u/taph0philiac

I've been at my partners place for about 5 days and I usually eat more when I'm here, but when I go over my cal limit - the hunger claws itself at my stomach so so bad as my body is acknowledging, "wow, we have food again." Then cue the extreme hunger.

I only brought a couple of my safe foods and I'm so hungry that I'm getting angry and I'm scared of upsetting my partner because of my own shitty issues - I'm a little more agitated because I'm a huge foodie and love talking about food, looking at it, listening about it, and love when people offer to get food when I'm "allowing" myself to eat before I lock back in. My partner is someone who forgets all about food and goes hours to days without it because it's not a priority to him as he struggles with arfid. My brain can't comprehend how people simply forget to eat or don't see food as sacred and evangelical like I do - but ofc I'm just sick. So. That's on me.

The anger is getting to me, though. I want food. I want all of it. I want so much of it, but I'm still forcing myself to reach a goal in a specific amount of time, and if I get back home and weigh myself and I'm over where I wanna be, then I'm going to freak outtttjrjthtjfjt.

I'm dropping weight, planning to get to my sickest, and no plans of stopping even once I reach there again, I'm struggling immensely - however, I don't think I'd be attractive to my partner anymore.

That scares the hell out of me. I already struggle so much with insecurities, feeling like I'm ugly and that no one could ever be attracted to me at all, but my partner proves that otherwise; I'm told constantly how beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, cute, etc. I am by him and it's the first time that I've trusted someone's judgement - he's adamant about it, and assures me out of the blue, meaning I'll be minding my own business, and he tells me how much he's into me, lolz. Yet again, I'm not attractive at all when I'm sickly.

He listens to me venting about my ed, understands, sympathizes, loves me no matter what, and doesn't try to force me into getting better, he just understands and helps me eat either way. He's the star of my whole life, but I still don't plan on getting better anytime soon and it's heavy on my mind how he'll perceive me once I'm very bad. He didn't know me at the time of my lw, I'm sure he wouldn't have liked how I look. We met after my forced recovery and before my relapse - healthy weight.

Now, thinking about reaching my lowest again and how he'll see me is shattering, because he'll be worried every time he looks at me, I'd be frail and easily injured, tired, nothing about me would be attractive, just bony and stickly without any curves or muscles, I'm already insecure about how flat my ass is for him lmao and I'm sure it'd be twice as bad further down the line.

Thing is, I know he'd never love me any less, but it's just sad, because I know it's inevitable. Him seeing me less sexy and handsome, and more gaunt and sick. I want to be desired, but hell, I find myself ugly at my worst anyway, so I think he'd also think the same about my body, not in a negative way, but solely out of concern and worry, considering there's not much sex appeal to anorexia, to death in this way. This is a pretty common thing for disordered people unfortunately, I've just never voiced it to anyone before :(((((

I'm so peeved. I think I'll be RIGHT on the brink of recovering again, only to see one visibly ed'd person either IRL or online and everything goes down the shitter. I know that comparing myself to anyone is the #1 detrimental thing in general, especially for recovery, but I can't help it. I can't help the competitive thoughts, I can't help but want it all for myself, I fear that I'll never get to my lw again, even though I know I shouldn't LET myself do so. I'm even lowering my self expectations and letting myself be okay with a higher weight than that, but it always lives in the back of my head. I've been through this cycle for years of recovery → relapse so I'm not so concerned with the number as much as LOOKING like the number on the scale.

I want my body to look sick so whatever weight I achieve that at, the better. I hate everything about thisss and I'm still waiting to be referred to a clinic and therapy again. this is so sucks.

Environmentally, mentally, things are at a stalemate for me right now - I have a very positive influence in my life that is showing me how life can be outside of this disorder, outside of the muck and scum we all live in every day, and I have a few more reasons to head back to recovery when I finally put my foot down.

1. Reversing cognitive decline - I've noticed recently that my mental state and memory capacity has been declining significantly and I know exactly why, it scares the ever living shit out of me. I feel dumb, slow, I can't remember things like I used to, I have no drive. I'm a writer, I need my brain to function, and I can't write if my mind doesn't work.

2. Getting my ass back -_-" - My mind feeds off of weight loss; "just get thinner," "lose x more," "you'll feel secure once you're x again," but I have no ass because of it, and it's messing with me so bad because a lot of the things I want to wear would look so much cuter with a bubble butt. This usually wouldn't phase me, but now it is, which is honestly a good thing! I'll get there eventually ୧⁠(⁠ ⁠ಠ⁠ ⁠Д⁠ ⁠ಠ⁠ ⁠)⁠୨

3. Reminding myself that there IS more to life than my eating disorder; I'm a foodie at heart and this disorder makes me hate it, makes it stressful, makes it an enemy, but it's all false pretenses my sick mind loves to throw at me. Food has so much joy within it - the culture, socializing, emotional support, serotonin, and nutrients for the body. We aren't solely our bodies, we live inside them, and if we don't take care of them, then the beauty of our consciousness fails to exist, WE fail to exist without our bodies keeping our conscience alive.

I'm jotting these down to come back to, as a positive note board for myself, and for anyone looking for some silly lil reasons as well. If anyone relates and chimes in, the more the merrier !!

CW: venting about relapse and recovery body, psychedelics talk, not active recovery

I have knicked a highly negative influence towards my ed out of my life, and nothing horrible has been happening as of lately so I don't have many enabling factors that is pushing me further into this relapse (good!) other than my relationship with myself, perception of myself and body, and my god - I want to go back to recovery so bad. I'm grateful that my psyche has reached a point of suffering so badly that it went 180° on me, and we want to recover again.

