It seems odd that I, of all people, would have to remind myself of this. I can (and frequently do) go on hour-long diatribes about the real nature of eating disorders to anyone and everyone in earshot. It makes perfect sense that EDs in other people are mental illnesses because I can see the distortions. I understand how a nibble of a Saltine can seem like "too much food" or how running a marathon can be "too little exercise." I understand it and yet I can see that it's not exactly reality.

My problem is that when I'm thinking these things, they seem perfectly rational. If I had vowed not to eat lunch, and then had a nibble of a cracker, I would have griped about how much I ate. Because a nibble is more than nothing, I clearly ate too much. It doesn't seem distorted in the least. It seems normal and (dare I say it?) sensible.

This is where I have problems. I have a hard time understanding that MY distorted thoughts are symptoms of a mental illness.

I can compare my ED experiences with those I've had with depression and anxiety. I became inured to the mild depression and anxiety that characterized my life, to the point where I kind of stopped noticing it. But when I get really depressed or really anxious, I don't feel like me. I've never been high-energy, but when I don't even want to get out of bed, that doesn't seem like me. It's not pleasant. Taking a shower and going back to bed might be the actual best I can manage, but it's still not pleasant. When I first developed OCD in high school, I thought I was going crazy. I knew that my touch probably wouldn't cause someone to die of AIDS but I was so terrified it might that I washed my hands and tried not to leave the house if I could avoid it. I didn't know that this was , in fact, a mental illness called obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I was able to recognize that something was wrong. More than that, I was aware that other people knew that this was very bizarre behavior.

The anorexia was very, very different. Basically night and day different. Eating less and exercising more seemed very normal and rational and common. I got compliments about how "good" I was being. No one complimented my freakishly clean hands (thanks, Clorox and Ajax!) even though they were freshly scrubbed. No one complimented my ability to stay in bed all day or scream and cry and throw things at the drop of a hat. I had excuses for all of my odd ED behaviors. I had excuses for all of my other odd behaviors, too, but with the ED, I actually believed my own bullshit.

I seriously began to believe that a sip of water would make me fat, that I just "didn't like eating," that I worked better on an empty stomach, that I simply adored the treadmill. There were definitely OCD moments when I believed I was a death- and disease-spreading machine, but these moments also passed. The AN delusions didn't.

Although I continued to lose weight, I wasn't able to see it in the mirror. The number on the scale was different, my clothes were looser, but I still looked the same. Ergo, I must actually look the same. I could tell when other people had cut their hair or lost weight, so the same must be true for me, right? So if my mom is telling me I'm way too thin, I'm emaciated, I'm dying, and I can't see it, it must not be true. I mean, I know what I look like...don't I? I will eat, I told myself, when I see that I'm too thin. Oddly, this is the same trap I fell into on this latest relapse- I couldn't see a difference in how I looked in the mirror despite my almost hourly trips to the bathroom scale.

When I am really depressed or really OCD/anxious, I can tell a difference between those states and my "normal" state. When I am into the ED, it's much harder. I feel almost more like myself--more intense, more driven, more on top of things, in a sense, I feel like a better version of myself--when I slide back into the AN. I can't point to a difference. My mom can. My boss probably could. But if I feel the same and look the same and am just freaking fine, dammit then how in the HELL could I be sick?

How? Because the illness I have, this pernicious eating disorder of mine, makes it very very hard to understand that I am sick. It's one of the symptoms of the illness, this inability to understand that you are ill. Laura Collins introduced me to the term anosognosia and I love that word. Can't pronounce it, but I love using it. The depression and OCD aren't anosognostic- I knew damn well that something was up even if I didn't have a name for it and didn't know that it was a mental illness that could be treated. Anorexia is very anosognostic and it will probably be my Achilles' heel. Not so much the illness itself, but the difficulties in recognizing it.

However untalented I may be at recognizing my own eating disorder even when the evidence is literally staring me in the face, it doesn't change the fact that EDs are mental illnesses. Including my own.