Thoughts From The Floor: A Journey Through Eating Disorder Recovery

I use to bow down to the obedience I gave to my disease. I felt out of control the first time I purged. Trying to go a day without purging felt like the end of the world, every second filled with temptation and I was ready to give in. There is something so estranged when you consciously decide to rebel against your body, willingly and without caution. Everything else seems to disappear, and you are left in a realm of disassociation to your self-state.

“I thought bulimia was going to kill me,” was the oddest realization I have ever made, odd, because it did not scare me in the slightest.

My biggest fear was my reflection, how I couldn’t escape my skin. The tragedy of self-loathing was dying within. It was immortalized in the shadow of myself. I felt that I was many faces interchanging on one host because I was disconnected from the only person I had known.

I am healing, but I do not think I will be fully free for I continue to think about body image repeatedly on a daily schedule it seems; abnormally. I have conquered many demons but the aftermath of my battle with mental illness is still thriving, and I am figuring out how to survive.

I started releasing those fears by taking self-portraits with little to no motion blur; it was a very dreadful process for me at first. I took hundreds and hundreds of photographs for one single concept because I kept having all these irrational fears of how my body and facial features would be perceived, but I learned to realized it was only I who felt this way.

Confronting your struggles and demons would be my best advice when you are ready. Establishing the difference between irrational and skewed perceptions and thoughts towards you was my first step. That was when I grasped the concept that I was normal and that was who I was.

I had to become blunt and honest with myself. Accept, embrace, and rare that I am unique different. To try to let go of the taunting, overactive, endlessly anxious thoughts; that is not living.   

The process is slow; please learn to be gentle with yourself.

Coverage by Alexis Karr

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