Alone with the A's surrounded by friends and family

One thing about being in recovery is that it is a lonely place. Unfortunately, in order to properly be anorexic or an alcoholic you have to learn to isolate yourself. This is because well meaning friends and family members can get in your way along the way as they are obstacles to being able to skip a meal or take another drink. Both diseases force you to be extremely secretive with the way you live your life creating a pattern in your mind when you become uncomfortable sharing yourself or your thoughts with anyone.

While this is bad enough alone, the thing is that once you start to recover from both diseases, you find that your healthy group of friends have all but disappeared. You cannot so much blame them, as it was your actions that pushed them away, but the world is a lonely place and you need distractions while recovering in order to keep pushing through. Even worse, as both diseases can make you seem like a fool, having drunkorexia meanas that you have probably engaged in some ridiculous actions and emotional battles that have left all your friendships pushed to their limits.

This aside, one of the hardest things that I have found about being in recovery, is that even when you start to regain a sense of yourself, noone left in your life wants to talk about your anorexia or alcholism. For me at least, I have the need to be able to reference it and joke about it causually. It is something that looms in my mind everyday, because people do not realize that anorexia is not something that goes away. Every meal, or every innocent offer of an oreo cookie and it is present back in my mind. Ignoring the problem only makes it worse for me.

However, my family, friends, and finance feel odd mentioning my aneroxia, as they seem to think I am healed and that is it. The subject of anorexia is very uncomfortable for them and they would rather think of me as perfectly fine having simply glossed over a rocky day. My rocky day is still there, and continues to be there every step I take. Being forced to pretend that I am now perfect and fine which is far from the truth, not to mention the fact that my perfectionism and strives to always be in control are what lead me down the path to begin with.

Therefore, I find myself staring down the need to be perfect every day, but this time without my easy old defensive coping methods that some days I want to fall back on so hard. It's ironic, but I find that while in recovery I am still fighting the essance of the diasease, but without any of the perks that used to help me survive and cope. I know I am healthier for it, but it is a lonely battle and one that I think most people underestimate. This is not about rather I will just stick the fork in my mouth at dinner, rather I will puke my dinner, or rather I take a shot to feel better. Aneroxia is about much more than that and I wish there was a way I could make them understand that just because I am eating tonight does not mean that I am healed.

I assume that I am not the only one that feels this way out of every girl who has ever had anorexia, and that most family and friends react this way. But there is a demon in the diasease and it always lives healthier beside me, which is why I praise and commmend everyone who continues to fight it.