I wonder how others see me now. I wonder if they think eating is easy for me now, that I am recovered. On the outside everything seems fine , even – and I wince as I say it- everything seems normal, or, indeed, “healthy”.
Gone, now, is the skinny bony body, the non existent bust on the chest, the cracked dry skin and stick like legs and arms. And now gone too is the one thing that I used to doggedly grasp at, whenever ed used to tell me I was normal and didn’t t need to eat as much good, or any food at all.
My periods.
I can eat loads as i dont have a period.
But when it arrived, heralding its coming with a glorious rush of scarlet blood, I did not experience the feelings of joy and relief that I anticipated I would feel in such a pivotal and fundamental moment. Insyead of feeling like I had claimed something back, I felt like I had lost something instead. That being. An excuse to eat. That knowing that my body really wasn’t healthy; that it hadn’t got enough food and energy to enable me to give birth to a child.
For years, that knowledge spurred me on in my most difficult and darkest of moments. I’m underweight. My body is deprived! I must eat well as I haven’t got a period. I must keep going on.
But now the spurs have been taken away , and I now feel like I’m riding a horse with no reins or saddle . Confused and frightened, I hang on tight with shaking hands, and allowing it to choose wherever it wants to go.
