I almost relapsed

Today I wanted to talk about the EDNOS diagnosis, however I need to address what happened yesterday.

It actually started with Sunday night.  I sometimes go on my iPad before heading to bed to play some games or skim through Facebook, but instead of doing either of those I ended up Googling some rather unhelpful websites.  These websites are not pro recovery.  I don't recollect having a solid thought that I wanted to trigger myself, but there I was looking at triggering images.  I closed the internet down quickly after I got my senses back, but I had already done damage.  

ED was rather excited about my mistake.  He was telling me all sorts of things like: I don't really have an eating disorder (that's one of his favorites), I don't have to follow my meal plan exactly as it's written,  I just need to lose a few pounds and skip meals here and there.  When he gets a good hold of me I start to feel a pain in my chest.  I don't know how to exactly explain, but it's not uncommon for people with mental illness to feel physical side effects.  I've gotten so used to this pain that I realized I kind of missed it.  I had thought before going to sleep that maybe I should skip lunch on Monday.

Then morning came and I ate my breakfast before going to work.  During my shift I was struggling with the idea of eating lunch after being triggered by coworkers so I reached out to various people.  They all encouraged me to have my lunch and to not skip, but even with their encouragement I trusted ED more.  It's just one meal, was ED's reasoning.  And I agreed, it is just one meal, people accidentally miss a meal here and there all the time, it's not a big deal.

When I arrived home around lunch time I busied myself with other things.  I wasn't going to eat lunch.  I told a couple friends that I couldn't eat, that I was afraid of gaining weight.  Again they wanted me to follow my meal plan.  One even said, you're going to undo all that good work you just did and be right back where you started.  That definitely hit a chord, but ED immediately had a response for that: there is nothing wrong with skipping one meal, you can't eat normally or else you'll gain weight.

Since time had passed I started getting that heady feeling when you don't eat and I realized I missed that feeling too.  Eating disorders are addictions and I was getting my "fix".

Then John came home.  I had my snack out and I was eating it when he came inside.  I smiled to myself that I would get away with this.  See, I'm eating my snack!  So that means you can't question if I had lunch because the snack comes after lunch.

Although I thought I got away with my trick, John told me later he sensed something was up.  He asked on our way to the grocery store if I was doing alright being home alone.  I'm a terrible liar so I told him the truth, that I skipped lunch.  We talked about my day and how/why I came to this conclusion of not eating lunch.  

We both knew what the next step was: I had to make up what I missed.  This is the hardest part of recovery.  I wanted to starve so bad and almost got away with it, but my logical side knew what was right and John wasn't going to put up with any of ED's shenanigans.  At 3:00 pm I finally ate my lunch in HyVee.  It was a miserable experience because I wasn't hungry and it seemed like I was served a lot of food.  But the important thing is I ate my lunch and followed the rest of my meal plan.

Today I'm in a better mindset and I've been following my meal plan.  Recovery is not perfect and definitely not easy.  There will be another time when I won't want to eat a meal or a snack or my whole meal plan.  I have to remember how miserable I felt yesterday when I followed ED's instructions and how it just didn't affect me, but also the people who care about me.

I want to thank John, Hanna, Emmy, Matt, and Patrick for being there for me.  ED tried his best to defeat all of us, but we won in the end.