How do I tell them about you?

For the majority of the 26 years I’ve been alive, I have hated food. The way it made my body look, the way I loved how it tasted, the shame it always carried with it, the guilt it pummeled me with, and the way it burned, the way it tore my throat apart every time I purged. I blamed food for what it did to my relationship with my mom, my relationship with it, and my relationship with myself. It’s something I’ve talked and written about at length as I started confronting the things that kept my ribs bruised and my throat raw. It’s something I think about each time I eat. How grateful I should be that I can look at a plate of food and appreciate it for what it is, not hate myself for what it might bring me.

Since I’ve been in recovery (it was four years this past October since I last binged & purged), I have tried to remove all value from the food I once tried to find my worth in. I pushed myself to eat the trigger foods that usually stopped me dead in my tracks, forced my hand, and filled my eyes with tears of regret. I’ve started getting to the root of the causes of my bulimia and as a result have been able to have a healthier relationship with my body and food in general. I am getting to know my body’s voice and learn what it’s like to listen to her and her needs.

It’s weak, and so, so quiet, but it’s there.

But as I carry on with my daily life, I don’t want to wear a sign advertising my recovery process. I don’t want to tell the world what stage I’m at or that some days I feel like I have to start all over again after having already come so far.

Some days though, I wish I did, I wish people knew. Because then they’d stop talking about the ill-informed diets they’re on. They wouldn’t use words that invoke guilt and shame just because you’re indulging or just because I don’t eat a salad for lunch. They’d stop talking about how much they have to go to the gym or stay away from carbs or joke about whatever size meal I’m eating. They’d stop adding fuel to the misinformed fire about weightloss.

And each time I heard them, maybe their words wouldn’t make tiny incisions all along my body. Microscopic cuts that you don’t even notice until they’re everywhere. A multitude of entrances for the toxicity I’ve tried for years to expel from my mind.

So maybe I should, maybe I should embrace the scarlet letter given to me by my own hand.

Maybe that’ll make this all just a bit easier.

Or maybe I’ll end up isolating myself on this island of recovery. Eating my meals in peace, screaming into the silence.