Why is it so hard?

To the uneducated and uninformed the solution to recovery from an eating disorder is simple. Eating is in the same category as breathing and sleeping...all necessities that happen without much thought or deliberation. It is among the fundamental necessities to stay alive. Much like we can learn deep breathing for relaxation or sleep in late on the weekends for rest there is also a degree of enjoyment in savoring different flavors and dishes. So for one to decide not to eat is difficult to understand. For some there is a jealous idealism..wishing they too were able to resist the natural need for nutrition to obtain the figure they would like to embody. However it only goes that far...an annoyance of those who are stronger and a guilty or at times not so guilty indulgence in deserts and foods they enjoy. So the simple solution to the starving anorexic would simply be to eat. Give in to the natural desires and promptings the body evokes and eat.

So you can imagine the frustration and desperation that torments me every single day as I battle through a mind so blinded and overwhelmed with numbers and rules and hatred towards the very thing i need to survive. But it goes beyond that. My head is so clouded by the accusations of the eating disorder that there is no room to accomplish the dreams and desires that make this life worth living. It would seem like an easy fix...a simple solution...but its anything but that.

  My world stays in order with my ability to manage and control my weight and my food intake. I am able to relate and empathize with those who struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder. The repetition and the counting and the ability to control myself in a world that feels so susceptible to the desires and agenda's of those i come into contact with brings a calming security, an ability to breath...and like a drug that eases the anxiety and pain that surrounded everything i can't control, i am addicted to the safety within the predictability. Before you know it the feeling that is achieved through the disordered eating is harder and harder to achieve and the lengths you must go to increase...and to be honest its worth it.

This week I believed a medication I was taking was making me gain weight. I felt like the one thing i can control was taken from me and i went into this crazy panic...i became desperate to prove i could still find control. I didn't care about the consequences of losing weight...i just needed to see there was still something in this world that made sense...that followed some sort of order...like 1 + 1 = 2. I needed something to follow a this, then that, equals pattern. The world doesn't make sense. Bad things happen without asking permission. People make choices that impact my life...my heart...my voice. So when i perceived my medication to mess up the pattern i have found so much comfort in, I became frantic to make it all work again. So its not as easy as just eating. Eating or the lack there of has been interwoven with sanity, protection, safety...and to give it up would be giving up everything that makes my world safe to live in. It helps me cope with the weight of a past that threatens to steal my very heart... that threatens to strip me of all joy and peace and leave me cold and alone, used and worthless. There is no easy answer as to how to get better...only an understanding of why its so hard to let go.