Not Everyone Gets To Stay Skinny

Hey y'all! Today's topic is something that I personally struggle to accept in my own recovery: the fact that not everyone in recovery gets "lucky" and stays thin.

Wouldn't that just be the best of both worlds? You get to recover AND stay thin and attractive and you twirl around in a wheat field, wearing a boho-looking white maxi dress, large smile fixed on your lips. You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Kinda like those Tampax commercials.

Are you, too, rolling your eyes?

Yeah, no.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the vast majority of those of us in recovery have very average looking bodies, and maybe we even overshoot the target weight. Guess what?

THAT'S OKAY!

I feel like today, the only people who get to be public with their eating disorder stories are the ones who are popular, have a lot of friends, stay relatively thin and are attractive. Only then can we validate the existence of eating disorders. And I don't know about y'all but I am SOOOOOO tired of that. I spent so much time in quasi-recovery, trying to look like the girls I went to treatment with who are so gorgeous you would think they were models.

Believe you me, my own anorexia would have me believe that I could be one of those girls who looks perfect and stays thin and posts all about my beautiful, wonderful life. But guess what? I can count on one hand the amount of nice and good things that have happened to me while I was at my thinnest. And I would have to grow quite a few extra hands if I wanted to count on my fingers the amount of good things that have happened to me while I was at my higher weight.

There's this biological reason for that, where, when you actually adequately feed your body and soul, your body will take you places with a clear head. And it will allow you to walk without becoming exhausted. Or eat without screaming at someone. It's great fun.

So where does that leave us people?

I wanna celebrate my sisters (and brothers, that goes without saying) who gained a lot of weight in their recovery.

I wanna celebrate you, who has a body shape other than the one cookie cutter body shape society "allows" us to have.

I wanna celebrate those of us who have misshapen facial features.

I wanna celebrate those of us who aren't popular.

I wanna celebrate those of us who don't exercise in recovery.

I wanna celebrate those of us that are fighting their demons silently.

But most of all, I want to celebrate those of us who wake up everyday and fight this silent battle. It's a hell of a fight and people don't quite realize just how exhausting it is to fight your own mind every second of the day.

So go eat the ice cream. Or get the peppermint mocha at Starbucks. Because I think the world has enough Instagram recovery models.

Let's just be ourselves and enjoy our lives.

Lots of love,

Cece