Midnight Confessional: The Morning After (pt. 2)

Upon the hideous pain deep in my bones jolting me to consciousness from my less-than-two-hour sleep, I awoke to find the ineffable amount of support and compassion received on my previous post. I would just like to thank each and every one of you for sharing your thoughts, struggles, pain, and encouragement with me. It truly means the world to me that you are willing to help another find peace in their suffering, if and only if by helping them to see the impeccable fact that we are not alone. The amount of courage and strength it takes to do so is tremendous, and for that I am speechless of how inspiring it is to me. Each and every one of you, every story, every word, and every painful memory matters. You are all living testimonies of life, of forte, of recovery–You are the proof that our battles do not define us.

This Monday morning, the “morning after,” so to speak, is (naturally) absolutely bloody-horrid. Aside from the physical pain my body is inflicting on me in vengeance to yesterday(as if the palpitating heart pains and dizziness is not punishment enough) it is raining and I am in full-on battle with the Voice. Ironically, I essentially have a deep enthrallment with rain and storms; however, it is not the best catalyst to improve my guilt-stricken state.

“You disgusting pig. Look at you, feeling so miserable. Weak. You used to could have gone weeks without food. Now, you are indubitably the pathetic mess you were created to be.”

“I am sick, I’m very sick, and I just can’t see it. The doctors have shown me the charts, the numbers, the scans. I can see the clothes that no longer fit until I secretly pin and tie them up in a dozen places.  I am sick, I’m very sick, and I’m too close to death to stay here.”

“The numbers tell a lie.”

This is the war within my head. As I lay in bed last night, I felt my eating disorder in physical form. My hand encloses my entire arm; my body feels the empty spaces between my legs; my fingers grab hold of my entire pelvic bone, and clearly number each ribs length and depth. I feel what the Voice has done to me. I am not the only one who sees it. The rude men at the store, the people at school, they snicker when they say:

“Don’t you know the purpose of skin is to hide your bones, not flaunt every one like a skeleton freak show.”

Thanks. I was not aware.

Despite the comments I receive, despite the evidence of which I feel, I still look at myself and notice each and every part and do not see what I feel, what I am told. One of the hardest things about this battle is knowing that I must learn to accept my body at wherever it is deemed “healthy.” I find it dryly-humorous that I am such an advocate on inner beauty, so supportive of “what’s on the inside,” yet I do not apply these beliefs in regards to myself. Never would I tolerate someone judging another on their appearance, nor would I dish that sort of cruelty unto another, yet I do without hesitation to myself. I can craft outrageously false and/or negative things about me, my body, and who I am, without even the slightest capability of creating a positive to contradict.

“No, not me, that is the Voice. The Voice is my own. I am not the Voice.”

“Think again, you knife-addicted freak.”

I’m finding that one of my biggest challenges is separating, and believing, that this is not my fault– I am not my battle. It’s a difficult concept for me to grasp, and I’m not exactly sure how to go about fixing it. Writing about it helps, though. Perhaps I can write all of its thoughts down, along with my counter- thoughts. Counter-thoughts, aha. That is me fighting back.

I cannot say that I am okay, nor can I say that I am well. I am experiencing the shame, guilt, anger, and pain from my relapse full-on. However, I am willing to accept that. I am willing to admit that this is me, Candace, fighting back. I am experiencing these feelings because I know, somewhere deep down where I exist in essence, that I can no longer live this way. I am experiencing these feelings because it is the human thing to do. I am human. I am not the Voice, or my battle, or the pain. I am not my cuts, or pills, or mistakes. I am a human being and I have emotions. I must experience them, and allow them to run their course. I must accept that progress, recovery, will not be a straight uphill climb. I will fall back, I struggle, I will hurt and feel like there is no point in going any longer and I will want to give it all up in one simplified notion, but I will remember that there is a purpose. I am not fighting this battle of my life, this every second, 24/7 war with myself just because it’s the right thing to do. I am doing it because I love my family. I am doing it because I care about the world. I am doing it for my grandpa who has cancer. I am doing it for the one person out there who will one day read my story and gain that amount of strength they need to overcome. I am doing this to change the world.

“This relapse does not define me….”

“Yes, my filthy dupe, it does.”

~ by candyshele1204 on March 20, 2012.