the trouble with recovery

I found a nutrition textbook in the house library, and decided to page through it. It's incredibly helpful for me to educate myself about how food functions as fuel--when I see it that way, it's make it easier to make the right choices, day after day (i.e., not puking and eating nutritional and adequate foods). Whenever I pick up a book about food, body, exercise and related subjects, I almost compulsively check the index to see what pages they've mentioned eating disorders on, to see what misinformation people are spreading these days (with good intenions, no doubt, but a superficial understanding of the disease as "Gymansts-and-ballerinas-who-should-just-eat-a-fucking-sandwich-disorder" doesn't help anyone). One book I read blatantly stated "lower class girls are not at risk for eating disorders," which resulted in me writing them a nasty letter detailing the horrors of my disorder as well as the horrors of my finances. Thus, the bar of my standards is set pretty low.

And I was shocked by what information this nutrition book had to offer. First of all, it was pretty good. It wasn't dumbed down, or overly simplified, and even mentioned Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (CBT and DBT, for those into the acronyms), two forms of therapy often used to combat the psychological end of eating disorders. But two statistics in particular blew me away.

The average time for recovery from anorexia? Seven years. The average cost of treatment? $150,000. I have no idea how much my parents paid for my treatment at Renfrew, but I know it was somewhere in the range of a heinously disgusting amount that we couldn't afford. I knew women there who joked that they went to Renfew instead of college, but it was real. Many insurance companies won't cover the cost of treatment, especially if someone has been through it before. Aetna, my lovely provider, cut me off when I reached the weight my doctor set as minimally sufficient to keep my heart beating and eyes blinking. Not when I'd reached a place of mental, emotional, and spiritual development and restoration, but a number on the scale.

I only truly kicked my eating disorder out of my life for good this spring (symptom free since February 10th!), meaning I struggled with my eating disorder for almost nine years. It makes me deeply sad to think of all the things I could've experienced and the fun I could've had if this disease hadn't had such a grip on me, if I could only stop isolating myself, if I could just relax about the calories and eat the fucking ice cream.

What's scary and overwhelming and also beautiful about recovery and what keeps many addicts of all kinds from improving is that you have to choose it everyday of your life. It's not an event that occurs, like an orgasm or childbirth, where you know you came or went through labor. There's no moment when you know you're recovered for the rest of your life. It's the accumulation of a series of choices that you make because you're finally honoring the person you are and the person you deserve to be. It's little bits of labor everyday, forever. You've got to choose actively to craft that life worth living, and even now that I'm on that path and I'm doing it, I can see how overwhelming it is when you're stuck in the abyss. It makes sense to me on a very deep level why eating disorders have the lowest recovery rate (and are the most lethal) of any mental illness.

But it's a commitment, like any other. I've committed myself to writing this blog, to living my feminism, to being a good HR, to making great grades, to enjoying Smith to the fullest extent. And I've got to re-commit to recovery, by taking better care of myself in the face of stress (this five hours of sleep shit ain't cuttin' it). It's not glamorous like starvation is portrayed to be, but it's the building of a lifelong relationship with oneself that's based on respect and love and compassion that makes recovery (and life!) a triumphant experience.

Much love,
The Sheriff