'Do the thing you think you cannot do'...
‘Do the thing you think you cannot do’; that’s been going round in my head all day. It was the text I woke up to this morning from one of my dearest friends and number-one supporters. She’s a total gem and I quite literally thank God for blessing me with a friend like her during the hardest period of my life.
At two points today I’ve done the thing which I thought I couldn’t do, let me explain: to many today’s triumphs will seem totally unfounded and probably bizarrely normal. The first one was accepting an ice cream. As you’ll know, (unless perhaps like me, you’ve been blasted with icy aircon all day) it’s been a pretty hot today. So at 4:00pm my boss went on an ice cream run. She went around the office taking everyone’s individual requests, and I JOINED IN - I had one TOO! As I’ve said, this will sound pretty uneventful and very normal to most reading this, but for me, when I’ve had to contend against anorexia’s anger, accepting this ice cream was quite a feat. ‘It’s past 3:30 you can’t have it’, ‘you’ve already had your afternoon snack’, ‘what about supper later, save the calories for then’, ‘you don’t really want one’, ‘what will others in here think of you’, ‘you don’t deserve one’…
These are all thoughts I’m constantly swamped with throughout every food-moment in the day. Yes, yes you’re right, it does get pretty tiresome, hence why it’s easier to just give into anorexia because at least then I get a little bit more peace, a little more space in my head… that is of course until the next opportunity to eat, when it pipes up once again.
I digress. So, the second point I did the thing I thought I couldn’t do today was just now, at supper. I came downstairs to not just any goats cheese and caramelised onion tart, to an M&S ‘light and crumbly goats cheese and caramelised onion tart’ (sorry, I had to!). For a split second Mima was excited; in the past they would’ve been a Mima favourite, you see. But very quickly I was bombarded once again with thoughts, ‘you can’t have that’, ‘think how much is in those’, ‘they’re huge’, ‘far, far too much’, ‘AND you had that ice cream earlier, no way can you have one of those’, ‘think how guilty you’ll feel, it won’t be worth it’… and the thoughts went on and on.
As everyone got theirs and went to sit outside I cut one in half and nearly headed out to join them. But, that little part of Mima that’s so often unable to make herself, her needs, and her wants known at any meal time above anorexia’s, that real spark of Mima turned around and got the other half too. ‘If you can’t manage it you can just leave it, just put it all on your plate though, come on Mima’, I told myself.
‘Okay, half way through’… everyone else had finished long before me, and as I sat trying to negotiate around anorexia (which in the wise words of Mrs Kingsley “is like a nightclub, not something I tend to enter into”) I sat not knowing what to do. But, for a change, I voiced my struggle aloud, I explained what a big deal it was to me to eat this lonesome other half… and with their help and support, and Midge’s wise words, ‘this may not be Mima’s normal, but this IS a normal portion’… I DID IT, I ate it all!
So that’s twice today, I’ve done the thing which I thought I couldn’t do. Twice today I’ve won over anorexia, and twice today I’ve felt genuinely proud of my decisions (something that I’ve not felt in far too long). I suppose what today’s proven is that I am capable of more than I ever think, and far, far more than anorexia will allow me to ever believe, but the only way I found that out was to feel the fear and do it anyways.
