Before, in my past life, when my body did what it was told and valiantly put up with all the shit I did to it, I would have these moments of thinking “I’m fat. It’s wrong” and then I would obsessively start doing something about it.  The moments got longer and longer until they became a constant, my state of being, the way I was.  And I would always be doing something about it.  Always restricting, starving, purging, eating handfuls of diet pills, exercising way beyond what I should’ve been.  And it would work.  I would lose weight.  And for a little while, it would be enough.  Then it would stop being enough and I would need to lose more.  There was alcohol, lots of it.  Speed, lots and lots of that.  Cigarettes, more diet pills, and more diet pills.  And I lost weight and lost weight and still looked in the mirror and saw this huge excessive monster that I couldn’t ever equate with the person I thought I needed to be.

Wanting to be thinner, smaller, lighter…all ways to disappear.  All ways to be less noticeable and have less expectations and less pressure (from myself mostly, I’m blaming no-one else here).  To be rescued perhaps, to hit rock bottom and be forced to get a grip on myself, to make me rescue myself…although I was never the cry-for-attention type.  Everything was kept under wraps, obsessively.  I think if you asked any of my friends back then if they thought I had an eating disorder, maybe one or two of them would say yes, because they did too so we talked about it (always in that “Oh, I’m fine now, really” way that people in denial do).  But I don’t think anyone else would’ve known.  I lived in baggy clothes most of the time and smiled a lot and was a party girl in the truest sense of the word (or words).

I did the recovery thing, the therapy, all that.  I actually managed to talk my therapist out of weighing me, as long as I wore clothes that showed the shape of my body so he could see that I hadn’t lost weight.  Yes, I talked an eating disorders therapist out of weighing a patient.  Somewhere in my fucked up head, I was kind of proud of that.  I had achieved the impossible.

But I did recover, kind of.  In as much as I repaired the behavioural flaws.  I still don’t often eat like a normal person, whatever that is.  I am currently doing this thing where I eat whatever the fuck I want, when I’m hungry, and I don’t let myself look at the calories or fat in anything.  Man, it is fucking HARD.  But I’m doing it, and it’s good.  And I’m not putting on weight.  If anything, I’ve lost some.  But it goes up and down anyway, regardless of what I do.  Which is kind of the point of what I’m talking about.  Since having M.E. my body does not do what it’s told.  It doesn’t behave and it sure as hell doesn’t put up with any shit I try to do to it.  I can’t exercise, at least not in the way that society defines exercise.  Walking down the stairs is exercise now.  I sold my mountain bike and I dream that I still have it, that I’m doing a crazy downhill course, terrified and excited, reaching the bottom and feeling like I own the world.  I dream about rollerblading (which is weird cause I haven’t done that since I was 10 or 11).  But most of all, I dream about running.  Taking these huge giant steps, like I’m flying, and covering vast distances at great speed.  And they’re beautiful, these dreams.  I wake up and feel sad cause I don’t have my bike any more and I can’t run.  Maybe one day I’ll be able to, but I’m not building dreams based on maybe’s.

Cause right now, there are plenty of really fucking cool things I can do.  I’m doing stuff I never would’ve done had I not gotten sick, and I’m grateful for that, for being able to do these things.  I’m proud of myself for not just grabbing opportunities, but making them.  And that point I keep saying I’m getting to…the funny thing is, cause I can’t exercise right now and I definitely can’t do any dumb shit like starving myself or taking diet pills, I don’t really have control over my weight.  My metabolism is shot to hell and I’ve put on more weight than I’m comfortable with in the last three years.  But I can actually see now that I’m not a huge obese disaster of a person.  I’m not the skinny little thing I used to be, or the athletic woman I was during my gym-obsessed phase (while I was ‘recovering’, strangely enough), but I’m not anywhere near as big as I feel inside.  I can see the difference now between reality and the image projected by my frequently faltering self-esteem.

And therein lies the real blessing in all this.  If I didn’t have M.E. I wouldn’t be forced to deal with NOT having control over my weight.  Yeah, I eat healthily to keep my innards running as smoothly as I can, and to make sure I don’t gain weight and screw my body up worse, but I can’t make one crazy decision any more to lose three dress sizes and just go ahead and do it.  My body is the way it is right now.  It’s not a thing I can change on a whim.  I am the size I am, and whether I feel ok with that or horrible about it, it is the size I am.  And I have no choice but to accept it.

So I look a little deeper into the mirror now.  I make more of an effort to see myself as my husband sees me, or as my friends see me.  I’m a little better at accepting compliments than I used to be.  Take away the object of all obsession, and it leaves a fucking great hole to fill.  And I’m filling it with more important stuff than how to get through a day of work on 150 calories or how much my hipbones stick out or what size my jeans are.  I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, that bad things happen to teach us lessons or any shit like that.  But I do believe that while we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we react to it, and what we choose take away from it.  I joke that my body is getting it’s revenge on me now, and sometimes in the deep dark recesses of my mind, I believe that.  But only fleetingly.  Shit happens.  And good things happen to.  And it’s way more important to focus on the good things, and the lessons learned.  Cause they’re what keeps things moving forward.