It is always difficult coming home in the fall. There is a certain pain that rises in me when I realize another summer has come and gone. I am particularly melancholy as I realize, with last glance at the cottage, how much I missed because of the eating disorder reclaiming my life. Twenty years of recovery, and yet now I have become literally and figuratively a shadow of myself.
I had come so far. I had tackled this insidious beast. I had beat it. Then somehow, my fears, my doubts, my lack of faith, breathed life into what I thought I had slain. Was the recovery real? Was it all just "smoke and mirrors" distorting the eating disorder to just appear defeated? Sometimes I feel like I am just all "smoke and mirrors" never seeing who I really am, or allowing myself to truly be seen. Fearing being just as I am may not be enough.
Coming home is hard because I am obviously thinner. I can't hide that I am fading quickly into the eating disorder. I have tried to hide it from my husband, my family, and my visitors. I even tried to hide it from my closest friend that spent much of my summer with me. She knows me too well, and knows that I won't lie to her of all people. She asks me if I am restricting and/or purging. My secret is out. I tell her everything, from the restricting, to the endless hours of exercise often disguised as play. I even let her in on the raw details of the purging. My God, it was so easy to do because no one even suspected I had gone there again, and when I thought I would be found out; there was always the woods. That is how ugly and powerful this becomes. I Knew I could always walk the dogs in the woods, purge come home and no one would be the wiser. How classy? How humiliating? How desperate had I become? I wouldn't lie to her, but I asked her to keep my secret. That is how powerful the illness can become in such a short amount of time.
Still my husband says nothing. There is no way he hasn't noticed. How could he not wonder what was going on? I think that he was afraid that acknowledging it would give the disorder more power. It would be real. It would and did become an uninvited menace in our marriage. So I am forced to confess my sins of my summer. I ashamed, and so disappointed in myself. I broach the topic slowly. I kind eased my way into it, yet I spare him the gory details of my repulsive behavior. He isn't angry like I thought he would be. He has faith in me and the fact that I have great faith in my new therapist. His anger with me comes along later.
Coming home for both of us means coming home to our parents. My mother is now actually sick. I mean she always has one "ailment" or another, but this time it s real. Dad has thyroid cancer in addition to the heart failure. Kurt's dad is dying, and actually passes away shortly after we come home.
Today as I write this, I am heartbroken and ashamed that the eating disorder had consumed so much of my mind and soul, that I wasn't really present or available to comfort my grieving husband.
Coming home also means facing my therapist who is relatively new. I had just started to see her in May to touch base every "once in a while". One look at me and she would know that somewhere over the summer I had crossed the line.
Coming home meant facing the reality that I had let the eating disorder not only in the door, but allowed it to make itself at home.
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