What No One Told Me (about recovering from anorexia nervosa-restrictive)

Recovering from anorexia (“anorexia nervosa-restrictive”) is incredibly painful. It takes extreme persistence and the ability to ignore the several unpleasant stages that get you to become a whole person again. No professional (or anyone) told me what to prepare for or what it would take, nor anything about the pain. Everyone focused on the end goal because they knew that when I came out of the recovery process, it would all be worth it several times over. I was finally at the crossroad of: die or recover. I chose to live. They’d instead ask me, what do you want for your life? What would you do if you had a healthy body to do it in? What would you say if I told you you could actually learn to love yourself and your body the way yourself and your body were meant to be? What would you do if you had energy again, if you could laugh again, if you could sing again? At the time, I didn’t have enough energy to lift my head out of the wash sink at the hair salon, nor did I have the energy to even sit, much less stand, to sing at church.

First, every organ and its function must repair. No one told me my bowels wouldn’t work properly, for over two years. No one told me I would feel my skin stretching over new fat cells or that my brain and hormones would feel as though they were misfiring. For me, the emotional organ was the last thing to repair. It was the last thing to accept the changes I was going through.

No one told me my body would take over in incredibly primitive ways that would not waver and would literally control my motor functions. No one told me that a year would go by in which I would be unable to look into the mirror without having a panic attack in which would lead to living on water for two weeks or more to try to reverse the amount of fat on my bones, then that my body would fight back and store more fat that came from nowhere and the snacks I would finally allow myself to have after the two weeks or so of fasting.

No one told me I wouldn’t want to leave my house, see anyone, or have anyone see me because my biggest fear was someone thinking or saying that I had gained weight, or that someone would say it the polite way: you look healthy.

No one told me that all the weight would first go into my midsection and then begin to spread out all over my body from there, filling my breasts to a point in which I have never had to carry, filling each and every bone on my finger, each rib, my thighs, my arms, and every place to a point in which I never had to carry. Some people did tell me that my weight might overshoot above normal for my body, then go back to where it was healthiest. At the time, it was hard to believe this, but it was absolutely true.

No one told me that I would be completely exhausted,and that when I’d try to get up to urinate (countless times throughout each night), every joint in my body would ache and fight me and I’d have to walk across my wood-floor apartment to the bathroom like Frankenstein, and that my downstairs neighbor would complain that my “thunder walking” would scare her ill dog.

No one told me I would never get my life back to the way it was before anorexia nervosa, even after two years of beginning to repair, or that I’d never get my fiancé back no matter how healthy I became, but rather I’d marry someone who was so much better for me than I ever would have imagined and that my life would rather be better than it ever had been.

No one told me that those who loved me would turn from me, unable of knowing what to do or what to say, or how to be there for me, how to even sit with me, that they would disappoint me in all the worst ways, and that acquaintances would surprise me with their helpfulness and would become my best friends.

No one told me that I would have mini-strokes and not know, that I’d then forget who I was, where I was, how to fold clothes, how to speak, how to communicate at all, that I wouldn’t be able to count or keep track of anything, that I’d get in the car and turn around and around, forgetting where to go or where I was or why I was in the car.

No one told me I’d try vomiting.

No one told me I would never be able to wear all the beautiful clothes I had collected at size XXS and 00, and that shopping would be impossible when one cannot look into the mirror or know one’s pants size without panicking. But that later, I’d be happy to throw out all those clothes and I’d actually be astounded and even disgusted by how small they were.

No one told me I would cry over clothes, and cry over the bone-body I no longer had, and the breasts I now did.

No one told me. Because everyone knew I wouldn’t have done it unless I could see the absolute peace at the end of the journey. No way.

What they did tell me was to read the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. What they did know was that it would be helpful and I would feel grateful for those who participated, impressed and fascinated, but that I ate around three times less than those starving men for many more times as long as they did, and sometimes one hundred percent less.

This is part of the reason I am writing all this: because I wish someone had told me the truth about what recovery is really like; it’s not pleasant, it is absolutely terrible, but all of it really, really is worth it.