Circle Time Numero Dos

So a while back I did a post with various quotes and how they hit home with me regarding the ED and recovery.  Here is another round of that, with some lines that have struck me especially deep since then.

"If you believe it is impossible, then you will never find the secret, and you will always have to toil with iron in order to make it always less perfect than this."

-The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts by Louis de Bernieres

 I think a big problem with not only taking on recovery, but dealing with plateaus in the process, is not being able to imagine that you'll actually win this game.  It's too big, too hard, too far away.  If you don't think you can do it, it's harder to justify pushing yourself.  I think that's a big part of why I'm a bit stalled with progress at the moment.  At a midway point, you're still treading water with recovery, but are still working for the ED in some areas, and it's just fucking exhausting, to put it simply, and all that energy is being put into holding yourself back.

Not that we should fool ourselves into thinking anyone ever achieves perfection, of course that would be discouraging:

Apparently, people didn't look at pictures anymore and ask if they were lifelike.  They looked at their lives and compared them to images they'd seen somewhere.

~The Intimates by Ralph Sassone

So we can't be perfect, but how do we get where we're supposed to be?

Regardless of what the advertising campaigns may tell us, we can't have it all.  Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it's a fact of life.  We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar.  The crucial thing is to choose an altar that's worth it and a limb you can accept losing.  To go consenting to the sacrifice.
~The Likeness by Tana French

Way too true.  Nothing comes for free.  But freedom is worth the price, at the risk of sounding cliche.  When we have to "cut off our own limbs to burn," we have a choice between the healthy limbs and the disordered parts of ourselves.  The ED is a limb we can lose, if we can learn to consent and accept it.

Consenting and accepting is easier said than done, of course:


There is a gland in him that drips acid on his brain, distorting his perceptions until the world mirrors his own chaos and the monsters of his mind.
~The Prince by R. M. Koster

And the physical effects of ED behaviors can make it harder to find your way out of that chaos.  And no, you don't have to be emaciated for those effects to set in. This sums up the ED dilemma pretty much as well as anything I've ever read:

She is aware of how extraordinary it is, what the body does to the mind, and what the mind does to the body, one convincing the other it is in control.
~The Dancer by Colum McCann

And gradually we don't know ourselves anymore.  I think that's the scariest part for me, not only realizing how  incorporated this has become into who I am, but the wonder of finally rebuilding an ED-free life, structured around something besides food and exercise.  Can an entire scaffold be replaced like that?

Such a price the gods exact for song, to become what we sing.
~"The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses" by Matthew Arnold

When do you know when something is becoming something that changes you?
~Adverbs by Daniel Handler

Of course, we are not our diseases.  So at some point we have to climb out enough to realize that, and not hate ourselves for lingering so long.

It's one thing to forgive yourself for a mistake.  But if you knew it was a mistake at the time, how do you forgive yourself then?
~Handler again

I think that blaming yourself is really common with EDs (I'm definitely guilty).  But you can't blame yourself for it any more than you could blame yourself for having a more "classic" physical illness, in my opinion.  It's a disease. Sure there are things you can do to handle predispositions and triggers more or less well.  But you didn't ask to be sick.  People don't seek cancer, but a lot of our behaviors can exacerbate our chances.  That doesn't mean we asked for a tumor.

So treat yourself kindly, don't hold a grudge towards yourself for being sick, and but do give yourself tons of credit for all the hard work you put in to overcome it.  Think about what you'd say to an ill friend, and how happy you'd be that they were pulling out of it and reclaiming their healthy life.  You deserve no less.


And as long as I'm totally just bumming off of other people's wisdom for the day, check out Arielle's latest video with some facts that are crucial to keep in mind, a short 2 minutes that packs a lot of punch.