Do you want to know how I know that 2018 is going to be an amazing year? Because it is the Chinese Year of The Dog! 

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love and adore our furry little friends, so this made me all the more excited to begin a new year. I don't want to jinx it, but so far 2018 has been kind. Besides the fact that January in itself takes an entire year to end, I am not complaining about the extended hours of daylight this summer. I have been spending them reading, meditating, and catching some much needed vitamin C on our glorious Cape Town beaches with my friends. Over the New Year period I also spent some time in Johannesburg with my family. Relishing in their drought-free conditions and breathing in the air perfumed with the smell of freshly cut grass and flowers was absolutely amazing. I like to look back on it as a mini detox.

My refreshing time away gave me an opportunity to ponder on my word for 2018. Each year since 2016 I have chosen a word that I want to set the mood for that year, and so far I think I have chosen accurate words. My word for 2016 was 'Growth'. My word for 2017 was 'Refresh'. My word for 2018 has been decided too. It is...

Cleanse

2018 is going to be a year of focusing on my recovery. This is my fifth year in my eating disorder, and I cannot let my illness inhibit me from flourishing into my twenties like I know I can. This blog post is going to analyse some of the reasons why I feel I am being held back from the full life I want to live, and why my eating disorder finds purpose through me.

I also want 2018 to be a year of increasing my happiness. I have been gripped by episodes of intense panic, anxiety, and depression in the past, all of which threatened to obscure the balance I am trying so hard to maintain in my life. I have realised how important balance is to live a happy and sustainable lifestyle, the kind of lifestyle I crave. I touched on this a lot in one of my previous posts.

I am now going to introduce you to four words that have been prevalent in my life. These words have controlled most of my decisions and actions, and have also spurred my eating disorder and relapse. 

They are 'The Four Fs':

This is a word I use a lot. It is also a word that has governed my every move and thought since I became ill in 2014. 

Anorexia thrives on fear: Fear of being out of control, of self-actualisation, of realising your full potential, and of growth. It is one of the reasons why I am so terrified of growing up and maturing. I am scared of what will happen if I get better and start to let go of my illness. It isn't because I think I need this illness as a part of my identity, because I truly don't believe I do. I see myself moving forward into the future as a self-contained woman with a passion and vigour for life and living. I am rather scared of letting go of this illness because, if and when I do, all responsibilities of adulthood fall on me. People will expect more from me if I recover fully and expect me to be reliable, independent, level-headed, and mature. I know that I have all of these skills, but the truth is that no one expects them from you as a sick person. When you are sick, people don't expect you to be able to take care of yourself all the time. That is a comforting feeling in a way because you know that there will always be people watching you to make sure that you are just comfortable in your space: Not too overwhelmed, and not too neglected. Just right. Tepid.

One of the nurturing (if I may call it that) aspects of Anorexia is that it reduces you to a childlike state. No one expects you to behave or think like an adult because you struggle so much with the bare minimum tasks of taking care of yourself. No one pushes you to move out, get a job, go out with friends, do chores, or be more mature and responsible because they know you aren't ready to handle it. I am currently in a tug of war because I feel that I am ready to handle these tasks, but Ana convinces me I am not. I truly believe that I am ready to grow up and become an adult. I want to be able to perform my part-time job with full energy, to go out for drinks with friends, to drive to the mall, to go out and meet new people, and to experience life to its fullest. But this fear of letting go of my illness holds me back. 

I am also scared of people forgetting about me. The reality is that people don't worry about the people who are doing okay with their lives. Those are the people you just expect to do well because they are seen by others as having their lives balanced and in order. People do, however, worry about the people in their lives who aren't doing okay. They continually check up on them, care for them, worry about them, and wonder how they are. I'm scared that if I become better and let go of my illness that people will forget about me. I'm scared that they will think I'm entirely okay and that I can carry on with life as usual. On the other side of the coin is my frustration: I don't want to be the friend and family member that everyone is constantly worried about. I want people to trust that I can handle myself, take care of myself, and be okay in the world as I uncover who I am in my twenties. It truly is fear that is holding me back from getting better.

