It’s been nearly a month of trying hard to push forward in recovery, and I can feel it in my bones – well actually I can also feel it in my knees thanks to rapid weight gain.
Yesterday was the morning after the night before – my body heavy with a tiredness no sleep could fix, my mind fogged with the weight of too many days holding too much.

Today, I wanted a day off. Not just from recovery – but from everything.
From the grief that feels like a black hole.
From Corrupted Clippy’s voice (my ED) that still counts calories.
From trying so hard EVERYDAY to be okay.

Everything has climbed on top of me, hills feel like mountains, and I can’t climb them today. I just don’t have it in me.
So instead of running, I’m trying to rest.
If you’ve ever needed to do the same, come sit with me here awhile – this is my reset day, and I’ll tell you what’s brought me to it.

Dyeing My Son’s Hair While Half Asleep

Yesterday was the morning after the night before. I’d had an extreme hunger episode the night before – one of the worst I’ve ever had. I ate more food than ever during one of those “Putting the Scoff in Biscoff” episodes. I woke up with SEVERE regret, but more than that, I woke up absolutely drenched in sweat from night sweats and utterly exhausted.

I drank my coffee, which made me even more tired, and I kept falling asleep on the sofa – even though I’d slept eight hours the night before. I’d promised my son I’d do his hair, and it kept looping in my head. I couldn’t let it go. Every time I dropped off, I woke myself up again because I wanted to do it for him.

By the afternoon, still drifting in and out of sleep, my son asked if I was going to be able to do it. I said, “Yes, let me try another coffee. Sometimes that helps if I drink it in the afternoon.” It worked a little. My eyes opened slightly more.

I began dyeing his hair. I couldn’t even stand up to do it – I had to sit on a chair with my son on the floor in front of me. Every time I stood, my body screamed at me to lie down. I felt really dizzy too. Fatigue doesn’t cover it. There’s no word for the kind of tired where your soul feels like it’s giving out. But I was going to dye his hair.

His hair REALLY matters to me.
His hair is a huge part of his identity – he struggles with dysphoria and sensory overload when it grows too long, and I knew how important it was to him. I usually enjoy doing it too – It feels so bonding and I act like Brad Mondo’s apprentice, summoning all the power of the T18 toner, armed with knowledge of what not to do thanks to his many YouTube dye disaster videos.

Somehow – I really do not know how – I got through the dyeing part, and it came out great. He paused for dinner – His special tasty chicken wrap – while I sat on the sofa, beginning to drift off again.
I was in that kind of half-sleep mothers know: the “I’m resting, but I’m listening for every movement” kind.

When he stood up to go tone his hair himself, I startled awake and mumbled,

“Do you want me to finish your hair now?”

He looked at me in disbelief.

“But you’re half asleep. We can do it tomorrow – it’s okay.”
“No, I’ll finish it. It’s okay. I want to”

I think he was half-worried about me, half-worried about a half-asleep me holding clippers.
But I shaved his head. He toned it.
And somehow, half-asleep me is apparently an excellent hairdresser, because it came out perfectly platinum white.

I Don’t Really Get a Day Off, But What Can I Do?

I spent the rest of the evening resting, still half-asleep, and furious at how exhausted I was. I don’t know exactly why it hit so hard – maybe the hunger episode? Maybe the fact that I’ve been working so hard for weeks now.

I’ve been challenging ED rules daily.
I’ve increased my calories.
I’ve been doing grief work.
I’ve been fighting Clippy and my ambivalence 24/7.
I’ve been managing food shopping, cooking, appointments, parenting.

I’ve been doing everything recovery demands of me.

And the hard part is: it’s helped.
Every challenge, every fear food, every therapy tool, every blog post – it’s helped me move forward. But I can’t keep up. I never seem to be able to keep up. The pace required to keep making progress absolutely exhausts me both mentally and physically. I end up so disabled by my own fatigue.

