It’s gotten easy for me to talk about my eating disorder. To
talk about how I starved myself until my heart started to fail, how I counted
my ribs to make sure I could feel each one, to talk about the feeding tubes
that were put down my throat. I can talk to those who are struggling and tell
them that it gets better. That there are bad days but eventually the good start
to outweigh the bad and eventually you don’t start to detest every inch of your
body. I can talk about that.
What is scary to talk about is the darkness.
The darkness that has haunted the better part of the last
ten years. When I forget what joy feels like. But it’s time to talk about it.
It’s time to stop being ashamed of it because as much as I try to disown it,
it’s a part of me.
Not many know that I used to swallow bottles of pills and
pray to die until I woke up in the hospital getting my stomach pumped. Or that
I used to slice up my wrists with a razor because it was the only pain I could
feel. Or that I would carve words like fat and ugly into my skin to serve as a
reminder to what I was.
These weren’t one-time occurrences. I got used to hearing
the sound of an ambulance and know it was coming for me. People around me no
longer reacted seeing new cuts on my body. My roommates knew how many pills
were too much and what I could sleep off.
My dad never got used to policemen knocking on our door in
the middle of the night while he waited to see if they would say I was dead or
just another person found me unconscious. He never got used to holding my hand
in the hospital while I pleaded with him to just let me die.
I excise this part of my life and pretend it wasn’t me.
That’s not who I am. But the scary truth is that it is, and sometimes the
darkness still comes back. Sometimes I have days where I wake up and refuse to
get out of bed because being under the blanket feels safer. I have days where I
ignore my friends because I don’t want them to worry, to learn this part of me
and leave because it’s too much. These days have been happening recently and
it’s been terrifying. To want to slice into my arms for the first time in four
years and to be crying on the floor after my friends rip the pills from my
hand. It’s scary and I don’t like to talk about it. I don’t want to be the
crazy girl anymore.
When I started this blog I promised to be honest and talk
about what recovery is really like, every aspect. So here I am talking about
the crazy. Owning that dark part of me. Because it’s the only way to get
better. As cliché as it sounds after the rain comes the sunshine. And I have to
keep believing that the clouds and the darkness aren’t going to last forever.