Someone asked me today, "What do you think will happen if you get better?" 

And I said that I think that I will be happier, my family and friends will be happier, and I will be able to live life to the fullest with nothing holding me back. 

They then asked me, "What is holding you back then?" 

And I replied, "Fear." 

They said to me, "Why can't you let go of fear?"

And I replied, "Because when you have fear in your life, it holds you back from failure. Life is safe when there is no failure. As long as I hold onto fear, I remain in a safe space where nothing extraordinary will ever happen to me. It is like a child being afraid of learning how to swim. As long as they avoid any situation where they will have to swim, they will be safe. Sure, they will have missed out on an important lifeskill that is enjoyable and highly useful, but their fear of what will happen to them in the water will make sure that they never know what they're missing out on."

Failure is a territory I have been scared to enter since I was a young girl. I have always tried to be the good child, the star child, the child that never caused trouble, rocked the boat, or was rebellious in any way. As a result, I became scared of performing the smallest act incorrectly. If I forgot to do the dishes when my mom asked me to I would burst into tears and have a panic attack because I truly believed that that negligence (a strong word, but I believed it was) made me bad and irresponsible. I had failed. 

At fourteen years old I would stay up until two in the morning to study for a test because I believed that writing the test using my class notes and listening skills would result in getting 60%. This, to me, was not good enough. I would cram as much information as I could and stress myself to the point of a breakdown in order to get 90%. This, I believed, made me successful. This was what I needed to do in order to be a successful student. I believed that the skills that I already had, like my dedication and studious personality, were not enough. I needed to do more, be more, in order to be successful. I felt that if I only relied on myself that I would fail. 

I truly believed that what I had inside me was not enough to be successful.

Having an illness is like having something to fall back on. It is a safety net of sorts. As long as you have it, people understand that you can't work to your full potential. They understand that your energy levels and blood pressure are low, that you will have really bad days, and that your head space is consumed with racing thoughts. And because of this safety net, you never really have to worry about failure.

My illness has kept me in a space where failure has become an even more scary thing to consider. If I do let go of my illness and get better, I will be expected to perform more, do more, and be more. This means that I will be even more susceptible to failure. If I get better I will be able to embrace more challenges and experiences because I will have the energy and drive to embrace them. I could take my driver's test. But what if I fail the test? What if I fail the test more than once? That would mean entering a space of so much anxiety and shame that I have been avoiding for so long. The thought alone is enough to make me put off driving for the rest of my life.

But where would that get me? Where would avoiding a major milestone in my young adult life get me? I'll tell you where: Right back into Ana's arms. Right back into a space where I can sit comfortably in my unextraordinary life, being checked on every ten minutes like a child, and never growing into a fully-fledged twenty year old. That makes me extremely frustrated. The fact that my fear of failure is what drives my eating disorder to keep me small and contained makes me want to scream.

But failure is not a shameful space. Because the step before failure is where there is courage to try. And with the courage to try comes the passion to succeed. If you cut away these steps, you are left with nothing. No courage, no will to try, and no passion to succeed. All you are left with is fear. This is a lesson to carry into 2018 with me. Failure is not synonymous with shame and embarrassment. Failure is a stepping stone between trying and trying again. For as long as you continue trying, success will surely follow.

'Fat' is a word that has become so warped and abused in my vocabulary. I can honestly say that I have never used the word 'fat' as an insult, but in my mind with my eating disorder voice it is an insult to me. According to my eating disorder voice (now please keep in mind that this is a voice that speaks strictly to me in order to abuse me, not anyone else), 'fat' means grotesque, out of control, and disgusting. I have never believed these words to apply to anyone who is overweight, but my eating disorder voice convinces me that these words apply to me and only me. 'Fat' is the biggest swearword in Ana's vocabulary. According to her, to be fat is to live a life with no morals and to indulge in shameful things. 

