It’s NEDA Week, and I’ve been quiet. It’s odd to be quiet during this week as someone who started a blog + Instagram account with exclusively eating disorder recovery focus, but as I have grown so has this page. Six years ago I shared “my story” very publicly for the first time (it’s hyperlinked should you be interested in reading it). I read back over that post periodically and often cringe but also know how healing it was for me to write and share it. Now, there is an entire category of NEDA Awareness posts which I’ve written over the years, each one layering a year of growth on top of the last.

This makes year seven, and I don’t have many words or much wisdom. This post has nothing to do with this year’s theme set by NEDA. It’s just a little something because it felt weird to let the week pass without sharing something.

Earlier in the week, I saw a Facebook post from a girl whose recovery account I followed for years. There are several girls who I feel like I grew up with, in a way. Most of us were high-schoolers when we started our recovery accounts. Now, most of us have graduated from college or just been working or are in graduate school, all grown up and doing well in recovery. She also wrote about how it felt weird to not acknowledge the week and what it was, to not acknowledge her past, but also that she didn’t want people to be tired of her talking about her ED, talking about recovery, thinking she was seeking attention, but needing her fight seen at the same time and for people to know about eating disorders and the mental illness that once defined her and shaped who she has grown into.

Her words resonated with me greatly because my ED is my past. Sure, old thoughts creep up sometimes, particularly when life shakes me. I won’t say old behaviors don’t creep up too from time to time, but they don’t last long; I know it’s futile. It numbs the anxiety (re: redirects) for a time but it doesn’t change anything circumstantially and does not benefit me ultimately. So as I was saying, my ED is my past. I am no longer in the trenches.

It was part of me for so long, though, and I think in some ways always will be to a very small extent. It shaped me and my views. It made me more compassionate and aware of hidden battles. It’s taught me about my own finitude and humanity. It’s made me so much stronger now in the areas of self-care, self-awareness, and just in general. I can’t say I’ve ever dealt with anything harder than battling my own mind to do something so basic and crucial to my survival as eat. (And no, it’s not as simple as “just eat,” there is no “just eat” with an eating disorder, and I don’t care which one we’re talking about either.)

To get to the point though: Recently, I’ve been learning, completely outside of eating disorder recovery- but also relevant to that journey- is about survival. I would love to say I’m thriving right now, and maybe some would say I am. This week, particularly though, I have been in survival mode. I have worked the past three nights in a row and it has been a game of survival, both at work and between shifts. Before that I had tests and homework for EMT due on Tuesday and Monday did a 12 hour clinical for EMT which turned into a 16 hour day when it was all said and done.

So survival, that’s been the goal. The apartment is a wreck, and I need sleep and to catch up on a million little things but I made it. Other things had to slide for the sake of getting as much sleep as I could between shifts. Then, sleep had to be sacrificed so I could cook and have food to eat at work. Balancing all of that, that’s been part of the learning process in taking care of myself. It would have been easier to just sleep, to not cook, to not eat, but with how much walking and lifting and moving and pulling I do at work, that would have been a recipe for disaster and then I’d be just as much of a fall risk as some of the patients.

Sometimes, you do what you have to to survive. You get by best you can. In my case, I don’t sacrifice food because while sleep is also super important, eating is arguably just as much if not more.

Recovery can be like this too sometimes. Sometimes you don’t want to do it and you don’t feel good about it and you don’t feel like you’re making much progress or doing anything right, but you keep going. You do the bare minimum and you get by best you can. When it passes, you can kick back into high-gear, but one thing my therapist once worked with me on was being okay with survival mode, giving myself grace to just stand my ground without sliding back even if I wasn’t moving forward just then. It was an important lesson for perfectionist me.

That doesn’t feel like I very conclusive ending, but that’s about as many words as my brain can handle coming off of my last of three 12 hour nightshifts, so that is where I am going to leave it.

Happy NEDA Week, everyone. If eating disorders are foreign to you and you want to learn more, feel free to explore the NEDA Awareness category of my blog (check out the category box on the menu on the right-hand side) or visit the National Eating Disorders Association’s website: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.