I have a healthy weight for my age and height. I eat a fairly wide variety of foods. I don't like my body but I'm dealing with it. I'm almost entirely behavior-free.

Can I just say how much the above freaks me out?

I was talking to the T about it, and she said that the above does not make me recovered. I must have had a pretty baffled look on my face because she said: How long would it take you to fall back into the anorexia? Full force.

One week. Two, tops.

Well, there's my answer, I suppose.

My body is clearly not anorexic. I'm no twig. In fact, I think I could lose some weight and still be plenty healthy, but that's beside the point.

Then again, maybe it isn't.

My brain has recovered somewhat from the anorexia-induced malnutrition. But the years and years of AN thoughts and behaviors are going to take more than 3 months at a healthy weight to fix. Seven years vs. three months. It's kind of obvious that it's going to take longer than that. This is the really really shitty part of recovery, where body has healed long before the mind. I look normal. I sound (fairly) normal.

All cured, right?

Nope.

I still think I look like a giant warthog, I still have trouble deciding what do I want to eat, I still want to lose weight. This is not a cure.

Recovery is definitely a process. I've known that for a long time. Weight restoration is the mandatory first step. However, if it's the "first step," that kind of implies that there will be more. A lot more. Things that are much harder to navigate. Gaining weight is simple but not easy. It's the kind of eat-more-calories-than-you-burn equation, only the effed-up version of it. Because when recovering from AN, my already quite efficient metabolism went through the roof and I found myself needing to consume large quantities of food, a process that made me hungry and full at the same time. That would be difficult for even a healthy, normal person. It's confusing as all hell.

But then my metabolism has settled down somewhat, though I still need plenty of food to maintain my weight given my current activity level. My organs are still healing and being repaired, even if weight isn't being added. And so on.

Yet there is the analogy to chemical dependency here. As the lovely Sarah over at Recovery Rodeo pointed out, you can get rid of the alcohol, but you can't get rid of the -ism.

That's true with my brain, with the anorexia and the OCD. I don't restrict or purge or wash* just once. Nuh-uh. It rapidly cycles out of control. I wouldn't say that eating disorders are an addiction per se, but there are plenty of similarities. Especially because chemicals, alcohol, starvation, bingeing and purging all change your brain chemistry. Specifically in a way that makes you almost dependent upon the said chemical change. Starving dulled my anxiety. So did my OCD rituals. I would imagine that would be the same for someone using chemicals: it helps you function, however temporarily.

Then it spirals out of control and you're totally screwed especially because you stop recognizing that Houston, we have a problem.

I believe, I really want to believe, that true, full recovery is possible. I know people who are no longer plagued with ED thoughts, who like the way they look. I hope that one day I get there. But my brain will always be only a week away from anorexia. If that. It only takes one hop on that scale, one missed meal, for me to be back in that deep hole.

This scares me, maybe in a good way, but it scares me nonetheless. And maybe that's what I need to keep me in recovery at this point: a good healthy dose of fear.

*In the obsessive way, that is. I do wash my hands after using the restroom because that's good hygiene. I also shower regularly. I'm sure you're all glad to know that.

My brother (he's almost 5 years older than me) had an identity crisis in high school. He used that picture-in-picture feature on the TV and would go from The Real World on MTV and "Emeril" on the Food Network.

This should have been a huge bright red light that there was something seriously wrong with the boy. But, alas, along with other red lights, that one was missed.

At any rate, I'm going through my own identity crisis. It has nothing to do with TV channels, though I have been hooked on the Planet Earth documentary that's been airing on the Discovery Channel.

My identity crisis has to do with learning to live without Ed.

I am used to being "that anorexic chick" or "the girl with the light yogurt in the fridge" or "she who has Diet Coke." Things like that. The one who never ordered fries, who always bought low fat. The girl who both the ER staff and the gym staff knew by sight.

That girl.

Sometimes I wonder if we are the same person.

It's hard for me to grasp the fact that this girl, the one described above, was ill. She was sick. She was suffering from anorexia. Her mind was not wholly hers.

Yet it was. Those memories, those experiences, were mine. I was living them. That was my ankle that was shattered and repaired, in a modern day Humpty-Dumpty experiment. Those were seven years of MY life. I still have trouble learning when it's Ed or when it's just me.

