Shades of Gray

I’ve started so many posts about so many things – started them in my head, anyway! – and after this amount of silence, it gets harder and harder even to think about either distilling it all into one post or settling on one thing to write about.

There are things I’m not ready to share because I’m superstitious and other things I’m not ready to share perhaps because following the train of thought required to write them here might take me somewhere I don’t want to go. (Spoiler alert: this entry is the latter.)

If I sound gray, I am, a bit. As gray as a London winter. That post-Christmas nothing-nice-is-ever-going-to-happen again feeling has settled in, especially because I had a trip to Thailand to look forward to right after New Year – and to shop for, since I owned no proper summer clothes -- and now that’s over, too. (It was maybe the best trip I’ve ever taken as well as my first proper holiday in years, and I suspect the abrupt removal of sunshine combined with the record cold here has also contributed to my current low.)

I feel a bit unmoored at the moment; peripheral. After so many years, my industry – on its deathbed practically since I got into it – really does seem to be dying, and I am struggling to work. There’s been a fair share of family drama that is ongoing. A handful of friendships that have really sustained me over the years – or in London over the past 18 months -- just… don’t anymore. Some are because I’ve changed enough that things I used to do – in some cases, because I didn’t think I deserved more – I’m trying not to do or to tolerate. Others are because things in their lives have changed drastically.

One in particular: My closest friend from treatment, who was also one of my closest friends here, seems to want nothing to do with anything recovery-related anymore. All the routines I had with her are gone; when I saw her last – just before Christmas (this is someone I used to see at least once a week and whatsapp a squillion times a day) she had gained enough weight for it to be visible.  I say this not in judgment, but to say I can guess what’s going on with her, and to imagine – no, remember, because I have done this before – that the world of recovery can be excruciatingly painful when you feel you are failing at it.

We weight-loss bloggers, or those of us who started that way, all know this instinctively, I guess. I mean, it was usually the reason for a long since on a weight-loss blog. It isn’t the reason for the silence on mine, though.

For the record, I’ve had my own slips – for the record, my counselor from treatment definitely didn’t believe perfection is possible with eating disorders, or (I think) even in counting days, though she wasn’t allowed to say that. But all it takes is one for some of the shame and fear to start creeping back in; the craving for control that makes me want to manipulate my world so I can stay home and eat safe things. Most of the time I recognize that’s what I want to do and don’t allow myself to do it. At times I’ve dipped into the gray area between overeating and bingeing, and -- on the other side of the danger scale for me – at times exercised too much. I haven’t weighed myself in at least two years, though, and even if no one is going to see me, I get dressed – in clothes with fitted waistbands – every day.  And they still fit, even if one or two days I confess I’m happy to get out of them.

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I’m vowing to be back here more often. This blog and its readers, though few (certainly at this point!) have always been a huge source of comfort to me. In these gray times, I need to appreciate that.