One evening, I felt bone cold, a common experience with anorexia. I went into my room, which was completely dark because the light wasn’t working, and I had forgotten my phone to use as a torch. Feeling my way to the wardrobe lit only by string lights, I grabbed the first hoodie I could find. It wasn’t until I returned to the bright living room that I saw what I had chosen.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a special interest of mine, the hoodie I had somehow grabbed from my wardrobe just so happened to be my Cyberpunk merchandise Samurai hoodie. This hoodie means so much to me. I have worn it whenever I needed to command all of the strength inside of myself. I imagine I am V, storming Arasaka tower, and it gives me courage.

Except when I put this hoodie on, it didn’t even feel like mine anymore. It once fit me so snugly, and now it is four sizes too big. There were layers of fabric where my body should be, and now it’s gathered and empty. It made me feel like a ghost, or a shadow of my former self. Just the bare bones of me are left.

I was confronted with the memories of myself, the soul of who I used to be – the person who fit into this hoodie, and smiled while listening to Rebel Path walking into her psychiatrist appointment. The person who would have been giddy happy on her sons birthday, and joined in like it was her birthday too. The person who loved the things she loved, like Cyberpunk 2077, so deeply.

Just as the fabric hangs empty in places my body used to fill, my personality and soul feel equally hollow. I might be wearing her hoodie, but I am not her so I am only borrowing it. I am still cosplaying, but this time not as V, I am instead cosplaying my former self.

I was expecting the hoodie not to fit me physically, as I only have one outfit that currently fits. I chose not to buy many clothes in this size because I don’t want to commemorate or celebrate being this size. The one outfit I did buy was simply out of necessity to stay warm in this very cold winter we’ve been having. So, I’m used to clothes not fitting me, but I wasn’t ready for the hoodie to not fit me emotionally.

I wasn’t ready to feel so empty when reflecting on who I used to be. I wasn’t prepared to grieve the person I used to be. In Cyberpunk 2077, V struggles with the thought of her personality changing and wonders if she’ll even notice the change, or if she’ll just wake up one day, different, and question why she ever worried about it. I wasn’t prepared to be able to answer her question.

The change happened gradually, so much so that I didn’t even notice it at first. If you’re on a sinking ship, you throw off one item at a time without thinking, knowing you have to do it to survive, or else you’ll end up at the bottom of the sea. You don’t think about what you’re throwing off, you just do. You have to survive. Eventually though, you run out of things to throw off, and that’s when you realise you have nothing left. That’s what losing myself to grief and my eating disorder feels like.

Now I’m on my ship, with nothing else left to throw off, just hoping I don’t sink further, grieving for the parts of myself I threw over the side, just to survive.

Grief therapy tells me to reach over the side of my ship and reclaim what I lost. But my ship is broken, beaten, and barely holding together. The rust of my eating disorder has eaten away at the structure, making it too weak to carry the weight of everything I once had.

My therapist doesn’t quite understand this. She believes I can just reach out and take back the parts of myself that I let go of. But it’s not that simple. I didn’t throw them away by choice — I threw them off to survive.

I still have a relentless drive to fight, just like V. So I’ve tried anyway. I’ve reached out, desperate to pull something back on board. But every time I do, the ship starts to sink under the weight of it all. I panic. I have to let go again — because if I hold on, I drown.

Not only that, because of my relapse, those aspects of my old self, just like the hoodie, don’t feel like they belong to me anymore. They seem to belong to the person I was before my best friend passed away and before my relapse. I’m uncertain if I’ll ever become that person again or if recovery will lead me to become someone entirely new – because I already am someone new.

Meeting my best friend WeeGee had a profound impact on my personality. She fundamentally changed me as a person, in the best possible ways. She allowed me to be completely and authentically myself, so I became more myself. Losing her, changed me in the exact opposite way. I became a shell of who I was, with no one else who really sees all of me, I feel completely adrift and lost at sea.

When WeeGee passed away, I didn’t just lose my best friend and soulmate — I lost the one person who truly understood everything about me, even my darkest secrets, and still loved me for who I was. Her love made it easier to accept myself. Now, I’m mourning not just her, but the version of myself that she saw, because apart from my son, there’s no one left who fully loves and accepts me. My parents don’t. No one else does. It’s just my son and me.

I used to cope better with the fact that my own mother didn’t love me — because WeeGee did. She didn’t love me out of obligation. She just… did. She never made me feel worthless. She never asked me to hide myself. She never expected me to wear a mask, the way so many others do.

But now that she’s gone, I feel lost — like I don’t belong anywhere.

I’ve tried to belong. I’ve tried so hard. But no matter where I go, I always end up back adrift at sea. I pull my ship alongside communities, hoping to be part of something, but I’m always on the outside, watching. A visitor. A tourist. Never fully in. And trying to hold my place takes so much out of me. My ship is broken, barely holding together. How am I supposed to fight for a place in the world when I’m already battling just to keep from sinking?

If it becomes clear I’m not wanted, I leave. I have to. It’s survival. I don’t have the energy to wear the masks required just to exist in spaces that were never made for me. Right now, every ounce of my strength is spent just trying to survive another day. I have to be careful with what I give.

But I don’t want to be alone. It’s just what survival demands.

All my soul has ever wanted is to belong. To be part of something bigger. To be seen. To be understood. To be welcomed and accepted without condition.

That’s what WeeGee gave me. Unquestioningly. Unconditionally.

And when she passed, I was set adrift again — alone, with a giant hole where family should be. A hole I don’t just feel emotionally, but physically. It sits inside me like something missing from my body, an absence where love should have been.


I know I should be focusing everything I have on fixing my ship. But the deep, soul-aching loneliness I feel is unbearable at times. It screams at me to reach out, to share, to connect. And I have — only to be othered again.

I’m not expecting to fill the hole inside me. I’m not trying to replace WeeGee. I just want to be seen.

But I know what I have to do. I have to pull back. I have to focus on myself and take real steps toward recovery. I don’t have a support network — it’s just me and my son. And if I’m going to stand any chance at getting out of this relapse, if I want this hoodie to fit me again, I have to give it everything I have.

But I don’t just want the hoodie to fit. I want it to belong to me again.

I’ll end with some lines from Cyberpunk 2077 – Johnny “Not asking you to never give up, sometimes you gotta let go. Just don’t let anyone change who you are, kay?”.
“Never stop fighting, V”

Old me’s theme tune for courage:-