“I have to get new batteries for the scale, I think it’s dead.”
“I haven’t weighed myself in a while. I’m trying not to make it the whole point of everything.”
“Oh. Well you should. You don’t want to go back to where you were!”
I get it. I do. My mom means well.
Many of the people in our lives whose eating is not disordered seem to interact with our recovery in ways that are focusing on the weight as our central problem, offering us extrinsic validation (“You look great!”), tough love that they call “motivation,” comparing our bodies to other peoples’ to make us feel better about ourselves (as if we don’t, as disordered eaters, already understand that the people in those bodies probably have insecurities and struggles of their own); ultimately, they offer us ideas that reek of the diet culture that we so desperately try to shake ourselves from in recovery.
And while the “You look great!”s and “how much have you lost?” are well-intentioned markers that our progress is being noticed by people that live outside our bodies, it’s worth knowing that our progress may look different to them than it does to us.
But the only person whose definition of your progress matters is YOU.
After almost five months of asking my mom repeatedly not to comment, not to help, to please stop offering to set me up at weight watchers, to please let me pack my own lunch…I am still met with a conflict.
By now, I have learned a lot of acceptance. I have accepted that my eating disorder exists. I have accepted that eating seven 13 oz. jars of Nutella in a week is not acceptable, normal, or indicative of being in a mentally healthy place.
I’ve accepted that as long as I choose to recover, I will struggle against myself, my ego, and my brain’s petulant roommate, binge eating. I have also accepted that I will stop struggling in a different way, and find peace.
I have accepted that in order to find peace, I have to forgive myself for not being perfect.
But I also have to forgive others for not understanding. And this also means their inability to understand that maybe, they just don’t understand.
What I mean by this is that people, particularly people who are not disordered who love you, will do what they can to match your experiences, because it’s easier than admitting that they just don’t get it. Human instinct is to relate, to have answers, to never look unprepared.
But until they’ve spent a majority of their hours awake thinking about their next meal, until they’ve dug food out of the trash and eaten it, until they’ve actually thought “Maybe if I didn’t have this body part I would weigh 20 pounds less,” they have not experienced what I have. And I have peacefully internalized that. Sometimes, when this situation arises, I reflect quickly and I accept it for them.
It’s not always that easy, however. There are momentary frustrations like the situation with my mom, that I get caught up in my resentment of other people’s understanding or their complete lack of it.
But then I am reminded: I have been given the gift of having my eyes opened to what being in disorder really means.
I have something that “normal” eaters don’t: an abnormal relationship with food, and a specific mechanism of healing–one that those who are not in recovery do not need.
So I am working on accepting the assumptions and the advice and not expecting people to meet me where I am at. They haven’t been where I am at.
And that’s okay.
I have to teach those who live parallel to my recovery that it’s okay that they haven’t been in my place, too. I have to teach acceptance by living it.
*happy Hillary dance for good luck*
Royally Incomplete 