People outside of eating disorders often think they’re a choice — a vanity issue, a diet gone too far, something you can just snap out of if you tried harder.

But in reality NO ONE would choose this.

If recovery were as simple as “just eat” or “just stop”, we all would have done it by now. Anorexia is one of the deadliest mental illnesses. How can it be about vanity when, according to statistics, many people don’t even survive to be able to look in the mirror?

I know I wouldn’t choose this. And if I ever needed proof of how little choice I have, it came crashing down on me just thinking about my son’s birthday later this week.

Party Planning Meltdowns

I asked my son what he wanted to do for his birthday. He wanted a day of fun food — Greggs, Domino’s, homemade brownies. A perfect birthday for him. We went to the shops to get everything, and I was excited for him. He’s turning 20 — it’s a big day.

We always make a GIANT fuss for his birthday — it’s always a week-long event of our favourite food, movies, pizza, and shopping trips. I get so excited for his birthday every year because it’s the most special day for me too.

It’s actually the one day in my past that I can think of so happily — the day my son was born was the best day of my life. Every time his birthday comes around, I get flooded with these wonderful memories of feeling that first rush of love for him, seeing him for the first time, feeling the weight of him on my chest.

I don’t have the same thing with my own birthday. I hate my birthday. It often gives me PTSD flashbacks like it did last November when it triggered a depressive episode. But my son’s birthday is the one occasion where I only feel and remember good things.

So preparing for it, buying brownie mix for his birthday, should have only been exciting. And it was — for thinking about him enjoying it. But thanks to my anorexia relapse, it wasn’t for me.

It was something to dread, to worry about, to spiral over. Just thinking about the food, Corrupted Clippy — what I call my eating disordered thoughts — popped up to remind me how I couldn’t take part in any of it.
“Pizza? No chance. The sauce would take you over budget let alone anything else — you’ll have to swerve that.”
“Greggs? Didn’t I tell you sausage rolls were on the ABSOLUTELY NOT list?”
“Brownies? Homemade? With no idea how many calories are in it? ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
I immediately got really upset.

The Heaviness Of Grief

I started grieving for the me who would have joined in on my son’s birthday. This birthday should be filling me with joy, not causing actual grief, but here I am, feeling completely lost in it. I couldn’t stop crying.

This is NOT who I am.

And it’s not just one kind of grief. It’s a many-pronged fork in the road. I’m grieving the version of me who should be sitting down, eating pizza with my son, laughing with him, enjoying our traditions. I’m grieving the hope I had 13 years ago — when I went through recovery and told myself, “One day, I’ll be free. One day, I’ll be able to eat pizza with my son.”

Yet here I am, thirteen years later, stuck in the same patterns, not better, not free, struggling with the exact thing I once thought I’d overcome forever. Just the thought of ordering him a pizza is sending me into a massive anxiety spiral.

This relapse has taken so much from me, but the hardest part is knowing that he notices now. When he was younger, I could hide it. I could pretend. He didn’t know any different. He didn’t see me skipping meals or making excuses or struggling to take a single bite of something I used to love.

But now, he knows. He knows I’m not joining in. He knows what his last eleven birthdays looked like before I relapsed. He knows that this isn’t just me “not being hungry.” And that guilt is unbearable. My mental illnesses have often made me feel like the worst mother in the world, I know it’s not true, but it doesn’t make me feel it any less.

How did I get back here? How did I slide backwards this far? How is this my reality again?

There have been so many moments where I wished I could just push through, where I wished I could leave this all behind and be the kind of mother who just exists in the moment, who doesn’t have to calculate, negotiate, and fight with her own brain over something as simple as sitting down and eating with her son.

I wish I could choose. I wish this was a choice. But it’s not. If it was, I wouldn’t be here, thirteen years later, still dealing with the same thing I fought so hard to escape. I wouldn’t be having an anxiety spiral over ordering a pizza for my son’s birthday, of all things. I wouldn’t be watching the years stack up, realising I’m back in the place I swore I’d never return to.

Mental Illnesses Don’t Observe Your Calendar

The thing about eating disorders is that they don’t take days off. They don’t check the calendar, see an important date coming up, and decide to give you a break. They don’t step aside just because you love someone more than anything in the world.

Clippy doesn’t care that it’s my son’s birthday. It doesn’t care that I am a mum who always puts my son first. It doesn’t care that I’ve never made his special days about me. It doesn’t care that this is the anniversary of the best day of my life.

It only cares about making me feel like absolute shit for not being able to take part in his birthday the way I would have if I hadn’t relapsed.

My son’s birthday should be entirely about him, but instead, I’m stuck bargaining with my eating disorder, trying to find ways to “sort of” take part without spiralling into a meltdown or an anxiety attack. But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t just take the day off. It’s not that simple.

When you’ve been restricting for this long, it’s actually dangerous to suddenly eat more calories. My body isn’t prepared for that. And mentally, if I push too hard, I won’t just struggle for a few hours— I’ll be fighting my own brain for the rest of the day.

I want this day to be about him, not about me wrestling with my own survival instincts. So I’m going to have to compromise, not because I don’t want to be free, but because if I try to force myself into something I’m not ready for, I risk making his birthday about me crying my eyes out.

And that is the LAST thing I want.

How I’m Going to Try and Celebrate Anyway

My son is so special to me. Of course, I will still order his pizza. I will still make his brownies. I will still get him Greggs. I will do all of that while battling Corrupted Clippy as silently as possible. I’ve decided to try and eat some homemade brownie, since even just the Domino’s sauce is giving me anxiety, let alone the pizza. It’s not much, but it’s something. It’s one small act of resistance.

And as always, my son is more supportive than I could ever deserve. “Maybe you can cut the brownie into a bear shape, and then it’ll be cuter and help you a little bit,” he said. I almost cried again.

That is such a thoughtful idea — not because it magically fixes anything, but because he sees me. He knows how hard this is for me, and instead of pressuring me, he just wants to make it a little easier in whatever way he can.

The cute bear shaped brownie won’t be the end of it, of course. Clippy will make his objections known for hours after I eat it, whispering about how I could “make up” for it. But the brownie will be my son’s birthday cake. And I have to at least take part in that.

If I could choose, his birthday wouldn’t be a battle just to eat a brownie. It would just be a beautiful celebration of the most amazing person I have ever met. I would be eating pizza, sausage rolls and brownies and just enjoying the day. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my son. But my eating disorder doesn’t care about my values, and I don’t get to choose not to have one, even for him.

If love could cure eating disorders, having my son would have cured me. But love doesn’t erase mental illness. It doesn’t overwrite decades of faulty wiring and fears. I wish it did.

The rest of my posts this week will be about my son’s birthday. I want to focus on the good, on the things I still enjoyed, on him. I want to celebrate who he is, not what I’m struggling with. But this is my reality too. Both things exist at once. And I’ll have to carry them together.

This isn’t the birthday I wanted to have with him. But it’s still his birthday. And even if I can’t fully join in the way I want to, I’ll be there. And that matters.

The theme song for this post is Florence and the Machine – Only If For A Night.

And the only solution was to stand and fight
And my body was bruised and I was set alight
But you came over me like some holy rite
And although I was burning, you’re the only light
Only if for a night