Normal vs. Healthy

There are several ED-related buzzwords that make me cringe a bit each time I hear them: "triggering", "fear food", "thinspiration", "meal plan". Today, however, the words I am focusing on are "normal" and "healthy". I don't like either of these words because I believe their definition varies from person to person. Too often, society tries to measure everyone against someone else's vision of normal and healthy.What is normal for me or healthy for me is not necessarily normal or healthy for you. But, more importantly, what is normal for me, isn't necessarily healthy, period.

I realized this a few moments ago while enjoying my lunch which consisted of a mandarin orange, one of those 100-calories bags of popcorn, and a handful of chocolate candy. By no means is this lunch the nutritional ideal for anyone, but, for me, it's quite normal. In other words, within the context of my life,this was not an unusual lunch for me to have (usually I eat breakfast, try to skip lunch, then eat dinner, only to end up snacking on a variety of nutritionally-derelict items). While this might be normal for me, it is not healthy, even though I do little to change my behavior. It seems I need to be reminded that behaviors aren't normal just because they are repeated over and over again.This is an important concept to keep in mind during recovery. It is easy for us to fall into patterns, to repeat certain behaviors, and become oblivious to them. But we need to be self-aware enough to identify which behaviors are "normal" in the larger scheme of things, and which behaviors feed from eating-disordered thoughts and impulses. Next, we have to fashion a plan to remedy these behaviors if they are damaging or if they interfere with our recovery, our health, or the quality of our lives. I can guarantee that my substandard lunch was the product of my eating disorder. Now, what am I going to do to fix it? Stop skipping meals. Stop restricting. Eat well-rounded meals with proper nutrition to avoid absent-minded snacking and hunger-induced binges.

I also have to remember that eating disorders are not normal. Of course this seems like common sense, but after you've lived with an eating disorder for a number of years (whether you are in recovery or you are not) your life begins to feel somewhat normal because it's all you know. Even if you aren't happy with the way your life is progressing, if you're sad, if you're tired of being sick--whatever-- it begins to feel safe and normal and the desire to change things lessens. The need for total recovery fades and you begin to live this pieced together sort of life in which you are partly recovered and partly broken. You step in and out of both realms, trying on both masks and constantly swapping one out for the other. But in order to ever be truly happy, or truly healthy, or truly normal in the most basic sense of any of those words, we have to self-aware. We have to look inward, notice our patterns and behaviors, and work hard toward changing those which are negative, destructive, lazy, neglectful, or hurtful.

Otherwise, we're living life half-full.

Fighting the ordinary

All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
- James Thurber

Each day is becoming progressively colder which has prompted me to do something I dread each and every year: swap out summer clothes for fall/winter clothes. I keep out of season clothes tucked away in the guest room closet, so I've spent the last couple of hours dragging out sweaters and jackets and belts and scarves. I've had some of these clothes for so long. Some are too big. Some are too small. Winter after winter I pull them out and hang them in my closet. Some of them I never wear. Each year I tell myself, "I'll get rid of this one soon." But I never do. Why can't I let go?

Is it because they remind me of the past?

I have this purple sweater I used to wear when my eating disorder was at its worst and my weight was at its lowest. It doesn't fit anymore but I refuse to get rid of it. I suppose I feel like parting with that sweater means letting go of those memories, that time, that struggle that existed when I used to wear it. They aren't the best of memories. That was the lowest point of my life. Shouldn't I want to shred anything up that reminds me of it?

I want to be free from my eating disorder.

But does that mean I want to forget it?

I have no problem letting go of my anorexia. I don't want to be sick anymore. I want to be healthy. I want to be better. I want to stay better. I don't want to be defined as the anorexic girl. But I also don't want to forget that girl ever existed.

I guess I could argue that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? That by remembering how bad things used to be I can appreciate how good things are now? While those things are true, deep down, I'm not sure those are my real motives for hanging on to the past.

Maybe it boils down to identity. For a long time I struggled to define myself as anything other than "anorexic." Now, I don't consider myself anorexic. But I used to be. I'm a former anorexic. A recovering anorexic. An on-the-mend anorexic. Maybe I like that identity too much to part with my past completely. In other words,

Maybe I'm afraid of just being normal.

Average.

Ordinary.

But I know in my heart that healthy and ordinary are not the same thing. They cannot be conflated into one pathology. Healthy is healthy. Ordinary is ordinary. They should not be made interchangeable.

There are still things about the healthy me that makes me unique. There are things that set me apart from other people. I don't have to count on my eating disorder to make me different.

And I shouldn't worry about labels or parameters or definitions.

And neither should anyone else.

I've been told my entire life it's okay to be me. I am unique. There is not another me. There is not another you.

Let that be enough.