Recovery represents a new life, a new beginning. I knew this all along, but now, this concept takes on a new and profoundly beautiful relevance.
For not only does recovery mean a new life for me, free from the shackles of the eating disorder. It also means that, from my body, new life may be brought into the world.
Me this Summer
I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost a year now. Something I haven’t really talked about on my blog; for at first I didn’t discern a connection between my relationship and my recovery.
For through this extraordinary and beautiful boy I have found both life, and beauty, in a place where there once was only barrenness. Being in love has taught me alot about recovery. It has showed me what recovery should be like, and could be like. For when I am with him it is like I almost feel normal. Normal and more alive than I have ever felt, in the whole twelves years of my illness.
He has made me realise just how badly I want to be free.
Free, to make our own life together: and, perhaps in time, to create new life through children.
There was once a time I was repelled by the thought of having kids. I love children and always have done; but yet, when it came to the thought of having children myself, my whole being would recoil with fear and abhorrence. Because being a mother meant being a woman. And being a woman meant gaining weight and leaving my thin, stick-limbed child’s body far behind.
For me, once; a distant possibility.
For me, now, a close and fundamentally life-changing new reality.
For now I no longer have a child’s body: my body is that of a young woman. Just yesterday, I bought my first D bra. Having been wearing B bras since March this year, it did not escape my notice that my breasts, over the summer, had continued to grow.
Hard to believe that once even my tiny little A bras were much too small for me.
I now have the body of a woman; the body that the person that I am was meant to have, long before now. Now all I need to do is accept it; and perhaps, in time, I will learn to embrace it.
And it is through love – the love of my boyfriend, my Mam, my best friend, and my readers – that I have come to realise that I need not fear being healthy. For being healthy will enable me to fulfill all my dreams and aspirations; for being healthy, I know, will enable me to live my life to the full. A life free from restriction, irrational fears, and obsession about my weight and my size.
It’s began, now. And I am near the end of the road. Not there yet; for there is still much to do; still a hill up ahead, for me to climb. But the light is shining, strong and true, through that little chink in the wall; like a beam of golden sunlight pouring forth from the cloud-shrouded heavens.
Now all I need to do is dismantle the bricks that encompass that hole, and step through, into the light.
