The Year That Ended

Some days I just sit and wonder what life would be like if I had never developed an eating disorder but I know it’s not helpful to do that. One thing I have learnt during this whole experience is that the past cannot be changed. You can starve, binge, purge, exercise, take pills and all the rest but the past still stays, you cant take away things that have happened and doing these things only serves to prolong the pain. Hurting myself certainly hasn’t stopped the pain of people who have hurt me but it’s a vicious cycle, once you get on it it’s so hard to stop. There are days when my eyes fill with tears and I want it all to go away, some days to the point where I have considered taking my own life. Eating disorders hold that much power. The power is so strong that the sufferer is rendered helpless which in a sense is ironic. The things I have done to make myself feel more powerful, after feeling powerless for so long, have made me weaker and unhappy and definitely not powerful. There are moments when I wonder if I ever will be completely free of this but I live in hope that it is possible to completely recover. Sure the mind may still go back to the dark times, but, as long as they do not withdraw so much into themselves that they become a shell then it will, like other memories, become one more thing of the past. I hope one day to recover and be able to look back and say that this is who I used to be. I want to show others that it is possible to recover. Right now though that possibility is harder to grasp, some days I feel it but then it falls from my hands. Lost ground is hard to make up and each moment giving in to the eating disorder thoughts in my head makes recovery that much harder. I feel like a failure. I wish I could be more positive right now but what seemed like a bump in my recovery is now beginning to feel like a huge leap in the opposite direction. And this is not a physical thing, the change is primarily a thought thing, I could be technically at a healthy weight and still be going backwards. I hate the focus on the weight side of this. Sure it may be important when looking at psychical health but it is only a small part of an eating disorder. You can have an eating disorder at any weight. My mind right now feels like a torture chamber, one that I don’t know how to escape from. Sorry for the lack of positivity, I just needed to vent.