Stepping out of the darkness

I created this blog for one purpose: to document my daily life as a recovering anorexic and bulimic.

I first became aware of my eating disorder when I was 20 years old, about a year after my father died of cancer. I first became aware of it then, but I’m certain it existed long before, in some other form, in some other fashion. I was always a fat child. I was never the pretty girl. I remember at 8 years old a moment of revelation. Sitting in the cafeteria among the other third graders consuming their lunches of hamburgers and greasy fries, I looked down at my plate, smeared with ketchup, took a french fry into my hand and put it into my mouth. It tasted so good, but even then, I was aware that it was going to make me fatter. So I wondered, “Why can’t I just chew these fries up and spit them out again? The taste is all I want. That won’t make me fat. I didn’t act on it then. I ate them like the rest of the children, though regrettably. I ate my entire life regrettably, until one day at age 20, I stopped eating altogether.

It has taken me many years to get free from that dark place, that anorexic mania that I used to cling to. It used to comfort me. I thought I could never life without it. And for a long time I didn’t want to live at all. But now, 26 years old, better, but not fully free from its grips, I can distance myself from my disorder and begin piecing together the fragments of my life that it broke apart and scattered. I hurt my family. I neglected my friends. I wanted nothing but to crawl into darkness and sleep. But I’m awake now.

For the next several months I pledge to write here daily about what it means to be an anorexic surviving anorexia. I will write honestly about what I eat and what I don’t. What I think about it. What foods I am okay with, what foods I still won’t touch. I’ll write about my body, my distaste towards it, still present, though not nearly as strong as it used to be. I hope I can learn something through this process. I hope other people can learn something too. Whether anyone reads this or not–I’ll be writing.

Jessica Lynn