Illusions.
June 26, 2008
Sometimes it amazes me how swiftly the ed thoughts can come rushing back in; emotionally, it feels like standing in the ocean feeling calm only to get knocked over by an unexpectedly large wave. In a moment that seems to last forever you are held under, being pushed down into the sand, and tossed like a rag doll underneath a force that you feel like you have no power over.
I took a dangerous trip back to memory lane by visiting a past ed journal that I kept on livejournal. Usually if I revisit, I keep it contained to my personal journal, where only my past thoughts are open to torture me; however today I took a perilous step into my “friends” page and was assulted by post after post of the pro-ana propaganda and thinspiration pictures that I had once used to fuel my fire so many times while in the throwes of my eating disorder.
This time I at least had the common sense to walk away when I started feeling those pangs. I will admit that I was tempted to look, to see the hudreds of pictures of girls who are so much thinner than I am, to wonder how they do it, and feel those all too familiar feelings of competitive drive to prove to myself and the world that I too, could starve myself back to perfection.
But I DIDN’T look, because I know that none of that is real. None of it. All of that competion to be the thinnest, is really about trying to prove that I have control and all the starving and purging is just a clever disguise for all of the anger I have deep inside me that I don’t know what to do with. Some people take their anger out on others, I take it out on myself.
I know there’s a better way, and it comes down to being honest with myself, sometimes that’s just harder to do than others.
When it’s all said and done though, even after all the crap I put myself through to get down to the perfect weight, I didn’t feel any better about myself than I did before I lost it. I’m at a better, happier, and healthier place than I’ve ever been right now, and those damn pictures are not going to suck me in this time.
