None of the clothes I own right now feel like they have any identity at all.

Even the ones that fit me at my healthy weight – apart from the Cyberpunk 2077 and Mass Effect merch, which I’ve written about before – never felt like mine. They were just a uniform I wore. A placeholder for the version of me I couldn’t afford to be.

I’ve been rapidly gaining weight again in anorexia recovery, and I’ve had to replace clothes at an alarming rate. One day they fit. The next, they don’t. But the urgency to replace them isn’t just about size – it’s about identity.

That got me thinking about clothes – and how recovery isn’t just about body image or food. It’s about identity. About who I’ve been. And who I’ve never been allowed to be.

Recovery Before

I first recovered from anorexia 13 years ago. I was 28 and had suffered with bulimia or anorexia for most of my life. But recovery didn’t give me what I expected: I didn’t love my body, or even feel neutral about it. I hated it. It wasn’t even about what it looked like, but what it felt like to live in – I felt like I was wearing a heavy painful suit I couldn’t take off.

I tried, at first. I tried really hard in recovery to reclaim my identity, and one of those ways was through clothes. But I was a single mum to a 7-year-old who had his own needs, and I had no money or time to explore myself. To be a good mother, especially when your child needs extra support and you have severe mental health issues, you HAVE to devote your whole self. So I did. Being a good mum became the most important aspect of my identity.

Therapy at the time didn’t help with this at all either. They don’t account for the fact you’re not leaning on a support system – you are the support system. It was hard enough to afford the food on my weight gain meal plan, let alone anything extra when you have a son that needs food too and grows out of clothes and shoes so fast. I couldn’t ask my parents to help. I was the parent.

Clothes felt frivolous. Self-expression felt indulgent – not in a self-hating way, just… too much. It wasn’t a luxury I denied myself because I didn’t feel worthy, or because I wasn’t trying hard enough. It was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford. If my son needed new shoes or clothes, he had to come first. Always.

It was also my son’s turn. I had missed mine – my whole childhood and adolescence shaped by trauma and then bulimia and anorexia. I didn’t want to take that from him. So I helped him grow into himself, and I willingly shrank.

Recovery, therefore, meant disappearing in a different way – wearing a black uniform of identical outfits on rotation. The cheaper the better so my son never has to go without. Commander Shepard cardigans, black coats, black everything. I never got used to the weight gain. For 12 years, it felt the same: a ball and chain of heaviness I was carrying around every day.

To cope and to stay in recovery for my son, I dissociated from my body. It became just a vessel to carry my brain around. A vessel to love my son with. A painful one, thanks to my disabilities. Why dress it up when it didn’t feel like home? When it hurt so much and restricted what I could do? The only part of myself I expressed was my love for gaming – and even that was minimal.

My identity slowly disappeared. Swallowed by the role of being my son’s mum instead. And I don’t regret that, not for a single second. In a way, I loved my identity as my son’s mum. If I could go back, I would do it all over again, because it worked. I was a good mum, even though I hated my body every single day of those 12 years. I stayed in recovery for him.

But then he grew up, became an adult. He didn’t need a 24/7 supermum. So I started to try hard again. I dyed my hair red. I bought things I’d always wanted but always thought were too much. I tried to figure out my confusing sexuality. I bought boots I’d wanted for over a decade. I was planting the seeds of my new identity as someone other than my son’s mother.

The Seeds We Sow… Get Dug Up

Then, in 2020, my best friend died.

I STILL tried, even through grief. I played Cyberpunk 2077 to run from grief without relapsing. Something about V sparked something in me. Playing as her unearthed a buried version of me. The 18-year-old me.

The younger me who wore glitter trousers and had brightly coloured hair streaks, looking like an NPC in Night City before Night City even existed to me. People thought I was weird. I didn’t. I was confidently me.

So I bought cyberpunk-inspired clothes. Leggings with straps. Laced boots. A dark Samurai-looking jacket that screamed “BURN CORPOS”. Still mostly black – just in case I failed. I didn’t want anyone to see me trying.

But grief doesn’t care if you’re halfway to rediscovering yourself. It bulldozes and uproots whatever you’ve just managed to sprout in the soil. I wore the clothes, but they didn’t feel right. Physically, emotionally. And eventually, when I felt nothing worked, I relapsed.

Because there was an attempt. But I was still lost.

I’ve never seen anorexia as my identity. But when I relapse, it’s always tied to my identity. Not because anorexia gave me one – but because the absence of identity shows up on my body. Weight loss wasn’t about being thin it was about trying to feel comfortable in my own skin again. It was about being lost. It was my body saying: “I don’t know who I am anymore.” And “I have nothing left of myself to lose.”

I was no longer the 24/7 mother, and I had lost my best friend, both of which gave me a place in the world, a purpose, an identity. My best friend was the only other person who knew all of me, accepted all of me, and then there was no one. No parents, no family, just my son and I. So I hid myself for safety.

There were other reasons for my relapse too, ones I’ve written about before. But yesterday my too-tight clothes made me think about who I am, and who I haven’t been. I remember being 18 and proud of who I was. Proud to show it through my clothes.

I didn’t follow one style. I wasn’t goth or cyberpunk or sporty. I was all of it. Glitter trousers, streaked hair, Nike Air Max. Like a character who looted three wardrobes and made it work. That was the point. My personality is a mash-up of contradictions. Not a Pinterest board. A chaotic stack of boards:
– I love Cyberpunk 2077. I play it on the hardest difficulty. I also love Animal Crossing.
– I like sporty clothes but hate sport.
– I want to dress like a Pilates princess but have never done Pilates.
– I love Nike Air Max, Uggs, and boots with metal straps.
– I love goth, cyberpunk, emo styles but I also love neutral softness.
My style fit my Jack-of-all-trades nature: realism art, stippling, macramé, illustration, writing. I’ve never been one thing, so my clothes weren’t either.

At 18, I didn’t want to be seen as one single aesthetic. I wanted to be seen as entirely myself, all of it.

This relapse has shown me how much I shrank to survive. And how easy it is to get used to that. It still feels selfish to want to grow again. Even though my son is 20 now, walking beside me, nudging me toward real recovery.

He tells me to buy all the Biscoff products we can find, to recover entirely on Biscoff. He encourages me to buy clothes and Jellycats for myself – I wouldn’t have them if not for him. Things I never gave myself permission to want.

It’s made me realise I can’t hide anymore. This time, recovery is for me. Not just weight restoration. Not just survival. Not just staying in recovery for my son. But recovering for real. For myself.

Clothes are just one single aspect of identity expression, but it’s unfortunately the one I’ve had to approach first and urgently due to bursting out of everything I own. So maybe uncovering my identity starts with buying clothes that fit me in more ways than just physically.

Well. Until I balloon yet again from the Biscoff eating and burst out of those too.
Join me in my next post where I go and buy some new… temporary clothes.