Awesome Honesty
For me, the hardest and most annoying part of being in remission from the Eating Disorder part of my mental illness is that I can’t just randomly trust a thought or a memory. I always have to turn it over and over in my mind searching for tell-tale signs that Slug got to it first. We all have ego, we all have perspectives and projections, we all have to deal with a bit of this… But recovery from an eating disorder requires those of us going through it to throw every notion, preconceived or otherwise, out the proverbial window where it can be screened for truth and fact before being invited back inside.
Facts are things that I can google or ask several people and get the same answer… Feelings are not facts, but it is precisely this lack of knowledge and logic that guided my every decision whilst I was held captive by various disorders for most of my life. Things like gravity are ok, I can trust that, but can I trust the elation I feel, that lightness of being, when I’m around a certain person? Or is it just because I haven’t eaten lunch? Is that same person really being mean to me, or is that my mental illness?
Is it all real?
Is none of it?
Likewise, memories need to be held up to the harsh light of day and examined for the truth embedded within. Due to a constant lack of nutrition my brain mustn’t have had enough energy to create memories, for I have so few of them. It feels like the decade of my 20’s lasted about 5 days.
On the first day I am 18 and in Townsville, food is not a memory, but lack of it is, alongside all of my rules. I remember near misses in cars, hallucinating either because of the drugs I was on, the lack of food in my body or both. I remember changing my clothes, my hair, and the type of music I listened to. I didn’t feel at home inside myself. I was becoming people around me, trying them on, seeing if they felt a bit better. In another life perhaps I was a serial killer and I’d cut out the middleman so to speak and just wear their skin?
On day 2 I am in Melbourne, now 20, I am scared, cold and looking for something to hold me down to earth. I want someone to see me, I want to matter, I want to be felt. And I am. He sees me, he feels me. I feed him whatever words he needs to hear. I convince myself this is love. I don’t know what to wear, my wardrobe is filled with the clothes of a stranger, I cut off all my hair, I don’t listen to music anymore, I crave silence. I don’t create anymore, but I do drink. Snatches of memories, a pair of boots, an outfit I really loved that made me feel very ‘Melbourne’.
On day 3 we are divorced or divorcing. 3 years have passed and I barely saw them. I don’t know what I thought about, I don’t know what I did. I was weight restored, I don’t think I thought about it...
But I must have, because on day 4 I am 27 and I am sick and fkn tired of feeling sick and fkn tired. I read something somewhere about ‘Saturn returns’ and I imagine that the next 27 years are exactly the same as the first, I almost die of boredom on the spot. I read an article about labioplasty and I rally against the woman who would be so stupid as to hate herself enough to do something so stupid. I don’t see the hypocrisy, despite the years of drug, alcohol, exercise and sex abuse I have inflicted upon myself.
On day 5 I am 30, I wake up 2 states away, in a caravan at the back of my parent’s property. I scream in tears as I beg for release from my self hatred.
It comes.
So what happens after? What comes after day 5, what about days 6 and 7? Does that get me to 50 and beyond or have I reached a state of being that allows me to be more present and tick off my days into the double digits?
I’d like to think so, but again, I’ve got a tricksy little head worm whose voice I can’t trust, but he sounds just like me.
This is a new thing. At least for a while there he sounded different, and his orders were more noticeably psychotic. It was much easier to find the traces of Slug behaviour when I was being told that I should jog harder and longer, and eat less. But now it’s more normal sounding, the requests and rules almost as though they are simply calls to my best self.
Like, to make sure I get my writing in, and to stretch my back out after sitting all day,... What about a quick painting before I go to bed?
Is it me or my ED? Is it me and I’m just trying to set new habits and form new rituals, or is it Slug, disguised as my career-focused drive? Is it me wanting to be the best I can be or am I compulsively marching down the same old path I always have, just in a new pair of boots, braying like a donkey about how smart and strong I am now? Is it imposter syndrome? When will I get to a place of being?
I’m not joking, is this it? Am I here?
Perhaps this is what I enjoy most about learning the rules and facts of painting and drawing, they give me something I can trust and hang onto when the thoughts circling around my head could be villainous or otherwise. The facts of Drawing Analysis and Colour Theory give me knives to cut through the bullshit, and perhaps, if I do this long enough, the truth will become a habit, and I’ll be able to trust that I’m here… That I am in fact, being.
XXX ALi
