Special

Today my paper is about "Why does your eating disorder make you special."

Just a little call back to third grade. To maybe make this topic a bit less heavy, if you are here, reader. Which you're probably not. I don't intend to share this one on my social media. But I know some of you wander the interwebs until you found something. So maybe you found this.

This one is for me. And maybe for my therapist, she asked me to write it.

I told her that I feel like I can't let this go, this eating disorder. That I know that it hurts me, but that I love it. When asked why I love it, I answered that it makes me feel special.

And maybe that wasn't the right answer, maybe that's not really what I feel. So let's just talk about how this eating disorder makes me feel on the good days.

On the good days it applauds me for my discipline. Not everyone can live on 600-800 calories a day. You can. You are something different for that. You don't have to feel the food in your teeth, rotting them away. You don't have to feel it in your stomach, pulling you down to the earth. It doesn't have to fill your time. You are free from the chains that the rest of the world is wrapped in.

On the good days it gives me hope. Hope that I can be whoever I want to be. If I can carve my body out into the way I want it to be, mold it, shape it, then I can likewise be the soul artist in my own life. That the abstract future can be as easily malleable as my physical existence. And living in a time of life where I truly don't know what I want to be, a thought that scares me, the hope that I could be anything I want is worth gold.

On the good days it feels like me. I don't worry how my clothes weigh. I don't feel my skin and fat fold on each other, reminding myself that I am there. I feel like my own soul. Where I am a mother, daughter, wife, friend, teacher, neighbor, an active member of my community.... being defined by outward sources makes me feel so fragile. Like the only thing that makes me ME is my relationships to others. So when I lose those relationships, then I lose me. I've moved through life wearing many different faces, to make others like me, to make others comfortable, and even to benefit myself, it became hard to figure out who I really was. I was bold and loud, I was quiet and coy, I was smart and loved reading, I was emotional and composed and boyish and frilly, loving color and sound and fearing attention from new people. I was a lot of contradictions. And now I don't know who I am. I know I've changed drastically since I met my eating disorder. I'm certainly a lot more quiet. Colors give me headaches. I speak strong but mentally slap my hand if I extend my presence too far. My relationship with my friends and family has changed. So really, it really feels like the only thing that's been there the whole time is the eating disorder. Like it is the most consistent thing about me. The most me thing about me.

And if I let it go, who will I be? Chasing wild, impossible dreams for a few days at a time, launching businesses, writing books, recreating our home every few weeks. I feel like if I let go of this then I start spinning out of control. Like I'll have no chance at being someone important at all. My sister creates gorgeous dresses. My mother is an amazing quilter. I can't be the person that doesn't know who she is.

So my eating disorder makes me special because I feel that it makes me, me. Intrinsically. Not a definition put on me through my footprint in my world, but because it is inside me, and it knows me. It has always been there. It gave me control through the madness of high school. It gave me consistence through navigating life outside my childhood home for the first time. It gave me power through an abusive relationship, where everything was taken from me. I still had this.

And really speaking of that. Where my ex told me that he could never be with someone with an eating disorder, someone "broken". Having it now feels like an act of rebellion. Like being my own person and showing him that he has no power over me anymore.

This is long winded.

This got off topic.

This feels very confusing and hard to put down in words, and even harder to understand.

But this is why it makes me special.