If you don’t suffer from an eating disorder it is nearly impossible for you to understand what goes on in the mind of someone who does. Which is what makes this an incredibly lonely disease. As hard as I try, I cannot make you understand what it is like to struggle so very deeply with something that is so very basic. Everybody eats. It cannot be that hard to just eat. Little children eat. Animals eat. It is one of the most basic parts of life. And yet for me, and for the others out there who struggle, it is THE most difficult part of life. The amount of anxiety surrounding meal times (which happen six times a day when you are on a recovery meal plan) is absolutely overwhelming. When every bite tastes like cardboard on a good day, and glass on a bad day, I live in a constant state of dreading the next meal. Which is why it is so much easier to just avoid eating.

Despite the fact that I am a year into recovery, I still have yet to truly enjoy eating. And as time goes on, I become increasingly more frustrated with the fact that for whatever reason, my brain works this way. I thought that going to treatment would fix my broken mind, but here I am a year later, and I still hate eating just as much, if not more than I did this time last year. Because now I actually have to.

Everything in my mind is skewed. I go out to eat and order a half salad, and eat half of that. And in my mind I have eaten SO MUCH. I have taken SO MANY bites. My anxiety has been on high alert for SO LONG. And I am done. I have just run a marathon and now I want to rest. But I can’t. Because I still have half the food left on my plate. And when I finally finish, I can relax for about an hour until it is time to start preparing for my afternoon snack.

I don’t know why it is like this for me. But I wish more than anything that it wasn’t.

When I went to treatment, The Lord did so much in my heart. He healed so many wounds and grew my confidence in incredible ways. And I let Him do all of those things. I was more than happy to fully surrender all of my wounds to Him. But what I am realizing nearly a year later, is that I never actually surrendered the eating disorder itself. I never actually asked Him to heal whatever is slightly off in my mind that makes me hate to eat so much.

I’ve spent the past year making excuses for myself. Making excuses for myself to not have to follow my meal plan. “Counting calories is just much easier for me.” Making excuses for weight loss. “I just have a fast metabolism.” Making excuses to not eat. “I’m just so full.”

I desperately want this all to just go away. I want to be able to eat like a “normal” person. So I just ignore the problem. But ignoring the problem does not make it go away. So now I am in a season of forcing myself to take responsibility. In a way that I couldn’t when I was in treatment. When I was in treatment, I didn’t have any choices. Food was shoved down my throat six times a day. I was forced to eat every bite on my plate or else I would be supplemented. I was weighed every single morning to make sure I wasn’t burning off my caloric intake.

But now, it’s just me. There is no one around to force me. No one will supplement me for what I leave on my plate. No one is here to weigh me every single day. It is all up to me. And that is the scariest, and yet most beautiful part of it all. It is my choice now. Health was chosen for me before. And now I have to chose it for myself. I have to decide all on my own to finish my food because my body needs it, not because I will have to endure a cup of resource supplement if I don’t.

So I am faced with a choice, yet again. I either have to chose myself, or I will lose myself. I have to chose life or I will die. So every morning, I have to get up and choose to eat. Over and over and over. I have to choose to be a human being that needs food to function or survive. I have to choose to override my own brain. And if my brain never heals while I am in this world, I will have to continue to fight it for the rest of my life. Because the alternative cannot be an option.

Although it scares me, I do take great comfort in the fact that I get to choose whether the disease wins or I do. It would be easier to let the eating disorder win. But I want so much more for my life than that. I want to choose a life of health and happiness. I want to be able to choose to get married someday and have kids. I want to be able to choose to go back to school. To travel. To help others. And I take comfort in knowing that I am the one in power in this situation. The decisions may be excruciatingly painful each and every day. But I still get to choose. I don’t have to wonder if I will die from this disease ten years from now because I am the one that is responsible for that outcome.

And so I continue on this journey. I continue to learn to live. I continue to learn to fight. I continue to cling to a God that is bigger and more powerful than anything I could come up against. The day will come when I am completely healed and free. The day will come when I can feast in peace and joy. Whether that day is here on earth or in Heaven, I do not know. But it will come. And in the mean time, I will choose to win this war.