This is my third and final (for now) installment of old journal entries that highlight the struggle one faces on a daily basis when living with the remnants an eating disorder. This entry was written on October 10, 2003, and centers around me questioning why I hang on to the disorder.

Why am I so willing to give up my future dreams in order to sustain this disorder?  I can’t avoid or dismiss the fact that everyday I kindle the disorder I take one step further away from ever being a competent and successful adult; that much is obvious.  Everyday I remain subdued in a world of weight obsessed thoughts is another day I spend separated from the real world, a world that is tangible and outside myself. A world that is carrying on without me.  Perhaps what I see out there scares me so much I would rather remain imprisoned in my internal reality.  The world I live in is more predictable, more controllable, more stable, more comforting than reality.  Is that it…does the unpredictable real world frighten me?

Perhaps the disorder is too much a part of who I am anymore.  I don’t know who I am without it; it is my identity.  To give that up would be like a slow internal death with no hope of a definite rebirth to a new “better” me.  Loosing the disorder is like loosing my best friend…a friend whom I at times hate but one whom, never-the-less, never lets me down, never lies, never is deceitful or selfish.

Perhaps the disorder is my coping mechanism, without which I couldn’t deal with life.  I’ve spent so many years turning to the disorder when life gets hard.  I don’t think I know how to constructively deal with conflict or hardships.  The disorder is like Novocain, numbing my experience of the world: both good and bad.  There’s no fluctuation, no variance, just a flat line that resonates with neutrality.  Is it worth giving up the good just to avoid the bad?  I don’t know.

Perhaps the disorder gives me a power that I don’t feel I possess otherwise: a power over others, a power over myself, a power over life.  Perhaps I fear growing up.  The disorder leaves me fragile, child-like, needy… qualities a capable adult isn’t supposed to have.  Maybe I’ve seen everything adulthood entails and have decided that I want no part of it.

There are so many “perhaps”…. too many possible causes that I can’t begin to discern which it is.  All seem equally probably at times.   Do I really need to know the reasons to get out of the disorder?  Do I even want to get out?  Just more questions; there never are any answers.  My whole life just seems to be one big question; mainly, why am I alive at all?