Sunday 11th May.
Crying while macrameing is probably the most recovery thing I can think of — and honestly, it’s also the most me thing I can think of.

If you go on Pinterest or Instagram and search for macrame, you’ll find aesthetic feeds: people happily knotting threads in beige rooms, sipping something fancy in curated lighting, with neatly organised tools and soft golden sunlight.

Me? I’m in an oversized hoodie, hair an absolute mess, crying in a dim room with thread everywhere, frantically searching for my scissors even though I just had them in my hand. The vibe is less “cosy crafting influencer” and more “emotional goblin making something weird on the floor.”

Despite all that, I’m making macrame for my Jellycat bear. Hoping that knotting something together will help with the feelings of everything unravelling.
So join me, if you like, as I try to cope in a healthy-ish way by knotting a pink and cream macrame bag for Enfys the bear — while quietly falling apart and blogging about it.

Why Are You Crying AGAIN?

Recovery has made me cry more in a few months than I did in a year and a half of relapse. Today was just one of those awful, grey, emotional wreckage days in recovery.

I’ve often wondered whether to share days like this on my blog. But every time I search for “anorexia recovery” on TikTok and only see hot cross bun challenges and cheerful meal outings, I feel like I have to. Because the good days are real, yes — but so are days like today. And when you’re deep in one of those, and all you see are smiles and pastries and progress, it can feel like you’re doing recovery wrong. I just want whoever reads this to know, this post too, is just as real as the aesthetic “What I eat in a day in recovery” videos.

Last night was another extreme hunger event — what I call a “chaos goblin Biscoff event”
Extreme hunger is completely normal in anorexia recovery and not something you can control, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier. I may have gone a bit rogue with the Lidl pastries… There were multiple Greggs cookies dipped in hot milk (I think I ascended while eating that), a Biscoff croissant, and multiple bowls of Biscoff cereal.

Today I woke up having to deal with the aftermath — biological and psychological.
Biologically: bloating, nausea, digestive mayhem, fatigue, headaches, all of it.
Psychologically? I’m basically a Biscoff-fuelled factory fire.
Fear of weight gain. Wanting desperately to undo it all. Waking up convinced I don’t want recovery anymore.

The constant flip-flopping in my brain between “I’m going to fight Clippy (my ED) and do this for real this time” and “Actually, no — I don’t want to recover at all and I’m staying here” is exhausting. And when I wake up on a “don’t want to recover” day, I feel ashamed. Like I’m failing. Like I’m not working hard enough.

Even though I know ambivalence is just part of recovery. It’s like rapid water weight gain: expected, horrifying, common — and still awful every time it hits.

I’ve written about ambivalence before. But every time it returns, it feels different — like it’s carrying a new fear, a new grief I haven’t faced yet. It doesn’t feel like I’m looping. It feels like I’m being asked to sit with something even deeper than last time. Or sometimes, the same thing as last time, but deeper this time.

I’m Still Grieving the Life I’m Returning To

People talk about all the freedom you’ll gain if you recover — food freedom, freedom from a deadly mental illness, freedom to do whatever you want.
“Think of the life you’ll be able to have!”

But I know the life I’m returning to. I’m returning to a life where I’m controlled, confined, and restricted — not by an eating disorder, but by my own body. In fact, aside from cluster headaches, most of my conditions actually seem to get worse in recovery.

Whether mechanically — more weight on my hypermobile, ageing joints after a period of rapid weight gain means more disability and less mobility — or through things that look like they’re worsening, like increased bipolar symptoms and anxiety due to perimenopause. Perimenopause, by the way, is something I’ve accidentally shut off by restricting so much I’ve caused hypothalamic amenorrhoea.

I know I’ll get to play Cyberpunk again, and I do truly love it — Night City became a special interest, and I spent over a thousand hours there, you DEFINITELY don’t do that unless you love it — but gaming was also a way to cope with the fact I couldn’t do much else. It was a way to survive, not thrive.

The macrame I’m making right now? It’s another workaround. at a healthy weight I could no longer make art at my desk without my ribs throwing an intercostal muscle strain or triggering costochondritis, so I make this instead.

Right now, I can do art — I’ve posted it here before. But I don’t know how long that will last. When I regain my hormones (which made my disability worse before) and put more weight on my joints, I might lose that again.

I live with chronic, unrelenting pain, fatigue, and mental illness and it heavily restricts my life and the things I want to do.

