sometimes i miss being sick

confessions from therapy (pt. 4)

Content warning: Eating Disorders

Over this past weekend, I decided to stop bringing my phone into my bedroom. Not to force myself into some technological withdrawal or to punish myself for grossly out-of-hand screen-time metrics. But I have been struggling mentally, and as I work in small increments every day to get in touch with how certain thoughts, behaviors, and experiences show up in my body – overthinking them all as aside as I can manage – I am starting to notice where certain habits are not helping.

While I’ve long since ceased being a bedtime doomscroller, my phone is still the last thing I touch at night and the first thing I touch in the morning.

I let metrics from my Oura ring tell me what kind of day I’m going to have.

I let the New York Times tell me how doomed I am.

I let the pile of notifications waiting for attention steal away any potential for peace the morning could offer.

I open Substack, and I scroll, and I scroll, and I think about how all I’d like to do is lie under the covers and exist only in this safe space.

Then I am defeated before the day even begins, knowing just how not an option this kind of safety is for me today.

So, in a fit of inspiration over the weekend, most likely fueled by the lovely and omnipresent Sunday Scaries pressing in on my consciousness, I moved one of our home’s Google Hubs onto my nightstand and moved my phone charger to the hallway.

And on Sunday night, my first phone-free night in my bedroom, I turned all of the lights red and sprawled out on the floor (there is truly nothing like lying on the floor when you are overwhelmed, don’t ask me why, just try it).

As I lay there, limbs splayed, soul bare, anxiety crept in with the onslaught of thoughts that love nothing more than to fill a silent space. I rallied all that I know about breathing and connecting with my body – a never-ending struggle – and I allowed this back-and-forth war between body and mind to be. Discomfort and all, just let it be.

Then, quite suddenly, I was overcome by the need for a pen.

Now I am not a journaler… though I suppose I consider my presence on this app a medium akin to journalling. I certainly am here, rawly expressing my inner woes.

But never once in my life have I felt the need to log my feelings in a notebook.

Here I am, though, learning to listen to my body. I don’t judge the impulse, but quietly get up, find a pen and a long-neglected notebook on my bookshelf that was likely given to me 10 years ago as a gift.

I crawl into bed and touch pen to paper. Here is what came out of me:

This wasn’t surprising; if anything, it felt like a small window of clarity after a series of days where the weight of my existence was more than I felt capable of holding.

A few days earlier in the week, my husband confronted me in a way that activated a very, very personal trauma.

He had been out of town over the weekend and now back at home, gazing into the fridge for what to make us for dinner, he called to me curiously, “Did you eat anything out of the fridge while I was away?”

I hadn’t even opened it.

This is not to say I didn’t eat; I did. I just didn’t go out of my way in the process.

He came into the living room, sat next to me, and told me this seemed like a problem.

What I heard: I have a problem. I AM a problem.

A younger part of me sat there and heard a tale as old as time. And there I was, back in my mother’s living room with 4 parents glaring down at me, telling me how I had failed. This younger me felt instantly threatened, confused, and unlovable.

My husband wasn’t, obviously, around in those days. He doesn’t understand how his words landed in my body, and I didn’t blame him for the confrontation. He loves me and worries about me, and for that, I am truly blessed.

But, good intentions notwithstanding, I spiraled around his words and all that they implied. The denial and the what ifs and every former consequence I had ever faced for not eating as a way to cope with my anxiety came crawling out of hiding and up my skin.

A part of me liked it, and they sensed that willingness.

For a long time, my eating disorder was a cry for help. A tool that, at the time, served to show the severity of my suffering in a way my caretakers could actually legitimize.

I suppose the same appeal has persisted, but I’ve become better at not acting on my darker inclinations simply for external validation.

But in these past few days, feeling again what that teenage girl felt many years ago, I’ve allowed her to whisper in my ear that what worked for her might work again now for me.

Tempting.

Terrifying.

Do I dare?

Could I even?

Am I already, and I didn’t realize?

Being sick gave validity to my pain. It gave me action and control. It made people take care of me. It made me pitiable. It absolved me of culpability. It washed away every other responsibility outside of simply surviving.

And at least surviving is something I’ve always been good at.

Thus, as you see on my frantic journal page, I fractured right down the middle.

My inner and former selves teaming up with my nervous system to seductively tug me towards familiar self-sabotage.

And then, dangling precariously on the other end of that same rope, the barely formed self that I have spent many months (and years truly) working oh so hard for now clutches with all of the strength she can muster. She pleads her case, but with far less proof of concept to back her up.

So I lay prone on the rough grey carpeting and let it all in.

The fear.

The temptation.

The longing.

The disgust.

Guilt.

Regret.

Hope.

Need.

Chaos.

Clarity.

And then, I needed a pen.

I suppose this is growth…

Messy and complicated.

Contradictory.

Slow.

Demanding trust.

Forcing patience.

Igniting grief.

Leaving me with nothing but the present in which to make a different choice.

-June

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