{on choice}

it is an astonishing feeling to realize that, unlike what i had previously attempted, i cannot will myself well.

i always hear that eating disorders are a mental choice - choose to fight off the demons, choose to choose truth over lies, but sometimes you cannot want to be healthy.

it is an insidious cycle, but i am slowly getting back up. i am learning that in the same way as some nights i crave the blades so badly that my bones ache and my hands shake and claw at fading scars... and i do not want to stay clean, i do not want recovery...

i can choose to want it.

i can keep my eyes on Him, above the waves, and i can decide that this is what i want, even when it is not what i want at all. this is what i want long-term. this is what i want in the long run.

health. wellness. wholeness.

and starvation does not do that. ripping my skin into shreds will not mend my soul.

i know this.

the book i read this past weekend shed so much light where there was darkness. i am amazed at how closely her thoughts, her feelings, her experience parallels mine.

and i know that there is a legitimate mental illness component to this disease. the fact that i can look in the mirror and truly not see what others see. i can look at my body and see enormous when everyone else sees tiny.

but the book blows me away. An Apple A Day, it is entitled, and i stumbled across it on accident at the library with my little brother.

the shock begins when i realize that our diet is basically the same... fruit and caffe americano, convincing ourselves that we are healthy, just 'eating clean'. it is not healthy.

she goes on to say that the average anorexic lives on anywhere around 800 calories/day, which is less than the average inmate at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which blows my mind and rocks my world down below its foundations.

i have been obsessed with the holocaust since before i can remember, and to think that on average i consume a grand total of 300, perhaps 500 calories a day... and they consumed on average 1000-1300 calories a day...sickens and shocks and repulses and terrifies me.

but here i found it different than most eating disorder books... it gives me answers.

i have been asking, for the past year, two years... 'what is normal eating?' Who will tell me what it means to eat like a normal person?

this book tells me..... finally tells me.... i finally have answers. concrete answers.

see, there is a passage where her boyfriend write out what he calls 'the action plan', her method for recovery. It is as follows:

"Action Plan:

• as agreed, you will eat three meals a day. Each meal must be a proper balanced meal 
• a proper breakfast consists of a large bowl of museli with milk, fruit, handful of brazil nuts, vitamin pills. alternatively, it could be toast with jam, fruit, nuts, and vitamins. it must include carbohydrates of some sort. on no account can 'breakfast' be a piece of fruit and low-fat yogurt (see below). the word 'breakfast' involves the breaking of a fast, not the continuing of a fast 
• a proper lunch consists of a cheese sandwich with a piece of fruit on the side. alternatively a baked potato with beans. or a pot of couscous with a roll, or vegetable soup with a roll. note: it must include carbohydrates and some protein in the form of beans or cheese, etc. 
• a proper dinner might be vegetable chili with baked potato grated cheese and a side salad, or it night be a vegetable curry with brown rice and a salad. or pasta arrabbiata with cheese sprinkled on top, or vegetable lasagna, both with salads on the side. you need to branch out and try different dinners that include proteins and carbohydrates. 
• you must keep a food diary covering the three meals a day (i don't want to hear your usual objections to this). be it as simple as 'breakfast: museli, lunch: cheese salad, dinner: baked potato and veg chili'. this way you can, quite crucially, keep tabs on what you are eating, making slip-ups impossible. 
• at the end of the week, well assess the week gone by. there must be no gaps. no missed meals whatsoever. 
• low-fat yogurts and fruit do not count as meals. 
• steamed broccoli and a roll does not count as dinner. 
• there must be no buying of 'low-fat' items: those items are for people on a diet... 
• all this starts now" 

and this makes sense. this, my brain can comprehend.

although, my problem is not low-fat so much as sugar free... so i would swap out the 'low fat' thing with 'sugar free'. no sugar-free or diet beverages, candy, food... 

but otherwise? this sounds like me... convincing myself that a piece of fruit and a large caffe americano counts as a meal. 

and if i have been seriously asking for the past few weeks what 'normal' eating sounds like/looks like... this is a good start. and this is worth a shot. 

right?

i can't do this alone, and i will - i have to - call upon His name to keep my eyes above the waves, to drown out the voices from all directions saying to stay this skinny.

fall seven times... fall seventy times... get back up. always get back up...

i do not 'want' to be healthy in the short-term. in the short-term i want to be skinny and size zero (i am finally size zero and it is hollow. it is empty, but it is acceptable)... in the long term i want wellness, i want health,

so if i cannot choose to just snap out of it, choose to be 'better', then i can at least decide to choose to want to be better.

i make myself a balanced meal for dinner - raspberries, spinach, burger, whole-wheat roll.

it is the hardest meal i have eaten in a long time, but holding my little brother's hand praying asking God to bless the food, bless us, bless me now my Savior i come to Thee...

i come back to Thee... again and again and again and again...

and get back up and fight on.