I have to keep being louder than it!
I was going to sit and write what a disaster this weeks been… but actually it really hasn’t. All too easily I focus on the one negative amongst the handful of positives. Yes, okay, Tuesday was not a good day… having thought I was over the ‘crying at food stage’, when I was faced with a jacket potato (my arch nemesis!) on Tuesday, it was evident that perhaps I wasn’t. Actually, that’s not entirely fair, as it wasn’t just this poor potato that made Tuesday so terrible… I also got locked out of my flat which caused a major stress all day. All too easily I pin it all on the food, when as Paula would say, ‘Food is just FOOD! You can choose how much power you give it’.
And my God do I give it a lot of power, far, far too much. The overwhelming feeling of panic and anxiety that this potato created for me on Tuesday was immense, so much so that it made me want to just RUN, leave Orri, sign out, and run. ‘Maybe you can’t get better, why are you wasting all these people’s time, energy and money, clearly you just can’t do it, you’re incapable, just accept that you have to live with this.’… and the thoughts went on and on whizzing through my head 100mph. In fact I was so consumed by them in the moment that my shutters came down and I totally blanked the lovely EDA (eating disorder associate) opposite me trying to will me on. ‘This isn’t Mima I’m talking to right now, it’s anorexia, Mima knows she can get better. Mima does food dances with me and wants to be back at Norland. This isn’t Mima right now, I’ll just wait for her to come back’. Something in what she said in that moment got through to me, I picked up my folk and began to attack the potato, but my God did it feel hard.
That’s the power of having support around you from people who really get you and hold such hope when I lose it. I got through my potato in the end, but initially there was no way in hell anorexia was letting even a morsel inside of me.
When I talked it through the following day I explained the immense urge I had to just leave and run, I voiced the concern I carry that ‘perhaps I can’t get better and just have to live with this’. The response I was met with shifted my perspective entirely. She said, ‘Do you really think you could do life and anorexia? What would life look like right now if you left Orri? Think back to what brought you through these doors those months ago, because I remember an incredibly desperate girl’. That hit hard.
But because of how threatened anorexia’s felt recently it’s led me to completely lose sight of how badly I wanted Orri, that all this was my choice. All too easily I forget the endless days I spent alone in my room in Norwich feeling totally hopeless, the seas of tears, and the time I sat outside Newmarket House wishing for someone to help. Orri has been and is my total saviour, and recently I’ve lost sight of that. In fact, had Orri not stepped in to help me, I’m not even sure I would still be here today.
But that’s the cruel nature of this illness, as you get better you feel worse first. And because progress is being made my anorexia is piping up louder and putting up even more of a fight to survive. The idea that the support of those at Orri is stronger than ‘it’ is incredibly threatening for anorexia, because if Mima doesn’t need anorexia anymore… then what?
So no, my weeks not been awful, okay, Tuesday was a challenge, but I got through it, and from it regained integral perspective that I had lost. So perhaps Tuesday was in fact needed even if it was painful, as it’s made me re-establish the huge appreciation I have for Orri, and acknowledge that a life with anorexia is not a life Mima wants, that’s anorexia speaking.
I have to keep being louder than it.