Can it be both? Can it? Or am I deluding myself? What if Ed says "Order a salad," and I think about it, and I feel like a freaking salad? Should I order the salad?

I have simply forgotten how to live in this world without an eating disorder.

My choices were dictated by my fears around food and eating and fat. It became a habit, a routine. Always doing or eating the same thing calmed my fears that I would eat the wrong thing at the wrong time, or weigh the wrong weight, or do the wrong workout. I had to be perfect. I couldn't eat cheesecake because it was called 'fattening.' And I couldn't miss a workout because we were all supposed to exercise for an hour a day. No, only 30 minutes. Or was it 90?

Rules, though annoying, also made me feel safe and secure.*

One of my friends from treatment, E, told me she was extremely sensitive to noise, movement, etc. That the outside world was overwhelming. That was me. I don't like large crowds. Pictures of traders on the New York Stock Exchange encapsulate the absolute worst nightmare for me. As such, my brain relentlessly focuses on one thing to the detriment of all else, known in the psychiatric world as "impaired set-shifting." By not eating, my brain could better deal with the cacophony of input and the anxiety it caused. Why? If it didn't relate to eating, my brain just tossed it in the 'slush' pile. Thing was, the longer I was starving, the increasing number of facts entering my brain had to do with food. So I ate less, increased my rituals, and...well, you get the idea.

Now I have all of this information being flung at me, information I have no idea what to do with. Carrie-as-anorexic knows how to deal with it. But Carrie-as-Carrie doesn't. My eating disorder has made all of my decisions for so many years, that I'm having trouble wresting back control. Ed has rules, strict rules, rules that must be followed. I don't remember how to live without them.

And the prospect of doing so is really wigging me out.

A part of me does want to live without them, the part of me that eats, that laughs, that thinks. There's also a part of me that is still controlled by Ed, a part that says I'm lazy and non-productive and worthless. These two versions of me seem so polarized that I can't think of how (or if I should) try to join them.

'Course, spending all of your free time on the treadmill, reading cookbooks, or sleeping isn't exactly the epitome of productive, either.

I know there's a real me in there. There was a me before the start of the AN (and the depression and the OCD), even if I can't remember it. There will be a me after.

*These were only my rules for myself. Other people's rules were a different creature entirely, though I rarely broke the rules. I might not have always liked them, but I usually went along with things. And if I didn't, I just did my own thing and didn't make a fuss over it.

This is something I struggle with as I try to separate from Ed and identify myself as a different person:

Ed's voice is internal. Sometimes, he even sounds like me.

I mean, it seems like I'm the one saying restrict, barf, run, take pills, etc. Yet, I know it's my illness.

I think I know.

Maybe.

Then again, I don't know that I think I know.

See, here's the thing: is my eating disorder a choice or an illness? I am firmly of the belief that it's an illness, as are my OCD and mood disorder*. So it's an illness. Those thoughts aren't me. They're not representative of who I am. It would be the same with schizophrenia- a person who hears voices or has paranoid thoughts might not be able to understand that it's a psychiatric phenomenon and the CIA really isn't after them. Time and perspective (and meds) help, though.

I think part of the other difference is that the eating disorder thoughts are so freaking common in the general culture. If I say, "God, I'm fat today," most women will take a look at their own butts and say "No, you're not. I'm fat today." And so on. It totally reinforces the fact that what I'm thinking isn't all that out of the ordinary.

However, even I knew I had begun to crack when I had the Sweet N Low folks on the phone and were screaming at them for false advertising because those little pink packets did, indeed, have a fraction of calories. I still feel bad for that lady.

My understanding of the ED voice was improved a day or two ago as I worked on the first of my books from my reading list. The said book was An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. One of the essays was about a surgeon- named Bennett- with Tourette's Syndrome and his views about living with the illness.

"I don't think of it as a disease but as just me. I say the word 'disease,' but it doesn't seem to be the appropriate word."

