Part Four: Relapse

I delayed writing this chapter purely because I knew it would make my mother cry. And out of all the things I hate about this illness, it’s the amount it makes my mother cry. 

But it needs to be written as much as it needs to be heard. 

The concept of relapses doesn’t exist without the concept of shame. Personally, shame is a feeling I’ve lived most of my life without. To feel shame is a wasted emotion, it doesn’t serve a purpose in my life. 

This was until I relapsed (plural).

I’ve had plenty of slips with my eating over the years as I’m sure many people who don’t experience disorder eating do. But the thing is, when people who don’t have eating disorders have a slip with eating, they don’t eat breakfast for a little bit, maybe eat fast food a few days in a row, who knows I was never one of these people.

The difference is when I have a slip with my eating, I am returned to the 14 year old girl I once was, leaving meals early to slip her fingers down her throat and drinking vats of coffee to cure hunger pains.

So you see how slips with my eating aren’t particularly as nonchalant to me as they would be for others.

This relapse or slip I had felt like performing an old dance. My body almost knew the moves, pacing when I can, fidgeting while I sit, but my brain took a while to catch on. I began to order the salad instead of the pasta, the vodka water instead of the wine.

In a twisted little way it was almost blissful. My brain hadn’t caught up yet, meaning Ana's voice wasn’t dragging dagger length nails, sharpened from years of rest, down the inside of my brain. I simply skipped meals, ran more, slept less, drank more, ate less and less and less until one day, my head and body were so empty and echoing, that the voice crept back in.  

Quiet at first the way you’d tell a secret. “We don’t really NEED dinner, you just want it. We had a good lunch. Let's leave it at that”. Easy like that. Suggesting something like that. Reasoning like that. Calm like that. 

Everything starts easy like that. 

The thing about anorexia is that your body’s so drained of fuel there’s an eerie little fog that just settles in your brain. Almost like being drunk. The nothingness is intoxicating.

So there I was, punch drunk on being empty, when a familiar little voice piped up. “We don’t need dinner today”

Don’t worry mom, I am doing better now.

The good thing about relapse is once you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up.