Sometimes Forever Is Just A Second

Dear Liz Jones,

The first thing I want to say, in response to your recent article and claim that “sometimes [you’re] glad [you] have an eating disorder”, is that I am truly so very, very sorry. I’m so sorry that your eating disorder has consumed and manipulated you to the point where you feel this way. I’m so sorry that your eating disorder has gripped you so tightly that you don’t want a life outside of it, let alone hope for it. I’m so sorry that your eating disorder has brought you such a lonely and isolated life, where it thrives as your sole confident. I’m sorry that you never realised you could hold a life above and beyond this hideous illness.

That said, and truly sorry I am, let’s just linger on the word “illness” for a brief 60 seconds. Whilst “recovery stories” often hold comments about the initial buzz one gets as they lose a bit of weight, this soon disepates to the heartache of friends and family, the diary full of appointments, a fuzzy head and a messy mind, a life of numbers and dictation, of lies and deception. I don’t know, maybe this does truly go full-circle? Maybe, the longer you spend in this cycle of self-destruction, the more you obey the voice and follow the rules to the T, maybe then you are “glad” to have an eating disorder? Maybe that level of “superiority” takes years of “perfecting the art” of depriving your frail body and fragile mind? Maybe, as you fade further and further from reality, from a sense of “normality”, maybe as the eating disorder grasps you tighter and tighter, maybe then you give in and you sigh and you say, “yes, I’m really effing glad…”

But I will not allow myself to finish that “maybe”; I will not allow myself to finish that sentence, because I will not let that be my life. I will not say I am “glad”, because there is not one bit of my eating disorder that I am “glad” of…and yet, despite that, I still can’t simply “let it go”. I will admit, my eating disorder is functional – it fits a purpose, over the years, to varying extents, it has served me, and it has been a massive part of my life for various reasons, but at no point would I claim I am “glad” of its presence. There is not a day goes by where I am “glad” to have wasted years and years of my life serving anorexia. I, like so many, will never relive the moments I have lived chained to anorexia. I, like so many, will never regain the time I have spent holding hands with my abuser. I, like so many, will never retake the pictures and replace those fake smiles: memories, claimed by anorexia.

I agree, “my addiction to not eating is therefore harder to cure”, for as you attempt to address, “recovery” from anorexia isn’t about stopping - "cold turkey" - it’s about restarting what you should never have stopped. It’s about learning to feel again. It’s about learning to live once more. It's about waking up each morning and letting yourself live. It’s about claiming your own self-worth. It’s about restarting. It’s about restarting, when you know how to stop. And it’s refusing to stop, even when it feels like you’re freefalling. But Liz, please, I believe you’ve spent long enough with anorexia as your dinner date, is life really “so much simpler if you just don’t do food”?! Reading that line struck me deep, because I’ve said it. I’ve sat with doctors and therapists and tried to pull the “I just don’t do food” and kidded myself that I’m some kind of unicorn, that my functioning need not be fueled by anything other than green tea…and I’m always met with raised eyebrows. Please don’t think I’m saying this out of some twisted superiority as you seem to, for I’m really not, there is NOTHING more degrading than my irrational relationship with food. There is nothing more embarrassing than being an adult, who is utterly incapable of doing the most simple of things: feeding themselves. There is nothing more ridiculing than breaking down in supermarkets over yoghurts and tinned tomatoes. There is nothing more derogatory than being a rational person with a degree and friends and “the perfect life” and a desperately irrational mind. So yes, my addiction to not eating is going to be bloody hard to kick, but it is not impossible. Eating is innate. And anything can become habit if repeated often enough. Gosh, how else did we get to starving the only bodies we have, the only us the world will ever know…and yes, I too have counted out those measly almonds and bartered over bread. And yet, despite my protests that I “just don’t do food”, it’s not really quite that simple. Because, news flash here, even as an anorexic, I do do food: I DO eat.

And with that, I am NOT an exception. I am no more the unicorn. What terrifies me, and what, I admit, has compelled me to write this blog post, is that whilst I can see how totally consumed you must be to claim you are “glad” to have an eating disorder, those who have not had firsthand experience may well fall into your glamourisation of a deadly illness. I do not need to mention the stats, there are enough numbers in my head right now, thanks. Eating disorders are mental ILLNESSES, not lifestyle choices. And I’m really not sure exactly what it is you’re “glad” about; I don’t really feel your reasonings add up (they certainly don’t resonate with me and many others suffering with similar illnesses). My only conclusion is that you are “glad” you’re keeping life at arms length, because that way it can’t hurt you. I’ve tried. That’s how I know. It’s not all that easy or glamorous, it’s “no thank you, no thank you, no thank you…” until eventually the invitations fizzle out and the friendships fade away. The world still hurts, even if you’re numb and lacking in energy and totally dedicated to numbers. The world still hurts…and I think you’re trying to convince yourself otherwise.

I get it, I do. In a weird way, as humans (not anorexics), we like to think we have everything within our control. And with that, we like to think that we choose what comes to us, because in that active choosing, we have not lost control, we have the ability to change our own outcomes. We are not paralysed, or pawns in life’s cruel game of chess. So you can kid yourself that you’re happy with this functioning, semi-living, half-existing, cold and lonely illness…we’ve all got to tell ourselves something to get through the day. What I ask is that you don’t add to the stigma: I didn’t choose anorexia, and I don’t choose to be ill, but I can choose to fight it. It’ll be the toughest fight I ever have, but I’ll be doing it because I’m not, not ever, “glad” I have an eating disorder. And I never will be – not with weight loss or less life or fewer calories or self-destructing. I’ll be fighting because, as a HUMAN, I do do food. I’ll be fighting because my eating disorder is no longer something I can control, quite the opposite…my “recovery”, or at least my fighting, IS.

This isn’t about superiority…and that’s what I ask anyone reading this to remember. This isn’t about vanity. This isn’t glamorous: eating disorders are illnesses. Many of those, like myself, suffering with eating disorders, are so lacking in self-appreciation, so consumed by our own self-deprecation, that “superiority” in any shape or form seems almost laughable…if it weren’t so painfully tragic.

Liz, I’m truly very sorry, not because I see you as a victim, because actually I still see fight in your words, but because you’re fighting on anorexia’s side, rather than against it. I’m very, very sorry that you no longer see a life outside the eating disorder, and thus have resigned yourself to its lies. I’m sorry that you felt the need to publicise your conclusion and I’m sorry that so many people may read your crafted words and assume eating disorders have positive side effects. I’m sorry because this couldn’t be further from the truth. And I’m sorry that the Daily Mail were frankly ignorant enough to publish these disordered words. I’m sorry, Liz, but there’s nothing strong or superior or enviable about maintaining an eating disorder. I hope you realise it is NEVER too late to let yourself live. I hope you realise that as Lauren Oliver once said, “the most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well” – to that I add “and happy”: the most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well and happy. I hope you realise that anorexia is desperate to keep you in its grip; so desperate that it will steal your voice and write from behind it.

Take care now,

Me – tea lover, book reader, coffee shop frequenter, believer and dreamer, anorexia sufferer living in hope of one day, because I am never “glad” to be contained within the glass bottle that is an eating disorder.