Reliving Your Diagnosis

I can’t lie that these past few weeks have been a bit unsettling for me when it comes to food. We are coming up of the one year mark since my official diagnosis of anorexia and having flash backs of what all that meant for me and my future. Everything makes me want to relapse — and everything is a constant reminder of what will be a part of me for the rest of my life.

Today I accessed my charts for some things I am currently dealing with — and reading the comments of the doctors hit me harder than I thought. I’ve lived it, been through it, still go through it — but something about reading another persons/doctors perspective on my illness made me want to break down.

The best way I can describe how I am feeling to someone who may not understand is like if you were to watch someone fall out of love with you — like physically seeing all of the reasons a person couldn't love you, or wouldn't want to and then putting all of that negative energy into not loving myself, or maybe even like watching someone fall in love with someone else — like making comparisons -- and in my case about my body, wishing I could be more desired, more wanted, more loved -- wishing you could be anyone else. It’s the constant images of how I used to look, and how I look now. It’s the wishing I could be pretty enough, skinny enough, just enough. It’s wondering what to do or who to talk to — because you don’t want to say the wrong thing. — but also how maybe it’d be worse to not say anything at all. — because relapse is real, this illness is real, and the reminders of how bad I was a year ago are conflicting with my emotions and thoughts of “maybe I should get back to that place.”

It’s like the disease is calling my name — and I want to run back. I have been feeling awful about myself and this is telling me I need it now more than ever.

— and what people don’t understand is that the process of recovery doesn’t mean “recovered.” There hasn’t been one day that has gone by where negative food thoughts haven’t crossed my mind. SO even if I am eating, my mind is still tearing me apart.

Reliving your diagnosis is more than just the words. It’s remembering the doctors appointments, the denial, the hospital room, the emotions, the weight.

I’m scared for the next upcoming weeks, because it seems like either way I lose. It’s still apart of me — and I think it always will be. I want to remind myself of the positives I can get out if I keep pushing and if I can maybe beat this -- but the want and need to feel skinny is somehow more desirable to me right now...

I wish I could have some positive words, but it seems like I am all out of ideas as of now.

Please remember my doors are always open — even if you just need someone to struggle with.

Love Always,

Rachel