I don't know what I'm doing creating this bubble again, stoking this fire in my mind like it could ever end any differently. I suppose it's as simple as unloading, venting. An open dialogue about my plagued brain is not necessarily encouraged though not quite forbidden. It's frustrating, the hard fact is that no one really understands it. We can nod and ruminate all day long if I really wanted but the people around me simply do not understand. 

My complaints are simple enough. I may not be sick how I was but I am sick still. Being underweight was not the only danger related to my eating disorder. Four years of binging and purging was equally as detrimental to my health as the two previous years spent starving. It's not appropriate to rummage through my clothes and conclude out loud in my presence that the item is too small to ever fit me again. It's not wise to make light of the type or quantity of the food I eat at any time. Do not occasionally remind me how much smaller I use to be whilst wistfully recalling how I could have been a model. 

I know you must think that with weight back on I'm out of the woods but you have to know that will not ever be true. I still see food as a collection of numbers and I can still feel fat pooling under my skin. Once I physically saw it, don't pretend like you've forgotten. 

It would be easier if I had some way of letting you into my head because no matter what I'll never be able to competently articulate the absolute anguish I went through, continue to go through. You won't ever know what it was like for me at 13, 14, 15 no matter how much I try to explain it. It undermines what I experienced when you reflect with humour, with an attitude like remember that crazy time[…]. It is not yours to mock, it was not your life! It never was and never will be the light hearted, close call you seem to remember it as. Please, please stop supposing we're past this. I'm not. 

Maybe in secret you tried to educate yourself on the subject but I can't believe that when you flounce so ungracefully around the issue. And I'm not calling you a trigger but when we all pretend like it was never a problem, like I never screamed and cried about porridge, it makes me feel discredited, it makes me feel like it never really was problem, it makes me feel like I'm suffering from something like a cold in the winter time, a fear of eating when I don't approve of the scale reading. 

I feel them breathing down my neck, watching while I pick this over that. I suppose I'll never be above suspicion, never to be trusted with food again. I tell them I'm trying to make 'healthy' choices, I'm trying to get 'in shape'. Not that I'm lying it's just that under all that calories are looming, counted and collected off to one side before they're chipped away at through ritual exercise. 

We always knew though that I'd never really get too far from this habit. I haven't thrown up more than twice this whole year though. I'm proud of that but we don't talk about it. Fasting and restricting, well that's only been periodically, nothing serious. The notion though, that's constant. Every morning, every night numbers tip toe across my eyelids. I could think of less numbers if I ate less of them, I could sleep better with less numbers in my head. 

This last month though, it's been strange. Not quite what I was but not quite far off. I haven't imposed any limits but they're there. 1'000 a day is acceptable but I rarely make it there. 700 might be an average but I'm never really happy unless it's dipped below 500. I like the way my jeans fit now but there's still clothes in the corners of my closet that I want to fit again. 

I really wanted to do this the right way. I researched BMR's and muscle groups, made a plan that slipped between my fingers to leave only half it's contents still within my grasp. I had this idea about abs and gluts and biceps. I wanted it to happen but when breakfast became poached eggs and dinner came with heaped sides of vegetables I started to reminisce on a time when I could make do with a pot of yoghurt and some strawberries, when weight just dripped off. I started thinking if I could just live like that a little while, lose the excess, I could start being healthy after the fact. 

Maybe it'll work out that way after all or maybe this is just another periodic phase. I'm not so sure though, I can feel a familiar resolution in my bones. The way I linger in food aisles to read labels is eerie. Tears welling in my eyes when I can't find a particular item, the panic that follows. It's same old, same old. The longer this goes on unaddressed the more stuck I become.