Shopping

I went clothes shopping yesterday. For a normal person this can be stressful and depending on how the clothes look, even depressing. For me, with a newly acquired healthy body, it was devastating. Imagine not knowing exactly how much your body has grown in six weeks, and being confronted with a full length mirror in a dressing room, stripped down to your underwear with every new bulge hanging out for the mirror to mock. Then imagine not knowing what size clothes to pick, being used to the old body, and trying on item after item that was simply too tight in front of that same mirror. I haven't felt the same since.
I confess I have spent a lot of time critiquing myself in the mirror since I went shopping. Even when I'm not in front of the mirror I am hyper-aware of the flesh that wasn't there before, the way it clings to me in the most awkward of places, places I am horribly self-conscious about. To be honest, I miss my old, sick body. I'm not used to this one, and right now there are a lot of things I hate about it. I miss lying in bed, starving from having restricted all day or binged and purged, and feeling the flatness of my belly, the way the hipbones jut out, the fist size gap between my thighs. I felt uncomfortable then, but the thinness of my body comforted me. But even then, I wasn't enough. I could always be thinner, starve better, do better at work, relationships, money handling, you name it. I was always inadequate. I used to say I'd always be unhappy, so I might as well be skinny and unhappy than fat and unhappy.
It's hard to stay in recovery with such thoughts. I try to turn them around, now, but they always come back. The last thing I wanted to do after the shopping day was eat my lunch. I wanted badly to slip into my eating disorder. It promised to take the pain away, and make me skinny again. I know it's a complete lie, but tantalizing nonetheless. I forget all the horrible consequences the eating disorder brings, and I romanticize it and mourn its loss. But I know in my heart that going back is not what I want. It's only that it's going to take a while to get used to being healthy. Til then, maybe I don't need too many new clothes.