I know that recovery isn't a straight line. It would be nice, but I know it's not.

On the other hand, recovery is still a line- a path of some sort. Meandering and unpaved, but nonetheless, a path. The optimist in me says that even my mistakes are part of that path. I'm learning! I'm getting there!

Maybe that is true. But it's not the making of the mistakes that is the useful part, since anyone can wander. Getting distracted in the forest is easy. However, the good part is in finding your way back to the path.

When I'm hiking in the woods (a girly, sissy kind of hiking, but one where boots are indeed involved, along with a gallon baggie of trail mix and two large bottles of water), I like climbing uphill. Looking down frankly scares the crap out of me. That, and it's murder on my knees. Recovery is a lot of climbing downhill. I want to go up. It's natural to go up. People don't generally climb down mountains, they go up them.

But when you're a recovering anorexic in a culture of whacked-out dieters, you are going downhill while everyone else is going up. The scales, calorie counters, diet pills, workout machines, buy one get one free gym memberships- those are like me climbing uphill. Losing weight and starving is oddly natural for me. When I get stressed, my appetite evaporates, and the cycle begins. To get out of that cycle, I have to do the unnatural. I have to eat. A lot. Especially food (like super premium ice cream) that is generally frowned upon in most of the rest of society.

So while everyone else is looking to get to the pinnacle of diet mania, I am going to the bottom, where the air is better, the plants are bigger, and yeah, the hiking sucks.

The moral of the metaphor? I started climbing uphill these past few weeks.

The end of semester rush was brutal, and I felt it. Some of it was a genuine lack of hunger, some of it was the semi-deliberate starvation neutralization of hunger. Between those two things, I was off and running (hiking?). My weight dropped- not by much, but enough. Enough to make me much more batty and almost enamored of that hike.

The distance between me and the path I knew I should be on started to freak me out a bit. It feels like vertigo, where the distance between my mental state and the rest of reality drifted back and forth, and I was left with a vaguely nauseous feeling.

I have started hiking back downhill in the past few days. My knees hurt, but the plant life is much better.

Oh, and Harriet? I totally beat you at the ice cream game. Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Roll has (check it out) 290 cal per half cup. Ed, however, is the ultimate loser.