It is difficult for Bennett, and is often difficult for Touretters, to see their Tourette's as something external to themselves, because many of its tics and urges may be felt as intentional, as an integral part of the self, the personality, the will. It is quite different, by contrast, with something like Parkinson's or chorea: these have no quality of selfness or intentionality and are always felt as disease, as outside the self. Compulsions and tics occupy an intermediate position, seeming sometimes to be an expression of one's personal will, sometimes a coercion of it by another, alien will. These ambiguities are often expressed in the terms people use. Thus the separateness of "it" and "I" is sometimes expressed by jocular personifications of the Tourette's: one Touretter I know calls his Tourette's "Toby," another, "Mr. T." By contrast, a Tourettic possession of the self was vividly expressed by one young man in Utah, who wrote to me that he had a "Tourettized soul."

It was long complicated paragraph, but when I got done reading it, all I could think of was, "Holy crap! This is me! This is just the way I feel about my eating disorder!" It makes sense. It completely makes sense. I was always under the impression that I could control my eating disordered behaviors. And there was a yes and no to that. Physically, I could eat. Mentally, not so much. In treatment and at home, I still had to make the choice to eat, to pick up the freaking fork and put it in my mouth. But the choice was easier: eat, or sit at the table until you finish.

Ed still goes yakity-yak a lot. Just yesterday I was sitting in the car, finishing up my snack, when my mom went back to grab something she had forgotten in the house. So there I am, just me and my string cheese and a garbage can about 10 feet away. And it was then, in that split second, that I heard Ed: "You don't have to eat that, you know."

I said: You know what, Ed? You're exactly right. I don't have to eat this. But I'm going to.

Obviously, I know there's no definition for "normal." I also know that even if there was one, I would fight it tooth and nail. But I do want to find MY normal. My usual way of being in this world.

Normal for me has been a preoccupation with food; counting calories; rituals that even I couldn't rationalize; feeling like shit. That was me.

And yet, I have to remind myself: I am doing well in recovery. Maintaining my weight, no purging, no cutting. This is something I have never yet done for any lengthy period of time (i.e., more than a month at a time) in the past seven years. Mentally, however, Ed is fighting back tooth and nail.

Ed: You can certainly afford to lose some weight.
Carrie: (looking in mirror) Absolutely.
Ed: So why are you eating your snack?
Carrie: Because I want to recover.
Ed: But you can still recover at a lower weight, can't you? I mean, you made it this far.
Carrie: Yeah, but sometimes on sheer luck. You almost killed me, you little bastard.
Ed: (very contrite) I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. But listen to me: you're fat now. You don't have to be that way.
Carrie: You're right. I don't. I want to be thin, bony, tiny...but I also want to be normal.
Ed: Well everyone's dieting.
Carrie: Well not everyone has dated a creep like you.
Ed: That doesn't change the fact that you're fat.
Carrie: (craning neck around to get better view of her ass). Nope. It doesn't.
Ed: So why don't you let me help you. People liked you better when you were thin.
Carrie: You did, that's for sure.
Ed: And aren't I always right?
Carrie: Um, no. You said being thin would make me happy. You said being thin would calm my frayed nerves. You were so so wrong, buddy. I was miserable and depressed and an anxious mess.
Ed: You are SO fat and worthless.
Carrie: Who asked you?
Ed: As far as I can recall, you did.
Carrie: Not now I didn't.
(pause)
Carrie: We have our next date in court* this Tuesday. Considering all of the medical costs I've accrued because of you, I might be able to write an article about the Most Expensive Divorce of All Time.
Ed: No you won't. Because you'll never go through with it. Why would you want to? You would just be FAT. Fat fat fat fat fat.
Carrie: You know, you just might be right.

I want to end this with a "Screw you, Ed!" kind of manifesto, but not if I want it to be realistic. It's like: there will be a price to pay for recovery. It means having to go out and face the world, having to realize that shit happens and I'll deal with it as it comes up. It means learning how to cope with depression and anxiety. I don't think my eating disorder was a "coping mechanism." But it did take the edge off of the anxiety at first. I could channel it, focus on it, do something about it. If fat and food and weight were making me anxious, then I could just eat the right things in the right order at the right time and do the right exercises for the right duration. Bingo. And if I was sad? I thought that losing weight would make me happy.

Now I know that it doesn't. I want so desperately for it to work, this anorexia thing. But it doesn't, and now that my brain is fully nourished, I can see that. I don't really like it all that much, but I see it.

I want it to go away, to thump myself three time on the head with a magic wand and wind up back in Kansas with Toto.

Nope.

