Wednesday 11 April 2012

Reclaiming an identity


I always had a glamorized view of what recovery would be like when I reached it. I am the first to admit I wasn’t prepared for what I found when I finally got there. I had spent so many years fighting anorexia that by the time I did recover, all I knew was a life with anorexia. I no longer knew how to exist in the world when the need to fight was no longer so prominent.  I had conquered the ED, but had lost myself and all that made me who I was completely (or so it seemed at the time). 

I spent a lot of time by myself, reading books and writing, but still at the comfortable distance from everyone else so that I would not have to feel or show how my years of anorexia had shortchanged my development as a person.  I was lost within a deep sense of emptiness for some time.

Thankfully, this stage was only temporary and a kind of inner adjustment began to occur where I could feel myself again and the void began to fill. Many things helped with this process, university, kind people, travel, knowledge, and evidently time.  I am still putting the pieces of my identity together and have come to understand this as a final part of the recovery process as a whole. It is very empowering to rediscover who I am and humbling to find that perhaps some of the things I thought I had lost to an eating disorder were just hidden underneath and remained with me all along ♥

3 comments:

  1. I totally relate to this! It's hard to think without Ed! It's hard for me to know if it's me talking or Ed. I'm sure time will only make thinks more clearer, but for now I'm still learning how to be just me.

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  2. i feel like i could have written this post. it is so overwelming and frightening and confusing when we let go of the ed and try to figure out who we are without it... but isn't it beautiful when we do discover those things and see how much better our life is without it? i am so happy that you are finding these things and not letting that fear drag you back into the (false safety) of the ed.

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  3. You're amazing and I adore you <3

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