real world. How to regain control of the food without relinquishing the delight I have experienced in going with the flow. In loosening the rules and routines. In moving away from breakfast at 6:45, lunch at 1:15; bed at 10:37; and next days’ clothes laid out before dinner. Don’t rock the boat with anything too emotional; pick to pieces every decision; kid glove treatment; no rather than yes – and sometimes the other way around.

My life is heading in the right direction; it is only the eating disorder that is trying to yank it back.

And so I think that this is the next phase of recovery, although it is painful and not wholly certain, yet, which way I will tip. It has been suggested that I’m nearly ready to let go and jump in the world – and that it is the snagging of the last remaining traces of eating disorder that are holding me back. I think that this is accurate, given that the immersion does not feel as deep nor as depressing as it has in the past…but as behaviours can quickly suck you downwards, I still need to watch out.

And so I am writing this post as an acknowledgement of where I am, and because I wondered whether this was a common experience for anyone else. Whether after the first part of recovery when you’ve got back to health, there is a wobble as the scaffolding comes down; and, if this is the case, what’s the best thing to do next? I am working along the lines of balance (hooks to hold onto rather than ropes to bind me down) and also refusing to go back (because if I have fought tooth and nail for the life I have built), but this is all new territory and I’d love a little extra support.

I am stopping today.

I decided, a few weeks ago, that I needed a date because that was how I did it last time. I know that it doesn’t work like that for everyone; but for me, bulimia has always been all or nothing. I need clear rules and high boundaries or I spiral quickly out of control.

And so, I am writing this to mark the moment and capture the learning. There has been some, even though the lesson was hard.

I have learnt that…

I am in my flat. I find a door that I haven’t noticed before and discover three or four unexplored new rooms. At first, the rooms are dated and unwelcoming, and two of them are kitchens, often filthy and filled with food. The dreams are deeply unsettling and I wake up feeling displaced and like something has tarnished my home. Eventually (over a few years) the rooms change and become full of amazing things– like a piano or a spectacular view or a fireplace – and I wake up a bit disappointed that they don’t really exist.

I was telling a friend about this dream when it was visiting me, nightly, and she interpreted it as symbolic of self discovery. As mirroring the process that I was going through of uncovering new parts of my self –

They are there, waiting: it’s just a question of seeing what’s behind the doors.

I have been struck, recently, by this notion of the self. That we might only know the areas that we have already opened, and there are therefore parts of ourselves waiting to be unlocked. It suggests that there is a step beyond self awareness or consciousness which, when I have let go of the knee-jerk fear, is kind of exciting…

I have had three half written posts on my desktop for a while now. This was one of them. The second was a link. I think they are connected. The link goes to this quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us”. (Marianne Williamson).

The quote holds me hostage. It is so exactly how I feel – and have felt – that I was too overwhelmed to mention it, at the time. It captures the moment just before I went into self sabotage; and, possibly, is uncomfortably close to what I am feeling now…
The third post was about last weekend. I went dancing, last weekend, on the spur of the moment. It was a sparkling night when I was unusually spontaneous and, for a short time, deliciously carefree. It struck me, as I woke up the next morning, that all the rules and limitations that I have been living by are self imposed. That it might be okay, just for a little while, to wander with no direction and learn what it feels like to relax and have fun….

I think I am on the edge of letting go.

Not there yet, but nearly.

I think I have been trying to stamp out any potential or, at least, iron cage it – and I am curious, now, about what would happen if I stepped out of the constraints. The possibility makes me slightly shaky and might explain why the struggle has stepped up a notch over the past few months…

I can stamp it out, again, as I did however many years ago. Or I can take a deep breath and adventure on.

I am not sure where I am anymore.

From the moment she woke up, to the moment she went to sleep, it either dominated her thoughts or tugged at the edge of them so that, in returning to the thought, she realised she’d been thinking about it all along.

It has only been two years since I actively moved towards recovery, and the length of time before this is obscene.

She could not imagine a life without food, though this life of food was a slow kind of agony; nor imagine any other kind of relationship, though it was unlikely that the eating disorder was really her friend.

