Emerging

When you are sick, people who are not sick talk endlessly about recovery. They are attempting to encourage you, to bait you, to convince you. They wonder what could be said that would make you change your mind, choose a different path, step away from the endless cycle of mental and physical abuse. The answer is that nothing can be said. Recovery is a privilege. Recovery is a miracle and a gift and mistrust and a burden. Recovery is peace and love and fear and anger. Recovery is the feeling of fullness in so many ways. 

What people don’t talk about is the period after a miracle finds you in the depths of despair and pulls you out by the hair, scratching and clawing to stay below. The painful and raw existence that greets you as you emerge; blinking your eyes as if seeing the world for the first time. The discomfort that comes with being healthy and living in this new body is unbearable at times. I feel as though I’m inhabiting someone else’s skin; waiting for them to come back for it and label me an imposter. Surely this body isn’t mine. It’s soft and supple, slight curves and dimples. Not sharp edges and bony protrusions, wounding those who dare approach. It’s warm to the touch and loves to be touched. It lets you feel it, caress it gently and make love to it with fervor and sweetness. Its appetite for skin to skin contact is insatiable.  

I am cautious and hesitant. I take small steps in this new body into this new life. I leave behind the comforts of sickness: the hiding of food, the compulsion to exercise, the black out drinking, the purging, the rumination, the obsession, the hunt. I am alone now. The hardest work is on the horizon. When the urges come and I must grip the sides of whatever solid thing I can find and hold on. When I know that the demon is beside me and within me. When I could give in with one decision made in a fraction of a second. But I won’t. I hold tightly to this new body in this new life that is mine. That I worked so hard for. That I fought and fought and fought for. That I will never lose. I will peer through the peephole, see my illness crouching outside and lock the door. She will knock but I will not open. I must leave you out there. You don’t belong here anymore.