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This picture haunts me. I see it around sometimes. It unnerves me and so I have the urge to face it. I was 8.5 stone here. I am nearly 6ft tall and that is a lowly weight. My muscles had started to die and I was eating about 500 calories a day. Salmon, broccoli and sweet potato were the only foods I ate for a year. All three of those ingredients were three times a day. Three beautiful footnotes in a bigger, more complete history. No invaders. Harshly rationed. On a loop (петля). Any other food item was considered a threat, especially if prepared by another human.
When I look at this picture I see someone desperate to regain some control. I used food as a (flawed) method to gain back control. As a way to empower a reality that had become bleak.
But eating disorders are not so black and white. We brand them too easily. If it's not Anorexia or Bulimia then what is it?
I used to feel invalidated by my circumstances. I could not be defined by google. And I spent roughly 14 hours a day trying to be defined by google. I became a nameless anomaly. Now, years later and having emerged slowly from the other side, I understand that our unconscious mind manifests itself in mysterious and bespoke ways. We are programmed to require our pain to be defined- but it's not always possible. Some of us are left in a psychological purgatory. For me that presented itself as an unnamed eating disorder. For others it's a drug addiction, a codependency, a withdrawal from society, a physical pain, an addiction to love, an addiction to solitude, to alcoholism, to a host of other mechanisms that make us feel momentarily better.
I suppose the message of this is that we can all get a bit lost sometimes looking for answers. The pursuit of it can sweep us away.
In the harshest of times, try and be decent to yourselves. It's rock hard but try. Try not to look for society to label your pain. Instead look to self acceptance and self compassion. Allow uncertainty to have its moment. I'm a tyrannical monster but even I see there's definitely salvation to be had in self acceptance. In letting go of the fight. Letting go is not giving up.
Important that bit. A x

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