Wednesday 16th July:-

Today, I got out of bed – and that was my first mistake.

It was the kind of day where I should have disappeared under the duvet. If the Met Office issued warnings for my brain like it does for actual weather, today would have come with a red banner: threat to life, avoid unnecessary travel and contact with the storm.

But I got up anyway. Pretending to be a functional human is a role I play and don’t get paid for. I had coffee. I got dressed to go and buy – what else? – more food.

Except none of my leggings fit. Again. Even the new ones I posted about buying just a few days ago wouldn’t go past my thighs. I’d planned to go to Lidl for my comfort foods, but now I had to reroute to Asda for an emergency clothing purchase, wearing the only leggings that still fit.

I guess I rapid-gained weight again, overnight AGAIN. Because they fit two days ago. I’m so sick of this. I just want to cry. And NO, it’s not “water.” When my clothes stop fitting, they never fit again.
“Water” doesn’t change your gait.
Water doesn’t give you a free overnight BBL – Biscoff Binge Ledge.
My glutes and thighs are massive and hard now. NOT. WATER.

But this storm didn’t start this morning. It started the night before – when the act of making my dinner spiralled into grief.

The Night We Cried About Running Out of Food

Yesterday had been okay, actually. I worked hard on myself. I’d dyed my hair and done my nails – the latter something I haven’t done for ages that I used to do all the time.

My roots had been out of control, but as I looked in the mirror to paint my roots and greys I caught myself staring at how different my face is – so different I barely recognise myself. But I was proud of myself for doing it anyway. For pushing through.

I’d been having low hunger all week – no mental hunger, no extreme hunger, no appetite at times at all. But after drying my hair and it revealing itself to be darker than the lies of the L’Oreal box lady, I made my burrito anyway despite my low hunger.

Skipping meals in recovery is a trap. That’s how you summon Clippy, my ED. You skip one meal and it starts whispering again. Or worse, you summon its chaotic twin, the Chaos Goblin of extreme hunger. So I ate. Because I am now stuck here eating multiple times a day even though I hate it.

And then I noticed I was running out of food. AGAIN.

I don’t do well with that. Not in recovery. It’s a new fear I have unlocked. If my food is running low I can’t stop thinking about it until it’s fixed. Because if I run out of food, I am not safe. I am not safe from Clippy, and I am not safe from the chaos goblin. If I skip even a small snack because I have run out of food, I might binge on Biscoff at 2 a.m.

And if I binge on Biscoff, I will feel shame, guilt, disgusting and hate the feeling of losing control around food. Then I’ll rapid gain actual weight and it stays forever. My entire existence is currently food-focused – Eating on time. Eating multiple times a day. Eating even when I don’t want to. Buying food, planning food, running out of food. Being too hungry, or not hungry at all.

And I absolutely hate all of it and I am FED UP.

Clippy hates it MORE when I eat when I’m not hungry. But I do it anyway. And then often I cry. Because recovery has become MORE than a full-time job, and the only thing I have to show for it is my expanding body and a mind that feels increasingly trapped inside it.

The Night We Tried

I didn’t even want the burrito anymore I was too upset. I ate it anyway. I told myself I had to try, that I’d already lost well over a year to this relapse. I’m 41 now. Every year feels more precious.

My best friend – WeeGee – died at 40. That thought snapped something in me. I ate the burrito because she can’t. Because she would’ve wanted me to. Because she always saw the parts of me I try to hide now. Because she can’t eat like I can. Because she can’t live like I can.

Then after eating my burrito, it suddenly dawned on me what I said to get myself to eat.

Even if this works, even if I actually recover this time… I’ll still be 41. With multiple mental illnesses. With physical limitations. With a body I don’t recognise. You can’t start over at 41. Can you?

I’ve always lived for someone else. As a child, due to the trauma I was going through, I didn’t believe I’d live long enough to have dreams. I belonged to my mother and she controlled every aspect of my life – I didn’t get to want anything, even food or clothes. As an adult, my life has been about surviving for my son. Now he’s grown, and I’m left with… what exactly?

I don’t even have the piercings I wanted. Or tattoos. Or a side shave – I’ve never even done the small things I wanted to do for me.

