Recovery Revisited by Rose Gleeson

Content Warning: Detailed Eating Disorder Descriptions

I’m fine. I’m sorting through boxes shoved unceremoniously into the attic of my family home ten years ago, unearthing photographs, gig tickets, leaflets, badges, posters, CDs, minidiscs, (minidiscs?!), drawings, letters, memories. There are letters and cards from family and friends I still talk to, from relatives no longer living. I look at them fondly, sort them into the small pile of things to keep. There are letters from friends I’ve lost touch with, cards from people part of my life long ago. I thank them self-consciously and sort them into the recycling. Marie Kondo would be proud.  For someone who considers themselves ‘unsentimental’, I’ve kept a lot of stuff. I suppose my younger self thought there was more worth holding onto. A photobooth photo with my first ‘proper’ boyfriend, a heartbreak as distant and remote as Andromeda. Shredded without sadness. This isn’t as bad as I anticipated. I open a purple plastic filing box, glossy and damp where I’ve cleaned off the dust, expecting school certificates or old payslips from my Saturday job at Kitchens. 

I plummet downwards,

Knees hit hard floor. Hands tremble. 

How could I forget? 

I pull the box down onto the kitchen floor and with shaking fingers take out and unclip a pink plastic wallet, spilling out the contents. Fuck. I didn’t want to see this but I can’t tear my eyes away and I’m screaming, fists pressed to my solar plexus, snot and tears streaming down my scrunched up face. I ugly cry now. The girl in those photographs would never permit herself such visceral rage, such visible pain. He made me a calendar every year and I kept them. I’m confronted now with our smiling faces, places and moments suddenly as fresh as the bile which burns my throat. I was so happy. I was so thin. I snap a blurry photo and send it to the group chat, although I colour his face in, protecting him still. ‘Tbt that time I was auditioning to be a trophy wife’. No one responds. Please someone respond. Please somebody tell me I look better now. Nobody does. My wife walks in, she’s heard my keening. She kneels down beside me.  

“I loved him” I wail, 

Probing a hurt still unhealed, 

As if that explains. 

“I don’t know what to do with these,” I tell her, “I can’t just throw them away unacknowledged.” Her arm stays round my shoulders until my breathing is steadier. She lets me talk through them, the places, the people, the special dates he added; World Book Day, Sylvia Plath’s Birthday, International Picnic Day… 

“It’s just so weird,” I sob, “like a timeline of our relationship.” 

“Or a timeline of your eating disorder,” she replies. 

It wasn’t his fault. I wasn’t that thin when He and I met. At first I was merely a chronic calorie counter, a dedicated dieter who flirted with bulimia but never had the willpower to really mean it. First boyfriend, whose fragmented face is reposing amongst the recycling, told me people referred to me as his ‘fat girlfriend’. He winced when I said I was buying a pair of shorts; said I didn’t have the figure for them. He encouraged me to join a well-known alliterative weight loss group, my gold membership card went in the shredder just before he did. He dumped me for a skinny brunette in our first year of university, the night Lee Ryan was playing at the Students’ Union. I was too upset to go so I’ll always be thankful to him for that. The rejection hurt more than the loss. 

I might doubt myself, 

But I never doubted Him.

He was my endgame. 

By the time He and I properly got together, I’d been in love with him for almost four years. I’d pushed him away previously, self-sabotaged, hurt him, hurt myself, because I was afraid. But once we were official, once I’d allowed myself to trust him, I loved him with an intensity I’ve never felt before or since. And with that deeper love, came a deeper fear of loss. And all the bullshit messages I had internalised throughout my life came whirling through my subconscious and out into the open along with whatever I’d eaten that day. I knew deep down that to be truly worthy I had to be smaller than him. I knew that to be good enough I needed to be light enough for him to carry me over a threshold. I had internalised the message that good girlfriends ate less, weighed less, took up less space than the men they loved. I desperately wanted to make a success of this relationship. My perfectionist tendencies went into overdrive. I felt I had finally found the strength to starve. Love was the catalyst. How fucked up is that? 

It’s so exhausting

Knowing you are not enough

And also too much. 

“I used to be so pretty,” I sniff, red faced and puffy. 

