“Woke up today, afraid I was going to live..”

Suddenly, as though a divergent ray of sun had fragmented through the atmosphere and scuttled itself with a griming jolt into my window, I awoke from my frigid blackness, afraid I was going to live. As indubitably awful a notion as it appears to be, I could not help but find myself musing, hoping that the day would pass by quickly so that I could retreat back to the comfort and detachment of my peaceful blackness. Sitting here now, I chastise myself for these thoughts, knowing that I am only trying to escape the inexorableness of yet another difficult day. Since the self-proclaimed “start” of my recovery, I fear that I may be doing more harm than good, all the while knowing in my core that this simply cannot be the case.

“It’s all for nothing, you pathetic piece of scum. How dare you claim you are done with me? We both know you don’t know how to deal with anything, and nature knows you will not gain even the slightest ounce of weight.”

I perceive these thoughts, I feel their venomous accusations tenaciously drugging my head, and I attempt with what feeble energy I can still muster to rebut them. The manner in which I awoke this morning has been the mundane pattern that seems to devour my life lately: an abrupt annihilation of my subconscious state; ache radiating through my decaying body; and the tender feelings of regret, shame, and so much guilt.

I am failing, in my mind, to hold to my promises. I try but I do not try in the least. I took their pennies and left their buckets empty, and I curse the bloody soil on which I waste. The Voice is lurid, deafening, and it frightens me to no end. I attempt to not let it illustrate its power over me for everyone else to witness. I try to convince them that I am on the uphill stretch. I aim to show them that I am so much stronger than It. I am trying on the outside, but in retrospect I cannot pinpoint anything that I am doing. My weight, health, and sheer capability to put together a thought have all continued to denature, though I proudly quantified recently that I was finally going to fight and succeed.  Am I but just a liar? A traitor in the bloodiest of all aspects? I would desire to hope that I am not. I would like to believe and have faith in my soul that soon enough, I will wake up knowing exactly what my first diminutive step will be and how/where to start it. Unfortunately, I am aware that this is not the case in any gradation. There will be no magic day or time that I will extemporaneously transform into an aggressive soldier in the ED battlefield. I have to just go with what I know, and that is what I am unsure of how to do.

It is not that I do not want to do something, nor is that I am ignorant to the ailments of my condition. In spite of its complexity, the datum of the matter is that I simply do not know how to make myself do what I need to do, much less how to actually do it. Going to outpatient for the past five years has provided me with the groundwork for the road of recovery I have before me: medical knowledge of what toll my illness will/is taking on my body, nutritional guidance and learning, and hours of therapy to sort out how the prior week went and whatnot. The downfall of this cycle, however, is that despite the skills the nutrition and therapy once-a-week have provided me with thus far is not near enough. Sometimes, outpatient is not enough for an ED patient, and frankly, that patient is now me. I have spent my fair share of days running through my preceding day’s intake with my nutritionist, discovering where I slipped up and setting goals for myself in the days to come. With her guidance, I have created meals for me to go home and try and adjusted common fallbacks. When I am in her office, the world is full of possibilities—most notably the belief of my recovery—but once I am back in the comfort of my own home and discretion, however, very seldom do I have the audacity or forte to complete any of my brainstormed tasks and expectations. On the rare occasion that I do try, the after-effects on behalf of the ED are what send me spiraling into a manic urgency to even further restrict my intake. Along either pathway in which I travel on any given day, the irrevocability of guilt bore from my failure to do much of anything only further emboldens the subterranean blankets of my depression to sheathe me in the numbness of it all. The same goes for my therapy. In our weekly sessions, I have uncovered the many underlying reasons my ED has such control and have analyzed certain ED thought processes I commonly entertain. However, I have never opened word to the events of my past, nor am I able to deal with my emotions or events once I step foot out of that crowded one-story building.

I cannot help myself but to question how, exactly, do some people recover? Are there some that are just too far gone to be helped? Is it a matter of guts or strength, or is it a sheer luck of genetic code? Deplorably, I do admit that this has been on my mind lately. The difference in me now and my post-social-awareness/inspiration-activism self is that my passion and thereby willpower for recovery is blossoming and interminable: the fruit that which is sure to be manifested hangs effortlessly delicate from a willowed, tethered branch; yet, I am wedged in an imbroglio of roots and impenetrable soil, unsure of how exactly to maneuver my footwork to set me free.

~ by candyshele1204 on June 6, 2012.