And the solution sucks: keep eating, maintain the weight your body has naturally settled at, and push on.

This reminds me of the lyrics from one of my favorite songs by the utterly awesome band Great Big Sea:

Hey You, you lost your only friend
You can't believe your broken heart will ever mend
But every mountain has its faces that'd make you want to stop
On this so unwelcome journey from the bottom to the top.

Move along, I believe there's Something Beautiful to see
Move along, I believe there's Something Beautiful
Just waiting for you and me.

I know you'll never count the tears you've cried
Though you've asked a million questions
No one could tell you why
A single soul is chosen to be the one put to the test
But there will be some consolation for a heart that never rests...

*Divorce court, of course, means therapy and dietitian appointments. I rest my case.

Wanting to recover from an eating disorder is one thing. Doing the actual work is another.

But then there's the emptiness left behind, that gaping hole of what used to be, those what ifs, which continue to haunt me. I have made a tentative peace with the "what if" questions that never seem to cease in my head. What if I had never decided to lose weight? What if I hadn't gotten help when I did? What if I had remained well enough to submit my Rhodes Scholar application my senior year in college? What if? What if? What if? My past is what it is, and I am where I am. Maybe I would have been a Rhodes Scholar. Hell if I know. But I do know that I am also the author of two books, and hopefully about to embark on a career as a writer, a prospect of dubious likelihood for Carrie, Rhodes Scholar.

There is the other emptiness, that sense of what is and what will be. Going home to an (almost) empty apartment, day after day. The slow evolution of the question of "Do I eat?" into "What do I need to eat?" and finally into, "What do I want to eat?" The vast expanses of time spread in front of me, time that used to be spent exercising, counting calories, or reading recipes. Time that Ed tries to lure me into spending with him, usually doing one of the above three activities.

It's a lonely, hard road, and though people walk it with me, they can never walk it for me. Nor should they. We each have our own paths in life, paths we think are easier or more difficult than our own. Whether that's true or not is a matter of debate. The one thing that isn't a debate is that, however the chips may have fallen, I am right here, right now, and I can always choose to go somewhere different, to change my own trajectory. I do it each time I fix myself a meal or a snack, each time I am honest with my family and my treatment team.

I don't know what my life will be without ED. I just don't. I'm still forging it, still finding out each and every day what freedom will bring.

I went to a local bar and grill for dinner with my parents- a hometown sort of microbrewery. It's really cool, a converted warehouse, with wood floors and stainless steel fittings. So I do the usual open-the-menu business, look at the "Burgers" list and discover...

...the Eddie Burger!!!!

I looked closer: ground beef, bacon, onion rings, and bleu cheese dressing, and homemade fries on the side. I am not typically a bleu cheese kind of girl- ranch is much more my schtick. But I didn't argue. The chance to eat a fabulous item of food, previously forbidden, that was also named "Eddie," well, I couldn't pass it up.

Gave Eddie a good bite in the rear, if you know what I mean.

Much of my recent success in recovery has not been due to any prophetic revelations or blinding realizations. Nope. I know I have to eat, I know I have to gain weight, etc. I've known that for quite some time. Most of that time, I either didn't care enough to try, was too scared of succeeding (or that matter, failing), to actually see it through. This past time as a day patient, I had the absolutely sinking realization that insurance wasn't going to help, treatment wasn't going to pander at my doorstep, none of that. It was going to have to be ME. Yes, me with support, but ME.

I am finishing up an audio book called Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. It's his memoir of a life as a chef, not necessarily a surprising choice by a recovering anorexic. However, one of the segments that stuck in my head as I was on my drive home from work was him and his three friends, sitting in a cab, looking to score some dope. He made the little lame joke that only one in four people detox successfully. He said he looked around and said, "That guy is gonna be ME. I am going to do this successfully." And he did and his friends didn't.

Aside from the fact that this is a good, if slightly off-color, read, I realized that Bourdain's determination is the same one that is now fueling me. I am going to beat this thing. Half of the "professionals" I've met with have told me I'd never get better, I was chronic, I was hopeless, I didn't have a chance. I know that the prospects for long-term anorexics like myself isn't necessarily the brightest. But I AM going to beat this. I am going to be that person.

So watch out, Eddie. I bite back. And you taste good.