Put Spoon to Mouth and Repeat?

It’s not the act of eating that pulls and tugs at my psyche.

No, it’s not that simple.

Put spoon to mouth and repeat, that’s the easy part, right?

My mother will proudly tell you that when I was a baby, I would not allow her spoon feed me. I hadn’t learned to hold the spoon so I would clumsily grab at the food with my fingers. Most of it would not enter my mouth.

Sometimes, she says, when I didn’t want to eat, I would let it fall in the pockets of my bib.

Perhaps, my need to control my meals at such a young age was a sign, a foreshadowing, of the struggle up ahead.

After all, I wanted her tie my shoes and do all the things that I still had not learned to do, but feeding myself, no matter how miserably I failed, was something that I wanted and needed to do for myself.

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It’s the before and after, of eating, that tears tiny little holes in my sanity.

The before:

I put it off, until my stomach gnaws my insides, and I end up wishing that the feeling would fade.

It doesn’t and that tiny little voice, my subconscious, the part that the somehow holds resilience to this disease- whispers words of reasons.

Eat, eat why can’t you just eat?

The anxiety rushes through my body and sends chills through every pore.

A hyperawareness, that stress is imminent. What and how much? Too many decisions to make, leave me aching for words that I spoke so many years ago- “No, I can do it by myself, I am a big girl.”

Hunger leaves and I desperately want to cling to my anorexia.

I stare at the plate with absolutely no desire to consume it but I know that I must. The next meal is hours away and I can’t stomach the liquid replacement.

Eating becomes mechanical.

Is never about taste and textures or cravings and nutrients.

Eating, the simplest of pleasures, the most innate of instinct gone.

The after:

There is always an overwhelming rush of coldness, guilt and sleep, that quickly weighs me down.

Despite the fact, that I have just woken up, my body grows limp and I need to close my eyes.

A physical and mental shut down.

*****

It’s in the twilight of the morning, when I am neither hungry or full, when the cognitive and physical have yet to dual, where my hope lies.

Maybe it was just a dream gone awry, a terrible nightmare… but reality sets in when I feel so physically tired that I can’t will myself to get out of bed.

It’s not the act of eating that leaves me immobile; afraid that the tiny thread that tethers and keeps me sane and functioning, snaps.

It’s the extremes, between the emptiness and satiety, the wanting and denying, the amplification of thoughts and suppressed actions.

The acceptance and disappointment, that maybe I was never in control and that I can't do this by myself.

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I got down to 91, the lowest I think i've been, i've been eating and sleeping more these past couple of days; hopefully I can get back on track.