What frightens you the most, Em? The thought of taking that final, terrifying leap into the depths of the unknown? Or is it the thought of remaining stuck...in this insipid place they call half recovery..forever? What frightens you more? The leap; or the prison? Just over a year ago I composed a short little post entitled the Beginning After the Halfway. Within it, I spoke of how in recovery one may encounter two beginnings : the first, most obvious one being the beginning of the recovery journey itself: the action "phase", so I have heard it called. Initially I thought that was the onl ..read more

Time for me to Write, again.  Time for me to again find my Voice.  Not really sure where to begin, with this. As I anticipated, the things that have worked to inhibit me from blogging in the first place - namely doubt, lack of confidence, and that all too familiar fear of being judged - are taking their places in that audience in my head right now, ready and eager to start their boos and heckling. As I sit here my eyes are scanning over the words I just wrote, seeking out flaws, feeding the hungry inner critics that reside within my mind. They're all poised and ready, now - ready to judge ..read more

I wonder how others see me now. I wonder if they think eating is easy for me now, that I am recovered. On the outside everything seems fine , even - and I wince as I say it- everything seems normal, or, indeed, "healthy".  Gone, now, is the skinny bony body, the non existent bust on the chest, the cracked dry skin and stick like legs and arms. And now gone too is the one thing that I used to doggedly grasp at, whenever ed used to tell me I was normal and didn't t need to eat as much good, or any food at all.  My periods.  I can eat loads as i dont have a period. But when it arrived, herald ..read more

Today I went to see a counsellor. I emerged from the somewhat dreary loooking place some 50 minutes later enwrapped in a cloudy sort of emptiness. It hadnt quite been what I had expected. Indeed far from it. She had more or less admitted that they weren’t quite what I was looking for. But what am I looking for? I suppose...the quick switch to my recovery. But from a physical perspective I am doing well, I guess. But mentally I feel the same. And I still find myself practising every day those silly little ed habits that I have long resolved to work on, and overcome. Yet they linger, as does Ed ..read more

It was the Tuesday after my birthday that I got the Skype call that changed everything. I was sitting in the lounge - or the "sun room", as I like to call it. My writing room. The frontermost room of the house which the sun's first light spills into every morning. As that golden orb ascends into the sky, it casts golden shafts of sunlight through the brooms' enormous east-facing window, illuminating the faces of my loved ones' pictures upon the walls, causing the polished oakwood of the little oval table to shine and gleam with an almost fairytale-like quality. It's one of my favourite rooms ..read more