The Path Less Traveled: Anorexia and Beyond

I am currently in recovery from anorexia nervosa. I no longer actively practice eating disordered behaviors, such as restricting my food intake, compulsively exercising, and purging. Yet, I am certainly not out of the woods. I still struggle with urges to do these types of behaviors almost every hour of every day. Have I improved since this time last year? Absolutely. But I still have an anorexic-type mindset, always on the prowl for low fat, low cal foods, even if I don't eat them.

Where, then, does this leave me? In recovery? What does "in recovery" mean anyway?

The Recovery Road Is Undefined

It's much easier to define sick and well than the nebulous place in between the two. I am traveling from point A (anorexia) to point B (being recovered), yet I have no way of locating my exact spot on the road from one to the other. I am always moving in some direction: mostly forwards, sometimes backwards, and occasionally sideways. Even my surroundings are changing because I am learning to perceive them differently. No wonder recovery is so hard to define.

My movements along the path from extreme anorexia to being recovered have been gradual. There were no eureka moments, no paradigm shifts. The change was subtle. It took me years to accept recovery on recovery's terms—that I couldn't keep some eating disordered behaviors and let go of others, that I couldn't keep my weight below the point my body needed for optimal health. Sometimes a step involved calling a friend for support. Or it involved eating a previously forbidden food and gradually incorporating it into my diet. Sometimes it involved writing letters to companies I felt promoted eating disorders through their advertising.

I still don't know where I am on the journey. The road has so many twists and turns and switchbacks that I doubt even a GPS system would help. One of my very wise friends says that as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you'll eventually get somewhere. I am still trying to figure out where I'm headed and how to get there. My destination continues to evolve, and each turn shows me new paths and possibilities.

Travel Time

I have to remind myself that I am on my own personal path, right here, right now, in between here and there, and that is perfectly okay. So often we want to be "somewhere" and there is definitely a positive aspect to achieving our goals. There is also, however, the traveling time, a time that occupies most of our waking hours. If I were to say that the past year was just "travel time," I would be literally erasing a year of my life. I have waited for years to be happy. After I graduated from high school. After I graduated from college. After I got my Master's degree. After I got a good job. After I lost five more pounds. After I recovered from my eating disorder. After, after, after. All too soon I found a near-decade gap in my life spent waiting for life to happen.

Most of our years are spent in that in-between time, working on our goals and ourselves, in route to our futures. I am finally realizing that being "in recovery" may not necessarily be a point on a map, but it is a completely valid place to be. Even though I find it difficult to live in the gray area between black and white, gray is just as real a color, and "in recovery" is just as real a place as sick and well. The path is kind of like a road-trip—the journey is just as important as the destination.