The Evil and the Good @zzanioo

I’ve made up two parts of my eating disorder. One I call M, she’s the one that calls me mean names and tells me that the only thing I’m good at is failing. She screams at me every day, telling me that no one will ever love me if I don’t lose more weight. The other part of my eating disorder is The Angel. The part that tells me that I’m amazing and that I’ve finally found something that I’m actually good at. It tells me about the control I’ve gained and about the kilos I’ve lost. I’m not quite sure witch part is the best as both of them are my eating disorder. Yet I sometimes like having The Angel there, telling me that I’m doing great, and that I can go a bit longer without the food. I also sometimes like M, screaming in my ear to run a little faster or to eat a little less. They have given me euphoric feelings times and times again. More times than they let me remember from before they came. It’s like one big, dark hole before the eating disorder. The only thing I remember is not having control and not feeling good about myself. That is all my they are letting me remember. Why? Because they don’t want me to let go of them. Because they make me think that if I do, I’ll go back to living a life where I weigh too much, where I eat massive amounts of food and where I don’t do anything right. Why would I want to recover if that’s what’s waiting for me? M and The Angel are smart. But so am I. They might try to make me forget. But even though I lie awake at night remembering how horrible I felt and how miserable my life was before them; I have friends telling me a different story. They tell me about me laughing, about the dances we made up and about the boys we liked. They tell me all the memories that my eating disorder put in the dark hole. And no matter how hard they’ll try, they can’t remove the memories from my friends’ minds. Sure, they can try to make my friends hate me. But the best ones stay because they know that I am not my eating disorder. I am not M and I am not The Angel. They are not a part of me. They are an illness, a mental illness that can kill me if I don’t kill it first. I want to make new memories with friends. Memories that I will remember. Memories that will have a bigger impact on my life than M and The Angel ever had. I will have those memories. That’s a death promise I’ll make to the eating disorder. And as much as I’ll miss having them both there, making me feel safe, it’s time to let go. To let go of the evil and move on to the good.

Zandra Wiik

@zzanioo