I was talking about recovery last week. About how I moved from one life into another. It left me shaken. I am unrecognisable, even to myself. I walked back towards the tube, after the conversation, and realised that I do not know, at the moment, who I am. I am not the girl who was paralysed by the thought of eating a piece of toast or planned her binges as she fell asleep, only to wake the next morning to start the whole agonising process all over again –

And yet for so many years this was me.

And so, I am stuck in this strange disjoint between a life characterised by

Fear. Please don’t make me eat because the fear is unbearable and frustrating because if you ask me to explain it I don’t know that I can

And

Loneliness. Because if I let people in, they might try and stop me; so I will reach out in desperation and then flinch if you come near, until I’ve worn you out and proved that I’m somehow made up all wrong

And

Despair. Because nothing else matters. Nothing else matters. And I will be okay as long as it is just me and the food.

And chocolate wrappers hidden in CD cases, and clothes smeared with food, and thick woollen tights to keep the cold out, and the rubbery squeak of hospital sheets, and the heavy shame that avoids eye contact, and the effort that every single moment saps, and the horrible significance of weight, and shape, and a quarter of a kilo either way –

None of this makes sense to me anymore.

And yet it was me.

I stood on the platform at London Bridge waiting for the district line. It was the tail-end of rush hour and, plugged into my headphones, the clashing of selves made everything, and everyone, seem unreal. It felt like, in the act of laying one life beside the other, I had slipped down the gap in between. I find it hard to relate to the old Melissa and yet there is an air of shiny unfamiliarity in how things now are.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense.

I don’t know if I can capture how incredibly different I am now, from how I was then.

Maybe there is a lag between shooting yourself forward and growing into where you have arrived? Maybe the transition from then to now took place emotionally, before it took place physically, so it feels like a sudden surprise but the clogs were slowly creaking into motion before the recovery begun? Maybe this is all normal, it’s just the extremity of the difference highlights the process?

Maybe we only find ourselves when we let go of the need to know?

Once upon a time, there was a girl.

Maybe this is part of the self discovery: a shift away from the need to define or find.

Once upon a time, there was a woman.

Maybe it is enough, for the moment, to appreciate that I am growing, instinctively and authentically, and still exploring who I am.

No longer defined by food. No longer trying to be definable.

And so this is me.

I’m not sure why and I can’t work out what happened; but, at some point, I got scared about being okay. I worried that I’d be nothing if I was ‘normal”, that I was letting myself go because I was letting myself enjoy life.

And so, I put the brakes down. Hard. I re-erected the walls and re-instated the rules. It was not okay to be okay.

We know what happened.

I ended my last post before I reached the end. The moment of insight that had been eluding me has finally clicked into place. This re-animation is the same as I felt at 17 – only this time I’m not afraid of it. It is alright to be okay.

The inspiration that I have been waiting for has stalled and is yet to catch up with me. Any insights that might prompt a blog post are suspended, somewhere, far above me; so, for the moment, all I can say is, “I am okay”.

I think this is enough.

I think, in fact, that it’s more than enough. It is a giant breakthrough in the light of my previous aversion to the flatness of okay-being, and a million miles away from the terror I felt a few weeks ago. It is also totally alien to how I typically am –

I have absolutely no idea what I am thinking and haven’t yet found the time to analyse everything that’s going on. I’m sure that will come…

But, for the moment, I’m getting up as the sun begins to rise and getting used to the hum of planes flying across from Heathrow. I am smiling on the way to my Putney Bridge bus stop, because the river makes me excited and I like feeling part of the trainer-clad suit-wearing crowd. I have found that I can actually eat breakfast when I arrive at work which is something I never thought I’d be able to do; and that it is okay to stray away from my old morning routine.

It is okay to not live by a routine.

And so, I am coming back into London as the commuters go out; and the drawn out bus ride is one of my favourite half hours, because it gives me time for Twitter and it helps me to wind down. I have gone ‘home’, on some days; and, on others, I have found myself haphazardly wandering through the tree-lined side streets and noticing things that I didn’t notice when I was here before, even though some of the areas between now – and then – overlap –

This is okay, too. I am not who I was then.

