For the month of February I have been asked to join a Pro-Recovery Project, which has been initiated by Anne-Sophie from
Fighting Anorexia.
So this is what I came up with when I talk about recovery from an Eating Disorder.
There are a lot of misconceptions about whether real recovery exists. Perhaps some of these thoughts stem from the fact that it is difficult to imagine that a person who has been at such conflict with themselves and their body, can ever be remedied, and certainly not fully. Is it maybe a difficulty to think that someone with an Eating Disorder can unlock a very difficult place within themselves and walkthrough said door towards a pathway leading to full healing.
From what I have seen, the human spirit is far more resilient than we maybe think. We can see this in many different places and in many different situations. Take for example a documentary I watched just the other night. It was about the desperate struggle of young children who were born into brothels in Calcutta’s red light district. A very inspiring young woman, Zana Briski, developed a relationship with these children and using the power of photography, asked these children to quite literally capture the world around them. Zana’s idea was to use photography as a medium for translating to us and the wider world, what it is to be part of such an environment. The project aimed to free these children from the tight grasp of a dark and seedy underworld, and release them into a space of hope, aspiration and freedom. On watching this documentary, I couldn’t help but wonder where does such resilience, power, and determination come from? These children had found a way of talking and using their voice through even just one image captured on film. It is clear that such resilience exists because these children showed in all its awe the capacity of humanity in the fight against adversity.
Recovery from an Eating Disorder may seem a ridiculous thing to compare with the fate of street children in India, but in fact there are more similarities than we once thought. I might not have been born in a brothel, quite the opposite, I was born into a very loving, caring and generous family, where my parents were together and myself and my younger brother were given all the possibilities my parents could offer us. Yet, out of the seams of the underground, it would seem I was to develop an illness that is a Western curse, that of an Eating Disorder. I would not suffer and struggle in ways these children did, but I cannot help but think that my suffering, if I am fair to myself, was no different than these children. This could never be a literal translation, and yet the horrors of suffering through a disease such as an Eating Disorder, surely is comparable given its sheer depth of suffering. Maybe the connection for me came when I watched a young boy with the camera he was given. He did not stop taking pictures and whilst his willingness to engage floundered, which of course can be forgiven, he continued. He forged a path forward despite all the odds. I would like to think that I did the same.
An Eating Disorder isn’t something to be gently put aside. At our lowest points of illness, there are no words that can satisfy the starved dogged hunger within us which encapsulates the experience. I also don’t think we could ever truly understand the daily battle the street children faced, and yet, we were given insight into a hidden world. As I type these words, I want to focus on the path each of us can furnace from nothing but rubble. The plight of these children was mentioned, expressed, portrayed, but the documentary was about their growth. Recovery from any affliction or suffering is about healing. Using nothing more than a camera and print, these images set these young children free. I too want to focus on the letting go, the freeing of myself from disease, and to not focus on what it was but what it became.
What became is full recovery from the wasted landscape of the profoundly messy world of an Eating Disorder. I hesitate to name my disorder. The limited boxes used to group Eating Disorders are far too restricted for it to have any meaning. What I will say is that recovering from my Eating Disorder, has been the hardest thing I have ever done, and will ever do, in my life. I reframe from modesty at this point because I am increasingly and incredibly proud of how far I have come. I can understand why other writers or journalists find it necessary to talk about just what illness is, because with that comes the sensationalism of what there now is. The shock value compels the reader further. You won’t find that here. Instead I would like to tell you what recovery has given me.
The day I chose to eat, was the day I chose to turn my life around. The day I chose to accept my body for what it is, is the day I chose to turn my life around. And the day I chose to let go of any remnants of this illness, is the day I fully recovered. Over the years I have written at length about how I personally define recovered life. I know there are a lot of sufferers who have their own interpretation of recovered, because let’s face it; anything is better than full engulfment in the illness. For me however, there are a number of distinct factors that incorporate being recovered. The obvious for me were weight restoration to a point of health, eating a healthy, balanced and varied diet, with no safe foods or foods I feared. There was then the social integration back into life, the letting go of compulsive and obsessive behaviours, sleeping enough, and finally, the living. A lyric speaks, we might all be alive, but not everyone lives. And that is the key to recovered life; the actual living. To look at me, talk to me, spend your days with me, you would never have thought I had a live threatening disease a number of years ago. Maybe if you asked about how I experienced my twenties and how I spent my days and nights existing you would. Madness aside, and the importance of life highlighted, I have learnt an awful lot. Life lessons too few master. I have learnt to appreciate the tiny drops of hope and faith I find in people or places. I can spend a day with a camera and my environment and feel full contentment. I can, each and every day, feel grateful for the life I live. I can see that others, who suffer, regardless of what, when or for how long, can also recover fully. I have found a passion in life I don’t believe we are given in manufactured parts. Passion is careful carved into our daily living. We find an outlet, an expression. Some of the most wonderful minds, and creative geniuses’, are those who have suffered hardship and this takes me back to my discussion at the beginning of this, about the children in Calcutta.
Hardship, suffering, pain, trauma, adversity, is different for us all. But what comes out of that is maybe similar. Maybe the people we become are similar. We are our individual selves, but we are assured and confident in that. We have hope, a huge capacity for hope itself, and the belief that in the end, ultimately, we are going to be okay, because if we have endured what we have, we can come through anything. In liberating ourselves from those chains and allowing ourselves to believe, our faith in both ourselves and humanity itself evolves. We are no longer isolated, alone, feared, frustrated, immobilised. It sounds cliché to write that we are liberated, not bound by self doubt and wrapped around the tight grasp of our mind and our surroundings. We cannot change ourselves by changing our environment in the literal sense, it can help of course, but we carry ourselves with us as we walk through life. On repeat in my head used to be a quote I read from “Prozac Nation” by Elizabeth Wurtzel;“How can you hide from what never goes away? (Heraclitus).” We can however dare to dream, to imagine and to envisage what our recovery can be and will be and what we want it to be.
I dared to dream. I dared to picture the life I so wished for. And as I dreamt of those things, I strived for those things. With a lot of determination, and a fierce resilience to all the thoughts in my mind, I surpassed my demons, my adversity. I set it free amongst the tops of mountains and roof tops. I sang in the rain, jumped in the puddles. I climbed caves, and jumped off bridges attached to a bungee. I got my degree, I followed a career in psychology. I spoke about my cause, I endeavoured to be a voice to those too ill to speak.
I lived.
I survived.
I am alive.
I live.
And that is being recovered ♥♥♥
