Seven weeks ago today I was discharged from a treatment center for eating disorders, and while I’m happy to be back with my family, coming home has been difficult.
I’m still following a meal plan which will probably continue for several months or at least until my hunger and satiety cues return.
I have doctor’s appointments, therapy appointments, dietician appointments, etc. and I’m tired.
I just want a day to not think about my eating disorder but that’s not happening anytime soon.
I wrote a lot while I was at the treatment center. Here’s a poem from a dark time:
At the Saddest Place on Earth
At the saddest place on earth,
sleep only comes when it’s been drowned in tears.
The darkest moment
is when the light starts to breakthrough.
At the saddest place on earth,
forgiveness can only come from yourself
if it comes at all.
To get your freedom back you must surrender.
At the saddest place on earth,
you are very alone
and everyone is watching.
Time goes fast or not at all.
At the saddest place on earth,
smiles shatter and despair prevails.
You wear your brain inside-out
but first, you must sit through the pain.
I know my present is not my forever so I will just keep moving forward.
The worst part of an eating disorder is that you have to eat to stay alive. You can’t get away from your disorder. Smokers can stay away from cigarettes, drug users can stay away from drugs, gambling addicts can stay away from their gambling habit…but everyone has to eat. You don’t get a day off because not eating is also an eating disorder. So very unfair.
Hang in there! Every day you follow your plan is a day you get stronger.
Sending you virtual strength.
Very, very true. Thank you.
After reflecting on it, I’m appalled at all the ways normal hunger and satiety cues are disrupted. As a child, your chance to eat lunch depends on the school’s ability to serve lunch. Big school = most students eating too early or too late.
When I was in high school, my junior and senior years, my lunch started at 8:15 am because my last name came early in the alphabet. If your last name came at the end of the alphabet, lunch was at 1 pm. School started at 6:45 am (so the football players would have daylight to practice after school, that’s why). So, I’d get up at 5 am to walk 2 miles to catch the school bus at 6 am, listen to my stomach growl until I could eat lunch (breakfast) at 8:15, get home starving at 3 and eat a meal, which meant I wasn’t hungry for family dinner at 6.
That’s a terrible way for a growing child to live, and no wonder so many adults struggle with disordered eating.
Actually, the saddest place on Earth, according to my son, is Disney in Florida. He and his wife-to-be just went down there because it was her dream to visit. The whole point of the place is to make you feel less-than: you spend hundreds of dollars to travel there and hundreds of dollars to get in, but if you want to actually ride any of the rides, you need to then spend hundreds more to buy a fast-pass…but too many people did that, so you have to buy an add-on to the fast pass.
Anyone who doesn’t is left standing in a line that never moves, while those who bankrupted themselves for a day in a theme park skip to the front of the line. How sad.
The food and drink are ridiculously expensive, leading those who aren’t 1%-ers to further bankrupt themselves, or do without in the stifling humid Florida swamp.
And everything around is tacky and greedy. Nothing is working for your greater good (like the health center you went to); everything is working to get you to bankrupt yourself.
Very sad.
I stand, as always, amazed by your strength, honesty and the courage you display by sharing your struggles with the world (wide web!), and at your extraordinary wordsmithing talents that capture your journey so vividly. ❤️
Thank you so much!