I am not who I was then – because I have been able to eat supper with friends, without worrying what’s on my plate whilst the conversation fizzles out around me; and, I have let my Aunt cook me supper, and found that I can manage okay. I have come home at 7 on some nights – and at 10:30 on others – and, regardless of the time, or situation, or how I am feeling, I have ultimately been okay –

This has been the fear. That I will not manage. That I will not be okay.

I might be a little lost for words at the moment, but I think that I’m doing okay.

I guess this is normal.

The last trip contained a bag of clothes. Not the outgrown clothes that I still haven’t worked out what to do with; but a bag of paint-sprayed clothes that had come to signify the reclamation of my flat. After the first few months of not bingeing and once I was no longer focussing on just holding myself together, I re-painted every room. In an attempt to remove the associations and make it somewhere I wasn’t afraid to be, I washed over each food splatter and splash of vomit with Dulux Indulgence paint, ruining an old tracksuit and a couple of towels in the process.

I didn’t throw them away at the time because they seemed a lucky charm.

Some of the other stuff is less positive.

I have an envelope sitting beside me covered with Roger La Borde butterflies and mussel shells, swirled in deep reds and rich violet blues and slippery greys. It used to contain stationery, but now holds a few papers and photos that have, for me, become intrinsically linked with the butterfly and the mussel. See one, imagine the other.

I’ve had the folder for years, but now that I’m moving, I don’t know what to do with it. I never look at it, yet in some dusty dark corner of my mind, I’m aware that it’s there. I wondered if, by writing about it, I could smash some of its power; but, it has been hard enough to name the contents. A time-softened weight chart in old style percentiles; a card from the other kids in my first inpatient centre; a few photos of razor sharp cheekbones and hamster cheeks; some hospital bracelets; a rosy-cheeked child snapped just before she became ill.

I should burn it. I just can’t.

I also keep stumbling over notebooks where I have tried to write my eating disorder out. They are, typically, immaculately kept and severely edited, so the content is bland and unrevealing: lists of reasons why I should change and the advantages of going through the whole recovery process. Repeated references to just how scared I am – “I am scared of everything. My life has become this tightly ordered box yet I am even scared of the order. It scares me that I’m ruining my appearance and my finances, that I am wasting all the talents I have been given. I am scared of how I feel. When I feel tired and sick, I am scared. When I feel fat and bloated, I am scared. I am scared that I will stay the same and scared of changing.”

The words are dead. Some turn into lists of calories and foods – pages and pages of numbers, and prices, and intricate mathematical calculations, which was easier than writing through the fear. Some of them fizzle out after a few pages, so I am left with reams of blank paper, charged with all the things that I didn’t know how to say.

I have binned them, spare pages and all.

There are a few other bits that I’m not sure where to put. Some undrunk ensures from last year; a coat that reeks of the Royal Free; various ‘feeling diaries’ from daycare; Oscar, the teddy bear my Mum brought me when I agreed to supervision… When I am brave enough, I will probably throw them all, apart from Oscar. It will be bittersweet.

Part of me is saying that the next step is a blank canvas, a chance to start all over again. Part of me is scared of saying goodbye so finally, of really letting go and moving on. Another part of me is aware that I have a tendency to slash my ties with things; to cut out parts of my life when I don’t want to think about them – and I don’t want to repeat that mistake again. When I divorce from things absolutely, I always end up trying to get them back.

I haven’t reached a resolution yet. I think there will be a balance between keeping enough to remind me not to return and appreciate where I have come from; and letting go of enough to move on.

I hope that I’m not tricking myself into making it okay to cling on.

I guess the difference between where I am and where I was a few months ago is in the level of feeling. Okay, I haven’t got the emotional regulation quite figured out yet, and I am still ricocheting between the highs and lows like a teenager; but I have let down the defences and gone with the unpredictability of life, rather than trying to keep it all ordered and boxed in. I don’t think I felt safe enough in myself to do this until now. I certainly still had a lot of crutches and support structures in place to make sure that I was okay.

