Secrets

I have not stepped on a scale since Wednesday. It is killing me. Every time I walk into the bathroom, the scale stares at me like it is haunting me. The scale is saying, “Come on, just step on. No one will ever know. I’m your friend and I would never lie to you.” I do not have a scale in my bathroom at home because that would be too hard, but the most difficult thing is to go to other people’s houses and see the scale. I am alone in the bathroom and the door is locked, so no one would see if I weighed myself. It can be a secret and my ED loves secrets. Secrets are its specialty.

I did not realize how much the number determined how my day went or how much I ate. If the number goes down, I feel good about myself and maybe I can eat lunch that day. But if the number goes up, I feel like dirt and I cannot eat anything at all. My ED tells me so. I feel somewhat lost without knowing the number. Should I eat? Or should I not? Should I workout more? I do not know what to do. I have to start listening to my body and it is weird for me because I have not done that it a long time. I know an important part of recovery is not weighing myself, but I want it so bad. The scale has become my friend and has determined so much in my life. Part of me does not want that to change, but I know if I ever want to get better I HAVE TO put the scale away.

Not eating does weird things to a person’s body. My hair is thinner than it used to be and it falls out all the time. My hair is also very dry. I have dry brittle, yellow finger nails and dry skin. I have chest pain every day. I feel sick to my stomach all the time and have heart burn. I am tired and moody. I go to bed with a headache and wake up with one. My hands and feet feel like ice. I get horrible leg cramps and my hands and feet feel tingly. No matter how horrible I feel, my ED always makes up excuses. “You are tired because you went to bed too late last night. You eat too much, so you cannot possibly be tired because you do not eat enough,” It tells me. It kind of brainwashes me so to speak. I walk through life believing whatever it tells me, including that I am fat, ugly, and that no one likes me. I have lost myself to my ED and my voice is really no longer existent. I have to learn how to get my voice stronger and teach it to override the voice of my ED. It is much easier said than done though. It is very hard to separate the two voices in my head. I hope with hard work and patience I can do it.