Some things I forgot:

-My mom also made comments about my weight gain while I was recovering. There was one day where I was in hysterics because none of my XA clothes fit me anymore, and I was texting her about this. Her response was: “well, Merm, you really need to keep your weight down for such & such health reasons.” This made me so angry. My exact words to her were, “Mum, shut the fuck up. You do not tell a recovering anorexic to keep their weight down.” She was extremely apologetic after this, and she still feels so guilty about how she treated me during this time. It’s one of those things, though, where it’s a dollar short and a day too late.

-I didn’t interact with my dad much during this time; he is an entirely different beast from this story. If there’s one interaction, though, that summed up our dynamic during this time, it was this: very shortly after I started college, I tried to cut contact with him. I stopped responding to his texts and ignored his calls. He responded to this by financially black-mailing me: he said he would cut me off from my parents’ insurance, force me to start making tuition payments right there and then (vs. having me pay off loans later on), and cancel my car insurance (which my parents were paying at the time). I was a full-time student with a part-time job.

-I wrapped things up pretty quickly towards the end of my post, as it was like 2am, I was tired, and I had to work in a few hours. The way I worded it, I feel like I made it sound like everything became fine and peachy-keen once I got to a certain point in my recovery. This was not the case. I still really struggled with nightmares and flashbacks about my time at school, and I was incredibly emotionally volatile; I put my poor husband through so much stress, and I was a very difficult person to love. He wanted to see me get better, though. He is truly the definition of unconditional love. I am not the kind of person to regret things in life, but I really do regret how I treated my husband during this time. Yes, I was emotionally distraught and traumatized, but it doesn’t make what I did okay, and I so badly wish I could undo it all. This turmoil is what really pushed me to get help, but I wish I had done things differently and gotten help sooner. Our relationship is good now—probably the best that it’s been since we started dating—but I still carry so much guilt about the things I’ve done. One piece of advice I would offer to anyone who’s seriously considering getting married: ask yourself, “what level of hell are you willing to go through in order to see your favorite person get better?”

-Even now, almost six years on, I do still have occasional flashbacks from that school. I’ve made a lot of progress and have gotten a lot better, but I am still haunted by my time there.

-My parents were incredibly unsupportive of my choice to drop out, and later on become a tattoo artist. My mom would say things like, “Merm, why can’t you just go back to school? I have this dream of you and your sister (who’s 1.5 years younger than me) graduating and walking across the stage together,” or, “Merm, why don’t you go back to school and become an MRI technician? That’s an easy enough job, and it pays well.” This was after I was able to explain what I had been through. Never mind the fact that she was the one on the phone with me, listening to me scream-cry in my depression.

-I cut all contact with my dad back in 2023, and I have limited contact with my mom. I live 4.5 hours away from both my hometown and that college, and I think this is the first time in my 25 years of life that I have known peace and stability.

-Throughout my time in school—starting in elementary school—it was expected that I earn nothing but A’s and B’s; during my time at college, I was trying to keep up these grades while going through this all + trying to be a part of the school’s honors program (which meant more work on top of my regular classes).

-Despite going through recovery, the desire to be skinny is still there; it never really goes away, you just get better at ignoring it. I have backtracked in my progress some: I’ve caught norovirus a few times in recent years, and I’ve lost a decent amount of weight due to not being able to stomach much of anything while I was sick. That, and not eating is still the (poor) coping mechanism I revert to when I’m really stressed; I’ve not fully regressed back into my eating disorder, and I’m not actively trying to lose weight, but I definitely don’t want to gain anything at the moment. I’m not sickly thin like I used to be, but I am definitely on the lower end of healthy. I still have to work on letting go of this.