This is what it means.
This is what life is like for a recovering anorexic.
You are hungry. You are constantly, inescapably hungry. It's an inferno inside you that gnaws at your guts and no matter how much you throw to it, it only feeds the flames. Your metabolism is in hyper drive, so that anything you eat gets burned away almost immediately. You can eat half a large pizza and it will still not be enough. It's beyond just physical fullness - your body is malnourished from months of abuse, and so the hunger is your body trying to replenish all the nutrients it's lost. It's the oddest sensation in the world, to be full and still starving.
Likewise, you are often ashamed. Because to keep up with your body, you want to be eating constantly. But you can't, because that would make you a freak, because you are still unable to look at yourself in the mirror without flinching and who the HELL eats this much, anyway? So you chew gum by the handful, and you drink coffee, and you smoke, anything at all to make the cravings go away, so you don't embarrass yourself in company by ordering a huge meal when everyone else gets salad and wolfing it down and wanting more anyway, and of course you feel that they're all looking at you and wondering what the hell is wrong with you. (No one does this, by the way. No one gives a damn what you eat, unless you are the one making a big deal about it.) If someone makes one comment about you having a huge appetite, you freeze up and suddenly can't finish and feel embarrassed all day for daring to be hungry.
And so you ignore the hunger. You cheat. And that's when things get really bad. Because that's when the non-hunger sets in. And that's even worse than the constant hunger. That's painful, but it's feeling. The non-hunger is like an ice cream scoop hollows out your brain and leaves nothing behind. You are dazed, confused, you can't focus on anything or get anything done. You are lost in your body's desperate need to be preserve itself. When your physical form is caving in, your higher brain functions tend to lose their strength in favor of more basic necessities. Like finding food.
And when you eat again, when you finally persuade yourself in the dazed state that it'd be okay to have a sandwich - then the hunger comes back in force, and you are ravenous, mind-blaringly so, but it's okay because you can actually think again and if you're REALLY lucky, you'll realize that wow, you really did fuck up your health, and whatever the hell your brain is telling you about how you look in the mirror doesn't matter because you can't take a walk without getting exhausted, and so you say FUCK it and have another goddamn sandwich. If you're lucky.
This is a cycle. It is happening to me right now. It has happened for the past month and a half or so, with me gaining ground and adding more and more food every day. On the good days, I'm just constantly hungry. On the bad ones, I get into the bad state, and that's exhausting. It is confusing, humiliating, and extraordinarily upsetting, to feel nothing but this raw aching pretty much all the time, and to only sate it with excessiveness for a fullness that will be gone in an hour.
You do not understand this. You do not WANT to understand this. Starvation is ugly and awful, anorexia is not a diet plan, it is not a discipline, it is hideous and it will kill you. You will feel your body wasting and be paralyzed with not knowing how to stop it and sometimes not even wanting to. Recovery from it is almost worse than getting into it, because you're dealing with the repercussions of your actions, but you really can't blame yourself because that just sets everything back. The disease did this, not you. Forgive yourself. Forgive your body. Understand the pain, and know how to vanquish it - by caring for yourself and providing what your body needs.
I got messed up, I hurt myself, I'm healing, and I love myself enough to take care of myself now and not let this demon living in the back of my mind do this to me again.
(At least, most days I feel like that. Let's not talk about the other ones.)
Thank *gods* that I've found the joy of living in clarity, and how much easier life gets when I can actually think. I'm returning to myself and the best days are great because I feel like myself again for the first time in a long time and the shame and doubt are getting eased when I do eat that cookie and lo and behold my thighs do not instantly explode.
That doesn't mean that every day is not extraordinarily hard. It's a constant struggle. If I don't provide for myself and fight against all the guilt and confusion that almost always wells up when I'm hungry and no one else is, then everything goes away. Letting the hunger linger just a little too long can get me lost in that bad zone, and fighting back from there is always awful.
But I'm finding my way back. I avoid mirrors, I embrace protein, I eat apples all the time, I quit smoking, and every once in a while I dare myself to have a piece of chocolate. And someday the hunger will subside. And I will be okay again.
This disease will always be with me, probably. But I can ignore it better now. And I'm working on that whole self-love thing that goes along with recovery. Because I've realized this: the most perfect body in the WORLD is not worth looking in the mirror and not being able to see who you are.
Love.
~*~