I’m grieving the “healing journey” I won’t have.
I’m grieving the reality of the body I’ll have to come back to instead.

That grief has already started, with the return of bipolar symptoms — and that’s what this whole “not wanting to recover” feeling, and being so upset about last night’s extreme hunger episode, is actually about.

The Wave of Extreme Hunger

My extreme hunger comes like a wave. It hits every 3–5 days, no matter what I do. And no, I don’t know what that is, or if it’s any kind of normal. I’m pretty sure I had it all the time the last time I recovered.

I can eat all the right things — hit every macro, eat when I’m hungry, eat weight gain amounts consistently, not restrict anything at all — and still, the wave comes. It’s not triggered by restriction. It’s not even tied to my mood. It’s just this weird internal timer that goes off, and suddenly my body wants everything.

Extreme hunger isn’t the kind of hunger you get from being too busy and missing dinner.
It’s panic-fuelled, urgent, and empty in a way that only masses of food can fix. You can’t think about anything else. You can’t do anything else — until you fix it by putting the scoff in Biscoff.

Even if you’re full it doesn’t stop — actually, ESPECIALLY when you’re full that seems to be one of the triggers for it to start. Your body starts screaming for fast carbs and fat, and don’t think you can outsmart it with a nicely balanced meal. It’ll keep screaming for sugar while you’re there chewing through fibre and protein to balance your blood sugar.

Sometimes I get extreme hunger on days I feel hopeful about recovery. Other times — like now — I get it on days where I absolutely don’t want to recover, and that’s when it feels torturous.

I want to take small steps from the shallow end. My body pushes me straight off the edge.

Extreme hunger is like standing on a bridge with a bungie rope. You tell your body — the instructor — , “I’ll jump when I’m ready.” And instead, they think they’re helping by shoving you forcefully off the ledge. You were going to jump. But now you’re hurt, disoriented, and pissed off.

The end result might be the same, but the process matters. And the process my body chooses? It isn’t kind. It’s not slow. It’s not designed with disability in mind.

It would be better for my conditions if I gained weight slowly. But my body doesn’t care. It wants 3,000+ calories right now. It doesn’t trust me to step off. So it forces the leap, usually by demanding I eat every single product Biscoff has ever created, in one sitting.

My Body Doesn’t Know What I Know

Bodies are so dumb. Mine repeatedly asks for things that will hurt it. It demands multiple bowls of fast-carb Biscoff cereal, even though it also has reactive hypoglycaemia.
It doesn’t know it’s going to send my blood sugar through the roof.
It doesn’t know that rapid weight gain will worsen my pain and fatigue.
It doesn’t know that these choices come with consequences.

It just wants to survive — NOW.

I’ve been really struggling with the way extreme hunger interacts with my blood sugar. I’ve started preloading a lot of protein when I feel an EH wave coming. It helps a bit. Instead of spiking at 12 or 16 mmol after two hours, it’s sometimes 10. Still not great, but better.

But even if I’m careful, when my body wants a concerning amount of Biscoff, it won’t stop until it gets it. I can’t give it anything else because I’ve tried and it ends up wanting the Biscoff TOO anyway. It just wants to feel safe right NOW. The issues my body has are irrelevant to my bodys survival instinct.

Maybe I should be more like my body because I’m not as concerned with surviving right now-
I’m concerned with surviving the rest of my life.
I’m concerned with surviving the life that made me relapse in the first place.

And that makes it harder to respond to the moment with the urgency my body demands. I respond reluctantly, with a wave of grief, sadness and shame — for being pushed off the ledge and further toward the end point where I’ll be forced to face all of this, and finally grieve it.

Everything Unravels But Also Gets Tied Up Neatly.

I’m feeling like I’m unravelling. But while unravelling, I made a cute macrame bag for my bear. It’s adorable. And I managed to create something soft and sweet despite wanting to undo every bit of recovery I’ve worked for.

I know I have to face this. I know my current mental state — being in a mixed episode — is probably amplifying everything. I know Clippy (my ED) screams louder with even more pop-ups when you try to uninstall it. I know that while weight restoration will bring it’s own problems but I’m not solving them here either. I know I’ll still eat anyway in the next few days and wonder how I did it.

I also know that tomorrow I might wake up more hopeful and wanting recovery. But today?
I just wish my recovery journey felt as aesthetic, as soft, as purposeful, as the journey I took while making this cute little macrame bag.

I cannot take this anymore, saying everything I’ve said before :-