Pact

Honestly? Honesty and transparency? When that was first asked of me I thought I was, figuratively, being asked to strip naked in public. Heck, I might as well be gutted and hung out to drain, because there would be nothing left of me without my secret thoughts and my secret behaviors. Eating disorders live and thrive in the dark. They feed on half-truths, lies, deception and secrets. There is a secret pact between myself and my addiction, a promise for each to never betray the other. I've tried so hard to keep it in the past, hiding the eating disorder under the flimsiest of excuses and the most complex lies, until even I am mentally dizzy. Who did I tell what? When and where did I do what and who might have seen or heard me? It's mentally and physically exhausting, playing the game of protection and deception.
The sad fact is, though I've tried to keep the pact and never betray my disorder, it has already betrayed me. What promise did it give me that it's kept? A better body? Love and acceptance? Peace? Simplicity? A solution to all my problems? Whatever the promises it may have kept, to whatever degree, they come at far too high a price. The eating disorder never revealed the most secret part of the pact to me. I had to discover those lines, written in invisible ink, that took my health, my happiness, my functionality, my ability to give and recieve love, and so much more, until the final clause -- my life. I thought when I was in my eating disorder I was free. Truly, I have never been less so.
So how to break the pact? How to free myself from those hidden clauses? I believe it begins with a counter-betrayal of the eating disorder, turning it in and calling out it's lies and deception again and again. In short, the freedom lies in honesty. Honesty and transparency with myself, and with my support and treatment team. I need to reveal each thought and behavior the addiction cries out for me to conceal. Give me just this one, it pleads with me, let me keep just this one secret between us, it won't hurt anything, it's so little. Just give in a little, lie a little ... until the small things grow and I'm back in the web of deception, back in slavery to the secret pact. I know where it leads.
This doesn't mean I always am honest and transparent. I struggle with keeping the secrets. I struggle to remember that the eating disorder has already betrayed me, that it not only wants me to lie for it, but it also continuously lies to me. It can do nothing but lie. How could I forget that? How could I forget the secret clause that gives me over, body and soul, to something unspeakably evil? Yet still I forget, I fall, I lie, I give in and cover up. But now the difference is, I uncover the eating disorder too. I try to be honest. Truly my conscience tortures me, and the lies eat away at me until I come clean. So I am learning ... honesty and openness, and a slow death to the addition's secret agreement.

Memory

If I haven't written much lately -- and I haven't -- it's because my life here has taken on something of a repetitive nature. I'm not bored, but even my struggles have a tinge of familiarity to them. Depression, I know you. Bad body image, check. Food struggles, little slips, I remember how it goes. I know this path because in some way I have been here before.
I had a routine before I came into treatment -- a routine of serial, self-inflicted abuse. Wake up, barely in time for daddy to pick me up for work, skipping breakfast entirely. Work itself was routine, taking call after call until the names and details blended together, and I felt numb and useless. After work I'd be drawn irresistably to the grocery store or a restaurant to pick up binge food. Binge followed binge, and then came the inevitable chore of finding a secluded bathroom where I'd purge until my stomach was empty and I was exhausted. I'd go home or to various appointments, then spend the evening secluded in my room while my roommates, who were dating each other, did their own activities, whether that be screaming at each other or flirting while making dinner. I'd go out for dinner and binge and purge more, or buy wine and drink until I fell asleep, only to dream restless dreams that woke me at two in the morning. I would binge and purge in the middle of the night, then sleep to wake up unrefreshed, dreading the cycle's beginning again.
The panicky thoughts of whether to not eat or binge and purge never stopped. Work thoughts, friend thoughts, family thoughts -- all were concurrent with a constant stream of abusive mental dialogue about food, my body, my depression. You suck, you piece of trash, you are a food-whore, disgusting and worthless, a complete failure, your life is meaningless, you should just give up -- over and over, interrupting what little life I had and destroying me from inside.
I dread going back to that, though in truth I still have not left it behind. The mind-chatter from the eating disorder is constant and steady, though some days not as loud. I am no longer so helplessly driven by it, but I fear that the semblance of order my life has taken is merely a byproduct of treatment. My mind is still very disordered, though my body is beginning to heal. I am slipping even here, fiddling with my meal plan, and it seems small but it isn't. Nothing is small when it's driven by an eating disorder mind set.
I am visiting home next weekend, and I am afraid. My new patterns are so shaky and formless. Can they stand up to the memories I will face as I go back to the place I left so sick? Facing home will be a true test of my recovery. So many places and people have a painful and shamelful significance for me. This is the bathroom where I purged so often, this is my therapist's office, this is the path I used to walk in the middle of the night to buy binge food, this is the grocery store I shoplifted food from, that's the restaurant I binged at and this is the one I was too terrified to try ... so many memories. Will the new pattern hold? How strong are the new thoughts, and how strong are the eating disordered ones? Am I brave enough, strong enough, willing enough to try something new? Or will I fall back on the comfort and familiar numbness of my disease?

Falling

I woke up yesterday morning, and I was still in Arizona. I hate that some days, because it reminds me that I'm still sick, though I'm trying to get well. I woke up and remembered the thing I was trying to forget. I binged and purged in the early, early hours of the morning. I wanted to forget it, pretend it didn't happen and I didn't fall into my disease once again.
It had been about four weeks since I last did it. I was reaching my threshold of the longest time I've been without it, and the urges were getting stronger, stronger and louder. I don't understand why I gave in. I feel like a failure. I know it's not failing but it feels that way. it's hard for me to pick myself up after a fall like that. Extreme thinking tells me to just throw my recovery in the trash and do it again, and again, to wallow in my shame and misery and then numb it off with binging and purging. It tells me I'm a worthless failure, that my recovery is a lie.
I know this thinking is the real lie, but it's enticing nonetheless. It would be so easy to give up and listen again. I can't. I won't. I've come too far and I know too much of the truth to be happily, numbly blind again. I can pick myself up from this fall and begin again.