No matter how many miles you pound, your demons are right behind you.

No matter how much your body aches, no pain is greater than the pain you feel inside.

No matter how loudly you scream, the voice in your head screams louder.

And no matter how frantically you try to escape, you will always remain trapped.

The years are adding up and I'm no further from ED than I was three years ago. Hurting and haunted. The voice strangles my mind. The blows hit just as hard. The shaking just as strong. The urges just as violent.


Is there any escaping this hell? Will this torture ever end?

I have a body.

I have a body.

What a silly, obvious thing to say, "I have a body."

For someone with an eating disorder or disordered eating mindset this can be a realization that is difficult to accept. For having a body means you have to look at it, look after it, nourish it, and take care of it. When you have urges and desires and needs they are to be met.

But when you are dealing with an ED mindset the drive to turn off those urges and desires and needs becomes painful and loud and often times unbearable. You long to escape the body you're trapped in, the body you hate to look at, look after, feed and nourish.

When the sad realization that you simply cannot discard of this body, this thing, this entrapment, every day can become a nightmare, or what I call a "silent hell."

This past week I had fallen back on restrictive ways. I had tasted the comfort of ED. The craziness, the physical pangs, I welcomed all of it with open arms. I was willing to throw away all the days that I struggled to maintain recovery, the mental well being, the physical health, all in the pursuit of "perfection." A perfection I never once obtained when in the darkest days of anorexia, a perfection I know intelligently does.not.exist.

Yet I keep striving for it.

At this juncture in my life the constant pull and back and forth is almost worse than the ED itself. I know the repercussions of restriction. I know all of these positive ways in which to keep my foot in the present and not give in. But that constant strive for perfection... it haunts me.

I used to say I felt like a fraud and that feeling has never felt more real to me than it does right now. I'm crippled by it. How can I possibly want to work in a field helping people to heal themselves when I can't even help myself?

Perfection, denied.

Each day, with each sunrise, I am forced to make a decision: Stay well or relapse. Most days I stand firm in my decision to move forward. Other days, well, it's a massive struggle. Some days I can accept that I am who I am, who I am becoming, and who I am meant to be in this world. Other days I'm simply not good enough. That feeling is almost as familiar as the body in which I reside.

Today, though, I chose recovery. Today I chose to stay present. Today I chose to recognize that I do not need to be anything more or other than who I am. Today perfection doesn't exist. Today I am content with just being me.