Winning the fight, losing the war.

I've finally got a moment of privacy to jot some thoughts down, or more like questions down. Though not possessing a headache from Satan today, we've still not fared well. I don't know what to write about or where to begin.

Maybe I can write about posing for the toilet bowl twice today, or maybe I can write about being too exhausted and out of breath to stand and fold laundry, or maybe I can write about not exercising and feeling so G*d d*mn fat that suicide looks appealing. Oh,oh, oh!! I know!! I can write about how we prostituted our soul to D. today, (the husband) and violated our own *no sex* rule.

Not working out today has really thrown me into a funk. I feel dirty, fat, worthless, and damaged. Food is dirty and has made me dirty, which is one reason I had to get rid of it. The other reason being I can't get fatter. We are tentatively scheduled to enter a partial hospitalization program on Tuesday, but the anxiety is high and I don't know if we will acquiesce to our own demise by letting them fatten us up. A lesser program is more, shall we say, appetizing. As I write that, the more logical and healthy voices of reason speak to me. I do not shut them out, because I know their words are true, but it's too late for us now.

All the time health care professionals told me recovery couldn't be sustained at a low weight I wouldn't believe them and figured my body was just different. I said we were different and we could recover and still be anorexic, so I ignored their advice.

But now we've had an epiphany, a light bulb moment! I understand it now, although it doesn't change my mind. However, it puts me into the position of MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE one day letting go and giving in to the pros. You see, when we got out of residential treatment, we were normal weight; still acting out with symptoms occasionally, but a normal weight nonetheless. As the last two months have dwindled by, we've dwindled down. I always argued that we could due trauma work and stick to a meal plan while being what they consider underweight. I've proved my own d*mn self wrong.

As we've lost weight, we've lost hope and our desire for recovery. Losing five pounds wasn't enough. Losing ten pounds wasn't enough. Eating three meals a day was too much. Then, eating two meals a day was too much. The game plan has changed, as everyone professional that we ignored said it would. It has consumed us again sheerly because ED is sneaky and lays his snares and traps and lures us in pound by pound. I finally get it. I finally know why I should have let it all go and let the professionals help me, instead of micro-managing our recovery.

But just because we now realize that you can't be super skinny and underweight and be in recovery doesn't mean we've accepted recovery on Recovery's terms. ED has us trapped and whipped. All his commands and demands have to be met or we won't know what to do; all hell will break loose and we'll lose control and be dirty, fat and dirty. Even with a BMI that suggest being underweight and hunger pains that satisfy self-harm urges, it's still brings us to a hopeless and helpless fork in the road.

We try to wiggle free from ED's grasp, knowing now everyone else was right, but we can't escape. I venture to say some want to get free, but others can't fight the good fight. It's bollocks, as Victoria would say.

So what do we do on Tuesday when the hospital we've been incarcerated in so many times expects us to eat a big fat plate of food and we don't want anything to do with it? Last year we went head to head with these people. I hear Erin asking me the same pernicious question, "Rebecca, do you REALLY want to be in treatment?", as if every single patient there was doing jumping jacks over having the opportunity to eat fattening, cheesy lasagna swimming in orange grease. Pardon us for having an eating disorder. No we don't want to be there. Do we want an ED for the rest of our lives? Hell to the No. Does our will to recovery wax and wane like the ocean's tide? Hell to the Yes. What will we do on Tuesday? Time will tell.