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?
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