As a result of what she has made me believe being 'fat' is, I am terrified of gaining weight. Because if I gain weight, I become all of those things: Grotesque, immoral, disgusting, shameful, out of control, and self-indulgent. If I let go of Ana and recover fully it means that I will let myself go. I will become a disgusting and horrible person, gaining weight at an uncontrollably rapid pace, eating everything in sight, living immorally, and not stopping until I've satisfied myself, no matter what the cost.

Okay, I've just taken a minute to step back and reread that paragraph. All I can say is, wow. The thoughts that have manifested in my mind and corrupted my logic thanks to my eating disorder are absolutely terrifying. 

I truly do know that gaining weight is not a bad thing. Especially in my condition. My current BMI cannot sustain my bodily functions which is why I feel dizzy and disoriented all the time. If I don't restore my body weight to a healthy number I run the risk of becoming infertile, hospitalised, and causing serious organ damage which could lead to organ failure. The thoughts that Ana has cultivated around gaining weight and what it means to be 'fat' have corrupted me so much that I am ultimately scared of recovery. I am scared of what gaining weight will do to my body.

But the truth is that none of us are defined by our bodies. We are not defined by our weight, our size, our height, or our calorie intake. This is going to sound so cliche but what truly defines us is how we live our lives, how we go about treating the people around us, and how we cultivate our unique mindsets. As acclaimed author Roald Dahl once said:

Similarly, a person who maintains a healthy lifestyle, in mind, body, and spirit, treats themselves with respect, listens to their body's call, and focuses on their happiness and wellbeing can never be Ana's definition of 'fat'. Recovery will cultivate this in me as long as I choose to embrace it. I just need the continuous affirmation (that can only come from me) that being 'fat' does not equal being grotesque, and that weight gain will not make me a disgusting and ugly person. Letting go of these thoughts that have kept me caged for so long is a hard thing to do, but if I don't, then this life of fear, inhibition, and a half-full cup is all I will ever know.

Recovery promises freedom. The freedom to become whoever I want to be. If I let go of Ana and embrace recovery then the entire world will open its arms to me. Things that are seemingly so far away now will become possibilities: Travelling, a family of my own, moving out, adopting dogs, and opening my own practice. 

There is no freedom in my eating disorder. Ana, however, disagrees intensely with that statement: 

"Of course I have freedom!" She says, "I have more freedom than the average person. I don't need food, I don't need friends, I don't have responsibilities or cares, I don't need water, I don't need exercise, I don't need social interaction, I don't need to go outside, I don't need to talk about my feelings, heck, I don't need to feel anything. How freeing is that?!"

But in Anorexia you are not free. In fact, you become more dependent on other people. This is a lesson my mom helped me to learn. You become dependent on other people to hold you when you fall apart because you have no energy to hold yourself up. You become dependent on your parents to see through the most basic duties for you. You become dependent on your doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and dietician to nurse you back to health. There is no freedom in illness.

The only way to attain true freedom is to let it go. No matter how scared I am I have to begin the process of letting her go. The only way to let her go is to walk through the fear. The fear is currently a blanket of mist about as thick as twenty wet bath towels. But no one is going to walk through it for me. I know what kind of life is waiting for me on the other side, and I have lived through the life that will be there for me if I turn around.

As long as I keep walking, everything and anything good can and will happen to me. I will be happier, stronger, and better.

But if I choose to turn around, everything and anything bad can and will happen to me. And I know this because I have felt it. I have lived through it for four years.

2018, as I have said, is going to be a year of intense recovery. But it is also a year of letting go. I will be my most vulnerable in this space. My heart will be even more susceptible to fear and failure. My mind will be even more ridden with Ana's definition of 'fat'. But somehow I know that this pain will be short-lived. For on the other side of fear is the most beautiful sunrise that will never set on me as long as I keep it in my horizon: Freedom. Happiness. Clarity.