Careful what you say…

I haven’t really written a proper post for ages, and that’s no accident. There’s been an awful lot of nonsense in my head lately* and to counter it, I’ve stuck my head in the sand and gone about hiding in awards posts and games of tag. The thing is whilst it’s one thing to spend your time in the real world pretending that everything is okay, it’s just plain daft to attempt to hide the extent of your broken brain in a blog that you keep to document your journey with a broken brain. I suppose the only person I’m cheating is myself….

Something went wrong – somebody said something to me that they oughtn’t to have said. If they’d cared at all they wouldn’t have said it which means not only do I have to struggle with the fall out of what they said, but that I also have to contemplate the fact that they, along with (and, this is about my broken brain) everyone else I know simply doesn’t care.

So – you know I’m doing this 10,000 steps challenge? It was going really well and people were being incredibly generous** and I was just about proud of myself. And then Mrs Black and White popped up to say:

“And how did you get yourself involved with this? You’ll need to eat like a horse not to lose any weight”

Boom! End of feeling proud of myself.

I started to feel apologetic. Like I’d let her down because she clearly thought it was a bad idea and at the end of the day, I just want to please people and most of all her. Then I felt stupid…. what have I got myself involved with, what a ridiculous idea? Then I felt unloved because surely, for once in her life somebody who had seen EVERYTHING I’d been through could bite her tongue and say ‘good luck’ even if she thought it was a bad idea. And then, and this is the worst thing of all, I went a bit weird about food – as if to prove her right.

I am recovering from an eating disorder – which is to say that I have (more or less) maintained a healthy weight for EIGHT years having once almost starved myself to death. I don’t count calories, nor weigh myself. Heck I don’t even think about eating. I just do it when I’m hungry. But when it comes to food, I’m vulnerable. I guess I always will be and I hope I will always be brave enough to keep on doing the right thing however hard it gets: which is why the comment hurt so much.

My biggest fear in life is going back to where I was. I don’t need to think about it. I don’t need to remember. I need keep on keeping on. I don’t need the people who are supposed to care reminding me of who I used to be….. And this person really should have known better. It was just unkind to make something positive into a great big fear of being unwell.

From one little comment comes a spectacular unravelling. That’s the way things go around here. It doesn’t take much for me to unravel because I’m fragile. When you’re fragile people have to be very careful about what they say and do which in the end means that people don’t bother because it’s easier not to bother than to be careful.

I shouldn’t let it get to me. I know that, but it isn’t that simple in my head – I don’t get to decide what bothers me and what doesn’t; the way I feel just happens and most of the time I can’t cope with the outcome. WeeGee doesn’t do feelings well

*Yes – even more nonsense than normal

**I’ve raised £235 so far. £15 more and I get a certificate from Mind!