Recovery

I don’t want to relapse, I just don’t want to be fat. I don’t want to starve, I just don’t want to be full. I don’t want to die, I just don’t want to live. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. I just want to be free and light and happy. Life feels like it won’t have meaning if I continue as I am, fat, ugly, alone, and worthless. 

Breakfast consists of nothing. Lunch, well, fuck lunch. Dinner I have to eat because people see me and will worry. So I eat as little as possible and pretend to be full. It’s all a show, all a game. Until things get too real, too sick, too much. I’m “recovering” but am I?

Nicotine and water are my sustenance. Live life to its emptiest. Hunger, sleep, and isolation are all a part of a balanced recovery, right? See, I can’t write or say too much because I’m sure someone will see or hear this and think I’m still sick. I’m not. I’m recovering in hunger, while slowly dying. Get it right. 

What am I doing? I know what I want, and I want it so much, but I can’t have what I want. Instead I get nothing. Why should I allow myself to recover? Recovery is for people who deserve it, people who look pretty. My friends, therapists, family all tell me that this is part of the journey. Maybe I don’t want to be on the journey they see for me. Maybe I just want to curl up in a ball and cry all day.

I see videos and hear speeches from recovering or recovered anorexics and know that I want that same joy for myself, all the while thinking that I will never reach it and never deserve it. Comparison got me into this and maybe it can get me out? No it can’t. Yes it can. No it can’t.

At this point things are so flipped around, I see everything from the upside down. Up is down and down is up. What do I want anymore? What is life? Because right now being healthy is the enemy and my friend. It’s a familiar face that I am drawn to but can’t recognize. Am I even living if I’m dying, or am I dying because I am living? I’ve lived so long in death that I can’t remember what it is to know anything else.

As I write this poem I see how bad things have become, and I welcome it with open arms. I’m not sick enough to die but too sick to live.