For the better half of this year I've been heavily bulimic after relapsing back into it, and have been deep in it ever since the beginning of the year which has been fucking me uppp. What I'm about to say sounds insane to anyone who's never experienced psychedelic trips or is versed on them, but my last shroom trip on its peak, I ended up purging my guts out in a random persons yard (embarrassing asf) after midnight, and when I was sober the next day, I no longer had any binge/purge urges at ALL, and still don't. TL;DR, my last mushroom trip cured my bulimia 😭 it's so silly bruh, I'm only half joking.

However as always, still struggle with anorexia. I'm at the point where I want to recover again thankfully, but I'm terrified of letting myself eat whatever I want (not just at my maintenance like lately) and gaining weight. My highest weight during recovery was my most insecure even if I wasn't burdened by food then, I'm horrified of letting myself look like that again.

I'm at a loss since I'm still waiting on therapy, want people to take me seriously, and am so scared of "letting myself go," because when i was in recovery, people always pointed out how much bigger and "buff" I was ??? #ihateithere. I have to relearn how to recover again whenever I get there, sigh 🫩

Heart pains aren't new to me in the slightest. I was diagnosed with pericardial effusion while in hospital my last admission → inpatient, and after I got out, got restored, the effusion faded along with the malnutrition. However, forcing me to get better did not make me better. I'm continuously in and out of recovery and it's been half a year since my last recovery attempt. Heart palpations are getting worseee...

The amount of stimulants and substance abuse I take/rely on to avoid hunger and appetite, emotions, etc. are heavy on my heart health; the more frequent binges and purges with my relapse into bulimia early this year as well, excess caffeine, elongated fasts, etc. are all putting extreme pressure on my heart and cardiovascular system and I physically feel it getting worse. The things that I do eat are also horrible and lack any nutrients whatsoever, I do what I can to make my taste buds happy. I hate taking pill form vitamins, and I'm frightened of vitamin gummies.

I'm scared. I'm scared that the pericardial effusion is back, my gastroparesis symptoms are back tenfold, and I'm scared that one day, even nowhere near reaching my many irrational gw's that I'm going to have heart attack from everything combined or something similar. I don't want to feel the fear of this every day, yet I have no plans to recover again yet, I fear that getting sent back to hospital might be the only way to get me back into recovery motivation and get me the help I need. I need more help, immensely, I've been asking and been talking with care managers, yet no one has gotten back to me yet. I have no help from family, and my two bestest friends cannot do much to help me except listen to me.

I know the only way to avoid this pain is to eat more, gain weight, be healthy, and fight off disordered thoughts and what other people think of me. Living with this is so hard - if you don't get better, you will die. That's just how this is, and it's horrifying. Living with this my whole life, missing out on all of my teenage years to this illness, and now living out my adult years STILL dealing with this illness is debilitating. I can't work do to many other mental and physical health problems and I don't even have hobbies - this is all I have. My health is getting worse by the day, and I have nothing to show, especially if my heart will give up on me by the time I'm 30.. if I even make it :(

Does anyone have any harm reduction when it comes to heart health ?? <3 I need to be held accountable with taking care of myself in GOOD ways that I'll remember.

I already struggle with having motivation for anything else, let alone cooking. To me, cooking means calculating, cooking means preparing everything that takes up to an hour to make and have it be gone and eaten within 5 minutes because I don't know HOW to cook or make an actual meal for myself of filling and normal portion. Stimulants that repress my hunger don't even work anymore. No amount of caffeine or nicotine can quell it. Takeout is safe because it's a real meal, someone else made it for me to eat, so I don't have so much pressure on me to do it myself; If I cook or try to take care of my own meals even when restricting I fall back into a binge/restrict cycle that "erases" my hard effort to get back down to where I was (my body can hardly handle restriction anymore because of chronic illness and pain anyway ts sucks so. so. bad.) I was never taught what meals were supposed to be like, when I was in the hospital the meals were humongous and way too big, when I got out of hospital, my family's meals were way way small and I struggled to gain weight on them. I have never known what normal was and I don't think I ever will, I can't feed myself properly unless it's someone else making it for me.

And on a side note, I think I would also like to be fed by someone as well. Utensil in their one hand, other hand holding my chin, and telling me to chew. I want all control of food to be in someone else's hands for once.. anyone else?

The fear of being undesirable to the people I gravitate towards is scaring me out of any potential re-recovery (I call it such term as I've been in and out of recovery for years after multiple hospitalizations and relapses). My current relapse is heavily dependent upon reaching looking a certain way to wear a very specific outfit in hopes I'll meet someone that will take a liking to my appearance - the type of people I like are the ones who fetishize smaller-bodied people, almost extremely, and unhealthily because of a lifetime of having an eating disorder, and trauma from similar people. The sickest parts of my psyche are wanting someone to reach out and make me sicker, both to feel wanted, and to enable my habits so I'll feel in control and also pretty for someone who loves me. Logically, anyone who truly loves you would never, ever enable something like this, they'd want you to be better, love yourself, no matter what or how you look. I know this sounds ridiculous, but this disorder is the Ridiculous Disorder, to put it lightly (it never is, it's irrational). I am struggling so much, I feel like I'll never be enough for anyone in general, but having this fuel both thoughts upon wanting to get worse and also wanting to be desired is killing me ah !!!!!!!!!!! I want to get better, and start eating like a normal person again, gain weight to a healthy point and forget all about how I look to others, but feeling tiny, feeling small, and wanting someone strong and bigger is all that lives in my head. I don't want to have to be sick just to be loved.