Now because all my energy was used on all of the above my house is an ABSOLUTE mess.
I can’t find anything – including my favourite glasses.
I haven’t done any macrame, drawing, much blogging at all.
Laundry’s piled up. The kitchen is still a DISASTER from panic-fuelled hunger.
I desperately need a bath because I haven’t even had the energy to do that.
And my body is screaming at me to stop – literally making it impossible to keep my eyes open.

Even the blog, which usually helps me process, has felt like a mountain. All of the post ideas I’ve had are too complicated, too hard to explain. It’s not that my blog ideas are brilliant, well thought out ideas, it’s just I can’t even think straight due to being so exhausted. I just don’t have the energy to keep going like this.

So I thought:

What can I do?

I can’t take a day off from having a mental illness – that’s not how it works. But maybe I can pull the brakes. Maybe I can stay still for one day. No food challenges. No emotional digging. Just safe foods, low-effort tasks, and tackling a smaller hill that turned into a mountain: the absolute chaos of my living room/kitchen and hopefully I’ll find my favourite glasses too. I’ve been really sad that I can’t find them.

Maybe then I can rest in the cosy instead of the chaos.
Maybe then I can blog – which is what I actually want to do.

So that’s what Biscoff the bear and I are doing today.

The Absolute State of the Living Room

The drawers in my coffee table wouldn’t close. I was sick of staring at them. They’re a little catch-all for all the activities I do in the living room – macrame, drawing, journalling, little crafts, my nails. They’re also full of my vitamin tablets, because otherwise I’d forget they exist and never take them.

Biscoff the bear helped me organise them. He also helped by wearing all the macrame, bows, and ribbons I found in there.

I can’t deal with my flat when it gets chaotic. I can’t relax, can’t think – whenever I try to do anything at all, my brain fixates on the mess. I have to sort it out to feel normal, to feel safe.

I could barely move yesterday after dyeing my son’s hair, so I spent the evening slumped on the sofa, my core too tired to hold me upright, while my brain locked onto those drawers. Just staring at them. The mess in them became the mess in my head. I started hating myself for not being able to keep up. Those stupid drawers became a metaphor for the absolute state of my brain – and the absolute state I’d become.

So that’s why they were the first job I tackled today.

And now, despite still not finding my glasses, the drawers are finally organised and able to close. I did find some glasses in there though – Biscoff’s glasses. I laughed, because of course I did. That’s so very me: searching for mine and finding two pairs of my bear’s instead.

After the drawers, I gently cleared the rest of the living room. I’m still exhausted, but I thought: let’s just make what I can see feel nice and cosy. Mostly, that meant clearing away the plates and mugs from yesterday – and the Biscoff carnage from the day before.

While tidying, I even found cereal in the carpet. I get so panic-hungry that, despite having an open-plan living room/kitchen, I can’t even wait to sit down. I eat on the way back to the sofa, and thanks to my hypermobility, I’m terrible at this. I end up leaving Biscoff pillows in the carpet and a Hansel and Gretel trail of crumbs that only leads you to more Biscoff, an exhausted-looking me, and a pile of Jellycat bears.

Behind me, though? The kitchen disaster. But I told myself: just do the dishes and clean the surfaces. Half a job is better than no job.

After the kitchen came the softer self-care.

Have a Cup of Tea, a Bath, and Wait for All of This to Blow Over

I sat in my now-cosy living room, lit a Snow Fairy wax melt, and made myself a cup of my favourite tea – Happy Tea by TeaPigs. I sat for a while, resting, feeling a little better for sorting out one of my Welsh hills turned Everest mountains.

The rest of the flat is still absolute chaos, but I made a dent. And after a bath, I’d finally get to relax.

Tomorrow, my son and I are going to Lidl to get more recovery food, and I need to tame my chaotic, frizzy hair for it. I was starting to feel tired and worn out again, but I thought about how nice it would be to sit in my living room after the bath, clean and soft in my favourite hoodie and leggings. It’s finally cool enough to wear them today – it’s been too hot lately, and I’ve hated feeling so exposed in a body that changes daily in recovery.