“You still are,” my wife responds gallantly, although right now I have my doubts regarding her sincerity. Blotchy faced and swollen, slumped in a heap against the radiator, I look at her. 

“Really?”

“Really.”

In this moment, I miss that body, the one with a tiny waist his arm encircles. I miss being able to fit clothes from any shop, having only one chin and not having to worry about camera angles. I miss having doors held open for me, the rush of reassuring responses to the lament “I feel so fat”. I miss the glorious fleeting experience of feeling confident in my clothes. I miss people responding to me as if I were beautiful. I miss the exhilaration of stepping on the scales and seeing the numbers get lower. I miss looking as delicate and fragile on the outside as I frequently feel on the inside. I miss fitting in. 

I almost forget

The fear which accompanied

Each waking moment. 

I don’t miss the ever-present dread which intensified with each mouthful of food, each step on the scales. I don’t miss the endless mantra that whirled round my head on a loop, a manic repetition of whatever I had eaten that day, frantic calorie counting. I don’t miss being told I “always had a pretty face” or the terror which came with an increase in the number on the scales. I don’t miss being constipated. I don’t miss struggling with bladder control. I don’t miss being eternally cold and tired and stressed. I don’t miss getting blackout drunk on two glasses of wine. I definitely don’t miss the cringing, sickening shame I felt if I woke up hungover, fearfully scrolling through sent messages and outgoing calls. I don’t miss repressing my needs and emotions and fears so deeply that they only came to the surface when I was overwhelmed or intoxicated. 

Vomiting feelings

Until emptiness returned

Then refilled with shame.  

There’s a part of me that will always blame myself. A part of me that will always feel that if I’d just been a bit more in control of my ED, if I’d just restricted enough to be a perfect size 10 but not so much that it became all- consuming and I went batshit crazy, He and I might have worked out. I know that’s not how eating disorders work, they literally change your brain chemistry, they have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. I’m lucky to be alive. For a long time, I didn’t feel like that. Looking at these photos of us smiling together, it’s easy to forget how much pain I was in, how lonely I often felt. I’ll never forgive myself for any pain I caused Him. I must have been such hard work, constantly spinning between Stepford simulation and hot mess. He quoted Dickens when we broke up. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I’m sorry. It’s ironic to think that if I hadn’t been so terrified of losing him, I might never have driven him away. With every fibre of my being I hope He’s happy now. 

Death once seemed better

Than weight gain, than life without 

Him. Yet here I am. 

Recovery was a bitch. Trying to get better in a fatphobic society was possibly more exhausting than maintaining my illness. The only reason I managed to stick to it was because it promised something sustainable. Initially, my weight gain was praised. People complimented my bigger boobs, my more relaxed approach to life. Briefly, very briefly, I was fun. Soon though, my weight was increasing faster than I could afford clothes to fit my burgeoning body. I found myself greeted with smiles as strained as my seams and awkward murmurs of “you look…. different.” I cried over my stretchmarks, struggled to socialise without alcohol, avoided seeing friends who I hadn’t seen since I was smaller. 

I had to accept that my metabolism and my set weight had probably changed irreversibly. A family member actually asked me if I’d “taken this recovery thing a bit too far.” You can’t take recovery too far.

Once I was bigger,

The world behaved differently-

Confirming my fears.

I kept going. I met the woman who is now my wife. I met my dog, Tai, the best most handsome boy who ever lived, who always looked at me like I was the best thing in the world. I learned a different kind of love. Now, I move my body for pleasure, not punishment, mostly. I can eat intuitively, mostly. I can enjoy food without guilt, mostly. My body has reached a set weight which society still sees as too high, but which affords me an amount of thin privilege. I have learned that life is too fucking short to keep chasing a thin ideal I will never, ever reach. My ED was proof of that, and it’s already cost me enough. I collect the pictures, the calendars, the little mementos and gently place them back in their folder. I’m fine. I’m over the shock, although my insides feel bruised and tender. I’ll say goodbye soon. 

The world will tell me 

I’m less worthy now. I know-

I deserve to live.

Words by Rose Gleeson, you can follow her on Instagram here.

Header image a collaboration between Rose Gleeson and Phil Scully, you can follow him on Instagram here.