I'm Scared I'm Going to Relapse...

I'm scared I'm going to relapse. It's okay, I've told my social worker, my dietician, even a couple close friends.

Actually, it's not okay, but you don't need to worry about that. However, I do know that, no matter how hard I will try to make it otherwise, eating disorder- and weight- related content is innately triggering for many people so I will put a loud TRIGGER WARNING here, just in case.

So, yeah. I'm scared I'm going to relapse. And I would have thought, after making it this far, with almost five years since I was last actively engaging in behaviours, that I would be in the clear.

I've been worried about this for quite some time, really. Ever since I snuck a glance at my doctor's notebook during an appointment and ended up crying in the bathroom of a smelly sports complex earlier this year. Maybe it was even before then. Maybe it was when I started measuring all my body circumferences and finding out that the internet did, in fact, believe that the ratios don't add up to perfect fitness and I'll probably die of heart disease by age 50. Or maybe it was when quarantine started last year and I began working out again in a totally A-OK way because I wasn't measuring calories burned, and I wasn't creating a strict routine, and I wasn't technically dissociating those times I had intended to workout but ultimately wasn't able to, except maybe I was, just a little. Maybe I started having fears that I was about to relapse when my counselor said something about all of us being made uniquely and wonderfully and I interpreted every possible way he could have meant to indirectly insult my weight, or that time last fall when things Didn't Work Out between me and the guy I was talking to and I started to assess my exact worthlessness.

Regardless, I know what didn't put me on the verge of relapse. What didn't put me on the verge of relapse was seeing my reflection in the mirror because, damn, I'm cute, so why would I want to go back to old behaviours?

But every time I see a video or article or comment on a video or an article discussing the innate worthlessness of fat people... that's when I'm scared I'm about to relapse. Because if us fat people aren't physically expressing hate for our bodies 24/7 with the same gusto of me doing jazz hands in my senior year musical, then how will they know? How are we possibly being responsible? Aren't we teaching little children to be excited about diabetes and heart disease, and they'll inevitably aspire to be plus-sized instead of, you know, just learning how to not completely spiral when they don't comply with severely outdated (and racist) BMI health guidelines?

This is what I know: my eating disorder wasn't (isn't?) about how I feel about myself. It's about my fear of how others see myself. Having learned to engage in a healthy-- but not obsessive-- amount of exercise, as well as how to eat intuitively I have been, all but recently, living the healthiest lifestyle I have ever lived (much healthier than at any lower weight I had been, prior). But, according to others, I am innately unhealthy and it doesn't matter that any attempt to lose weight would spiral into something much more unhealthy for myself because I live by others' rules. I lived by others' rules when I realized, at age 16, "If I'm not the Thin Child, then what other superlative could I possible have in a family of saints?". I live by others' rules when I base my intelligence relative to those around me ("I have X GPA, but my friend has a higher one, therefore, I cannot be smart"), I live by others' rules when I determine that I am unforgiveable, due to having been an extremely selfish friend at my most ill, almost three years ago.

Regardless, I am scared I'm going to relapse. But if I'm going down, I want to take the false assumptions related to pseudo-"Just Concerned for Your Health" culture with me. Please. Save the comments for the people who don't put on enough SPF or who wear high heels. There's enough health concern to go around, without concentrating it all on a community who has also been taught that they're unworthy of love. Yes, I know my weight could eventually be detrimental to my health but, I assure you, diet culture has already done far more damage than a few extra pounds ever could.