I’d saved one LUSH bath bomb for emergencies – my last one.
It was from the Hello Kitty collection, a Kuromi bomb, and I think I accidentally saved the best for last. The scent was beautiful – sweet and fruity but with a relaxing depth. I took videos of it as it sank into the water, spilling out pink bubbles, so I could enjoy it again later. I put YouTube on and slid into the bright pink bath.

The mirror taunted me, but I didn’t give it attention. Not today.
Clippy started shouting thoughts about skipping dinner. I let them pass. I tried to stay with the video instead – “Secrets of the Supermarkets” on Channel 4’s YouTube. I started thinking about what I’d need from Lidl tomorrow while Clippy objected to every item.

But I’m still looking forward to Lidl.
I’ve been really enjoying the food from there – much to Clippy’s dismay. Honestly, my recovery is sponsored by Biscoff and the Lidl bakery aisle at this point.

I spent nearly an hour in the bath. Mostly in my head, trying to stay with the video, to stay with now. I wish I could have a true day off – just one – but the bath was something. It helped. And now, just two tasks remained: straightening my hair and eating dinner.

Straightening My Hair and the Super Salad

I hate straightening my hair, but I love having straightened hair.
My natural hair is wavy, frizzy, and thick – though thinner lately, thanks to my total objection to fuelling myself properly for the past year. It’s huge if I don’t blow-dry and straighten it. Taming it takes about 20 minutes, and it’s usually the biggest mental barrier to having a bath.

That’s the trade-off: I want to bathe, but if I bathe, I have to do the hair, and that’s a lot of work. Too much work, on many days.

It’s such an ordeal that I have to do it the day before I go anywhere, because I don’t have the energy to do it on the day. I genuinely don’t understand how people shower in the morning. Just doing that uses so much of my available energy – and going outside needs all of it.
Just another way I feel like I’m failing at being a normal human.

I managed to blow-dry it, but ran out of energy before I could straighten it, so I made my dinner. It was well past the time I was “supposed” to eat it, but I didn’t care. Not today.
Today, the only rule is just eat. We’re having a day off, after all.

I made my current favourite safe food: the Super Salad.
I’ve had one every day during recovery, and I really enjoy them. I’ve been meaning to write a whole post just on them – I’ve managed to make them low effort, nutritionally solid, and cheap as chips.

In recovery, I’ve been having one meal a day that I genuinely love.
The rest of the meals and snacks? Those are where I manage calories, macros, fear foods, challenges – whatever’s needed.
But the Super Salad is the one where I don’t have to think too hard. It’s balanced, and I eat it every day. That’s what makes it manageable.

(I’ll write more about them soon, but for today…)

Today’s Super Salad had fajita chicken, cheese, a toasted tortilla wrap, lettuce, kale, spinach, lime juice, tomatoes, jalapeños, and crushed lime Doritos. I really enjoyed it – and it gave me enough energy to finish straightening my hair.

Later, all clean, hair done, in comfy clothes, I sat with my son and my bears in the cosy living room, hot chocolate in hand – marshmallows floating – watching random YouTube videos while writing this.

That’s where I am now.

At the End Of the Day

I’m really glad I tackled one of my mini mountains today, and that I made time for some proper self-care. It did help but I’m still absolutely exhausted. I’m exhausted by my ED, recovery, and physically, all of it.

Sometimes, you can do all the “right” things and still struggle.
Other times, you can do all the right things for too long, and end up completely burnt out.

This is what it’s like to live with mental illness and physical limitations. I still feel bad that I can’t keep up. That I’m not working hard enough. So I push harder – I ignore when my body screams at me to stop – and then I crash. Everything turns into a mountain. Even things I usually love, like blogging. Even dyeing my son’s hair.

I guess some days, I need a day off from everything – or my body will stage a quiet protest and force me to take one, like it did yesterday.

So this was me, calling a truce. Letting things be messy. Letting one drawer be enough.
And even now, sitting here at the end of the day, I still don’t feel great – but I feel a bit more capable because I cleaned my drawers and myself. And that’ll have to do. Although I still can’t find my flipping glasses.

Hopefully I will have gathered the troops enough today, to continue holding the line tomorrow.

Perfect song for my fatigue level:-