I am okay.

Wobbling like hell and falling over multiple times on a daily basis; but, ultimately, I’m okay.

There have been some hard lessons in amongst the amazingness. I guess that this is why I think I needed to make sure that I was safe; that I didn’t respond in the way I would have previously, and play it out through food. I have learnt that there are lots of things that you can’t control and more variables than I could have imagined. That there are more disappointments when you engage in life and certainly more risks. That uncertainty is inherent, and fear doesn’t go away.

This is all okay too.

It is just the stuff that I would have learnt if I hadn’t removed myself from the world. I have no doubt that there are plenty more highs and lows and lessons to come –

Unexpectedly, I find it kind of exciting.

The truth is, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed; and, because I’m overwhelmed, I’ve been temporarily blinded by a kind of white blanket of fear. It has seeped everywhere. In the cracks between waking and sleeping; when I step through the door after being out with friends; in the moments when I am waiting for the kettle to boil…

It all just feels like I’m very much on my own. Like the scaffolding’s been ripped away and it’s taking me a while to work out whether I’m strong enough to remain standing –

I am.

But I have had to ground myself and I am handling myself with a bit of care.

In the past few days, I have given and received more virtual hugs than I care to mention. It has been important to remember that there are other people out there. I have spoken to my closest friends and seen my family, and reminded myself that the world – and our relationships – will still go on.

I have cried, which is a far more appropriate way of handling the emotions than my previous strategies; and acknowledged the uncertainty, which is better than trying desperately to predict the outcome; and got a little (lot) frustrated (again) with my ongoing battles with control and change.

In an attempt to yank myself out of the spiralling analyses, I have thrown myself into mini projects like baking – and flat sorting – and planning some exciting activities. I have swum, and walked, and danced (badly); and appreciated that an evening slumped in front of the TV with no expectations might be just what the doctor would recommend. I have made some very overdue phone calls, and read through the headlines, and tried to shift the focus from me me me – to what’s going on with other people instead.

It has kind of worked.

I have not binged, though the thought has crossed my mind. I have not listened to the little voice that has been particularly abusive over the past few days, though it’s operating at full volume. I have dismissed, pretty quickly, the suggestion of maybe just cutting back a teeny weeny bit on what I eat –

No.

This is all good learning.

I’m still feeling a little bit wobbly, but I think that, after the wobbliness, I might start to find my roots.

It is not the food that has turned out to be the hardest part of my recovery – it’s discovering how far I have removed myself from life.

For a horrible moment, things seemed frozen and I felt myself zooming away, again, from the sea gulls, and the muggy morning air, and the sounds of cars, passing by in the background, to a place that was familiar, and understood and, in some ways, far less overwhelming. Where the parameters were defined, and life was much easier, or so it seemed, to control -

But I promised myself that I would never go back.

On the way home, I realised that in one weekend, alone, I laughed, danced, cried, talked, lived and shared. In two short days, I felt tired, alive, alone, connected, attractive, excited and scared. I drunk my first ever Long Island Iced tea and had my first cake in however many years; danced without caring what I looked like and laughed without forcing the smile. In one 52^nd of a year, I visited a new place and met new people; had breakfast at lunchtime, and lunch, at tea; breathed in the salty sea air and felt the sun burn off the morning cloud…and so so much more.

I do not underestimate how many firsts there still are for me, nor how terrifying it will be to start doing the things that I have not been doing for years. I am under no illusions, anymore, that I had sectioned myself off from the world for a long time, and created walls and barriers where they didn’t exist before –

But next time I feel myself teetering on the edge, peering at what seems to be an insurmountable void, I’m going to remember that each journey is made up of a million small steps, and each bridge is the accumulation of all the tiny achievements and firsts. That in two days, I can do a hundred new things and, that if I keep just focussing on reaching the other side, I might miss all the moments that I pass through on the way.