A letter from 5 years ago - How is it 5 years?

Forgive this post if it's too much, but I came across this and re-read it and it speaks volumes about who I am both now and then. How so much can change yet stay the same. I'm going to post it here and ask for no judgment but thank you if you read it. I am not proud of who I am but maybe it will give you some insight into the journey I have been on and am still on. I'm going to own this, as Matt Haig has encouraged me to do.

25.2.14

Dear J,

I wanted to write this down, whilst it’s all going through my head. Before I convince myself that it doesn’t matter, whilst I can still articulate how I feel and before it becomes mushy in its explanation. I apologise now if it seems like I’m ‘vomiting onto the page’ (an accusation leveled at me in the last piece of writing I dared show to anyone…not you, of course, but it has stuck) but I hope you appreciate my reasons for writing it down as I experience/d it.

I panicked today. I realise that you probably already know that (as your reassurances didn’t fall entirely on deaf ears) but I really ‘freaked’. So many things went through my head when you started talking about how far I had come in the last six months. I realise that you know how difficult I found it to hear it but all sorts of things ran through my head:

That we were having that conversation means that you (and the service) think I am recovered. Or that I am as recovered as you can expect from me. Whilst I know that I’m reluctant to push forwards with weight gain, and I’ve been stable(ish) for a while, I don’t feel like I’m recovered. I know that I categorically said “I don’t want to put on more weight” and I also know that you have no agenda for me to do so. But. And there is a big part of me that worries that means you have ‘given up’ on me ever being fully, BMI 20, physically recovered. I know I’m out of the ‘danger-zone’ but I worry that if I stay at this weight, that’s somehow ‘wrong’ and I’m not as recovered as I should be. ‘Should’ is a difficult word because ‘should’ isn’t what I want, but I worry that’s the anorexia talking rather than me. 

A tiny part of me is angry that anyone would let me stick where I am, whilst I am still engaging in eating disordered behaviours. Of course, I don’t really talk to anyone about these (apart from you) and sometimes it feels that I’ve so successfully hidden the illness that Ican’t talk to anyone about it

You asked what I want, and I couldn’t articulate it. I think what I want is to be free from the intrusive thoughts about food and weight. I want to not purge more often than not. I want to not pride myself on a loss or a skipped meal. I want to not hate myself more often than not. I want to be content with who I am rather than ashamed and full of horrible secrets (about the eating disorder amongst other things) I want to be happy and healthy and able to engage with real life and not run away from it.  I want to be able to engage in conversations and not feel tongue tied or preoccupied with anxieties so that I can’t talk openly and honestly. 

Whilst we’re on the list of things that I want, (my agenda?!) what I think (and I say think because I don’t KNOW) I also want, is the ability to contemplate the possibility of having a baby with Paul. I don’t know if I’m ready yet, although I suspect everyone feels like that. But I do feel that I need to talk through it. To know that there will be support if I need it, if I am able to conceive, to help me deal with a body that HATES change and is bound to change and to know how I can deal with that healthily. I’m not asking for therapy to continue into pregnancy (who knows when that may be!), but ideally that we are able to discuss it at some point before terminating therapy, and that I will be made aware of any support that I may need to draw upon in the event of me actually becoming pregnant.

All of these things I want, but aren’t really part of my life at the moment. I don’t know if they will ever resolve themselves and I know I’m being pessimistic about it, but I don’t feel that, in any of these regards, I am even close to recovery.

Then what worries me is that perhaps what’s wrong would no longer be considered anorexia, or an eating disorder, and that would mean that I would have to leave the service, and specifically your therapy. L. used to say that to me, “that perhaps you need transferring to the general psychiatric team” – even when I went into Leicester, she questioned afterwards whether I’d have been better in a general psychiatric ward. Why? I don’t know? She consistently stated that she thought anxiety and depression were significant, if not overwhelming, comorbidities. I am not a mental health professional, but I disagreed with this at the time, but now I find myself questioning myself again. I don’t need a label, but I would be distraught if I was suddenly discharged from the service as I no longer presented with the required criteria. As you know, I constantly question whether or not I have anorexia, and this plays on my mind for multiple reasons, not least the fear of being unexpectedly discharged.

I am not defined by my anorexia nor have I ever wanted to be. I have a life and a career and very few people know anything significant about my journey over the last few years, other than the very superficial. I worry that you might think I am dependent on therapy in a bad way and that it’s your responsibility to lessen my dependency. I don’t deny that I do feel somewhat dependent on it, and if you feel this is a bad thing for whatever reason, I welcome you talking to me about it and coaching me away from this (although appreciate that I will probably ‘freak’ in much the same way as I’m doing right here!)

I accept responsibility for what I have achieved in the last six months and whilst I don’t always like it, it has been me who has done it. It’s not been done in an inpatient setting, no one has forced me, and there have been significant benefits to staying at the weight I am now, having made considerable steps forwards since Summer. It is hard for me to accept these positives, but I can see that it has enabled me to hold down my job, it’s made it easier for me to make new friends at School, it’s made me more approachable (I think) to parents and children. It’s also made life a little more colourful. And I say that with trepidation, because I am still struggling daily (forgive me for restating this)  but things aren’t quite as hard physically and mentally as they were at a lower weight. But perhaps the biggest thing is that I finally feel ready to engage in therapy, to talk about the things that are holding me back, to process the events of my childhood (that feels incredibly self-indulgent writing that!) and then just as I feel able to do that, I am utterly terrified you’re going to discharge me. To let me go without doing that work. To let me find my own way and work it out myself because I’m doing well.

And that brings me to the scariest thought of all, that if I let all these worries get to me, the most sensible option to me is to stop trying and to just run away and hide in the anorexia completely and totally and just give up. I know it’s not about food or weight really, and it’s about the underlying feelings. But when being fully ‘weight restored’ was as difficult, if not harder, emotionally as being in the depths of anorexia, I’d choose the numbness of the anorexia every time over the sheer desperation and mental anguish (dramatic? Moi?!) of a non-eating disorder-symptom me. People are always saying trite aphorisms like ‘the worst days in recovery are still better than the best days in the illness’ and I’m sorry, but I honestly can’t see the truth in that: In the worst days of being ill, at best I felt a total numbness, feeling like a machine going through the motions and at worst I felt a general desire to disappear out of site. Compare this to the worst days in recovery where I was totally and utterly desperate and ready, with plans of how to do so, to kill myself. I desperately needed support at both points in time, but to me, the far more intense despair and hopelessness was in recovery. I can say, hand on heart, they were the worst days of my life. Who would want that? So, yes, I’m terrified of recovery, because aside from any physical changes, what if that’s what it brings? Sheer desperation, where every minute is torturously painful? 

As is so often the case, one worry turns into a thousand others and it all swims around in a great whirlpool in my mind but I needed to make sense of it and write it down, and I felt that it was appropriate to share it with you, because although I think you know much of this, now I’ve written it and shared it, I now know you know it.

I don’t expect a response, I just hoped to get it to you before next session so it’s off my mind and I feel I’ve made myself understood.

Thank you so much for your understanding,

H