They told me this would be the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, and I’m finding they were right. I was never one to purge before I started recovering from this disorder. I didn’t expect butterflies and rainbows, but I expected things to be easier this far in. I’m 18 months into recovering from atypical anorexia now, and I’ve lapsed twice in the last four months.

At work, we had a lot of freight. There was also a cute girl, and I got distracted. I kept eating, but I ate less on the days I just wasn’t feeling food or felt overly stressed. I postponed my lunch 1-2 hours, sometimes going 5.5 hours into my shift without eating, because I wanted to get as much done whilst my manager was there.

With a lot of freight comes a lot of stress. With less energy to function generally, my work performance dropped. Whereas I found myself getting into this flow again of OMG-I-can-dance-again, I now have so little energy to do so without creating energy and sleep deficits.

On my days off, I want to accomplish all the things that have been piling up like my colleagues are able to, but at the end of the day, I can’t keep up with them. I can’t do all the things. I’m a spoonie. I have no shame in being a spoonie, but I start to feel guilt because of my slacking — because some days, all I can do is my limit. On my days off, that means sleep, eat, and wash laundry. On days I work, that means sleep, eat, and do just enough work to “pass” as adequate.

So that means my nails don’t always look superb.

It means I go through makeup phases:

1. Eyeliner + lip color
2. Lip color
3. Lip balm

But I got stressed, because managers got stressed, because they got me on those days where I couldn’t put out more than my limit, more than what I’m capable of on my worst days. I don’t know if they understand, but I like to think at least one does. One even knows I’ve lapsed, because I told her, because I felt like I needed at least one person to understand that hey, I need some accountability here.

If you ask me how I’m doing, I’m just okay.

And that’s okay.

Because I’ve been through hell, am still venturing through it, and it’s taking my all to ensure I make it out of this shit forest alive. I’m not going the same pace as other people, either, but it’s okay as long as I’m okay. 💖