the light meets the dark

I have all these ideas about what recovery means to me and what that looks like. I don't really know where they come from and what it all means, or even if it's how it will look for me down the line from now. I've been doing so much thinking about the eating disorder world and if we ever really do leave it, fully, I mean. I want to reject Marya Hornbacher so badly when she says you never come back all the way. That you always have one foot in a world where everything is backwards and upside down and sad. I want to reject this because it pisses me off. And I feel like it just gives me an excuse to be like, well if that's always how its going to be, than really, what is the point?

But I've really been contemplating this, do we ever leave it fully? I see people who are recovered, hear stories of people who are recovered, like K, and it makes me long for a formula - one solid answer. I know it's different for everyone, but I want a formula for recovery. I want to know how to get from B to A. I want to know if that's possible, or if we just stay in some limbo.

But truly - years down the road from now when someone is doing better, can we still be so heavily impacted by the eating disorder in the most subtle of ways? A comment about weight, or a diet, or calories - doesn't it all just revert back to the eating disorder? My cousins wife's daughter from her first relationship told my niece that she was fat at Christmas. And I listened to my niece go on and on about how she was going to go on a diet, and that she weighs herself every single day. She's 9. And right away, my mind just reverts to the eating disorder - to that time in my life. And it's moments like that that make me think, do we ever truly leave it? Or are we forever living with one foot in the world?

I have this ridiculous notion that I'm going to get together with all my friends who were sick at one point in time, and we're all going to be recovered, and talking about the menial tasks of life that really, aren't so menial. Tasks that I didn't think I would live to be able to do - picking out towels for the guest room, getting the mail, paying bills. Simple, stupid, everyday shit. But simple, stupid, everyday shit that exists in the real world. And that's the difference.

This was just a giant 1 in the morning ramble because I can't sleep and because I truly want to believe we can leave the eating disorder world, despite the evidence to the contrary.