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Living With ED

It's no walk in the park.

By Jeremy JettPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Living with an eating disorder has been one of the hardest things for me to learn to deal with. How to cope with it, live alongside it, and find ways to work with it rather than fighting against it.

I never knew that ARFID was an actual, real disorder until about three years ago. I would spend two, maybe three days without eating and picking myself apart a little at a time, feeling anxious and depressed to no end. I would only drink throughout the day, and maybe if I could fight with myself on it, eat a cracker or two. It had become a vicious unending cycle until I finally looked up what I was feeling and found that my particular disorder was, in fact, common and explained so much of my childhood pickiness and the likes.

Living with an eating disorder, or more particularly in this case, ARFID, is a cycle. It’s a cycle of "I’ve eaten too much, so now I have to eat as little as possible," "I can’t eat that, I have to have something else or nothing at all," "if I have this, it’s going to make me feel guilty about eating it, but if I have something else it’ll be fine," "I feel gross and exhausted and I’m HUNGRY and I WANT to eat, but I can’t," "I’m not allowed to eat," and so on.

You get the picture, it’s a lot of self guilt, being hungry but feeling like you aren’t allowed to have what you want and how much you want to consume, or if you do have something in the end, you wind up feeling guilty about the food you ate or how much of it. It’s a cycle, and not a fun one at that. Most days you want to push through all of those bad thoughts and feelings and just eat because maybe that will make everything better and you’ll be magically cured for the week. Unfortunately, it doesn’t (always) work that way.

ARFID is a nasty breed of eating disorder and it’s not as widely common as Anorexia or Bulimia. I wish that it was, because I have come across maybe two others that I have discovered have the same disorder as myself and it’s been this huge wave of relief over me. To know that I don’t struggle alone with something that I only knew about three years ago, something that two people very near and dear to my heart can also speak out about and talk to me about. It’s helpful, it’s encouraging.

Trying to get into a nutritionist for such a disorder can sometimes be hard. I’ve been fighting trying to see one for almost a year now because of insurance hurdles. While I know it will never fully cure me, it can help me find ways to cope and better myself. Learn to love myself, live with my disorder and not for it, and hopefully one day learn to love my body no matter the disorder, grabs hold of me for the week, the day, or the month. It’s a long process, and living with any kind of eating disorder takes time and patience.

Struggling with an ED is not a walk in the park, no matter how it’s glamorized in the media. It’s a hard hitting problem and takes time and recovery. It hits where it hurts, and for anyone struggling: it’s okay. You’ll be okay, even when you’re at your lowest. Your ED will never have you; you’ll just find better ways to punch it in the face.

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About the Creator

Jeremy Jett

A tired, disabled trans cat dad who wants more tattoos & never has enough coffee. I write sometimes.

twitter: twitter.com/catnip_coffee

ao3: archiveofourown.org/users/lordbatty

instagram: instagram.com/catnip_coffee/

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