I’ve always been stuck in survival mode – just trying to get through 24 more hours with this brain, this body, this chaos. A side shave and tattoos feel frivolous when you’re just trying to get through the day. Bigger dreams and wants felt even more unreachable, pointless, scary. What if it all gets taken away from me? What if I don’t get to do any of it?

All I’ve ever been focused on is surviving right now, and Clippy was the only one that offered a solution. I don’t know how to live without it.

Oh dear. Now is not a good time for a trauma-induced midlife crisis.
But apparently, that’s where we are.
I have regrets – of course I do – but part of me also knows:
the only reason I survived some parts of my past was Clippy.

The Night We Grieved EVERYTHING

I tried a coping mechanism I’d found online to distract myself rather than using restriction. My son had bought me a new bag – a navy one to match the clothes I had to buy in a rush last week. He also got me a pigeon plushie and a bear because I couldn’t afford anything for myself after bulk-buying food on Prime Day.

So I made the bag mine. I added all my pin badges and keyrings. The Mako from Mass Effect. A Jellycat bear. My pigeon. I cried while doing it. And then I smiled too. For ten minutes, I felt okay. It did help. But then I ran out of badges and keyrings, and collapsed on the sofa sobbing again.

I realised I am grieving. I am grieving for Clippy. For how nothing feels as effective, as powerful, as emotionally numbing as listening to it. I’m grieving the control it gave me. The structure. The relief. The body that fit clothes, that felt smaller and freer and quieter and easier to carry.

I’m grieving that body – because I had to say goodbye to it so quickly. Too quickly. I didn’t even get to mourn it properly before I was buried in soreness and size. I didn’t even get to wear my clothes enough to grieve growing out of them.

I’m grieving how my body used to feel to live in. How light it was. How removed from sensation. How easy it was to disappear when things hurt too much. Now I feel everything.

Now every time I sit on the sofa, I feel mass. Density. I feel my thighs, my stomach, my arms – every part that wasn’t “too much” before. Now I feel pain. I feel stretch. I feel heat and pressure and friction. And it hurts. I’m grieving that too.

And I’m grieving the act of skipping meals, because even when I want to, even when I feel like I need to, I can’t – not without chaos. I’m grieving that there’s no escape hatch anymore.

But I’m also grieving everything because of Clippy.

I’m grieving all the years I gave it. All the years I spent in a body that was never safe, never fed, never home. I’m grieving the fact that I could’ve ruined my body forever and somehow – somehow – I still ended up here anyway.

I’m grieving the fact that WeeGee died, and she would’ve hated that I relapsed because of it. But I did. And I’m grieving the fact she’s not here now, because she was the only one who ever really understood me.

I’m grieving the way food has changed me. Not just my body – my personality. I feel like I’m “too much” again. Too emotional. Too expressive. Too alive. And no one knows what to do with that version of me. Except WeeGee. She loved that version.
And now she’s gone, and I don’t know who I’m supposed to be without her.

I’m grieving the fact that hardly anyone in my life knows the real me right now – because I haven’t been her. And I’m grieving the fact that I shrank my personality to begin with.

I want to recover for WeeGee.
I want to live the life she can’t.

But right now? I also want to crawl back to Clippy. Not because I want to die. But because feeling all of this is unbearable.

The Day We Survived Anyway

Today I cried through putting on the only leggings that fit. I walked to Asda with my recovery belly, sore strapped-up knees, and aching skin.

Everything hurt.

I got some emergency food supplies and headed to the self-checkout. The total came to £100 – $133 – for just a few oversized t-shirts, a cardigan, and not even a week’s worth of food.

I’m really struggling with the financial side of recovery. People love to say things like “just buy more food,” or “just buy new clothes,” like this is some empowering lifestyle makeover. But I don’t have infinite money. I’m disabled. I can barely afford to keep up with the cost of food recovery demands – let alone buy a new wardrobe every two weeks just to keep myself clothed.

I wanted to do something fun with my son today. That was the plan. But I can’t afford it now. The £100 wasn’t even the end – I still need leggings. I don’t have any bottoms that fit, and next time I leave the house I’m either going to have to wear the one pair I have or go out bottomless. And I don’t know when it stops. I don’t know if it ever stops. I’m buying disposable clothes for a body that also feels disposable because I’ll have a new one next week.

It’s been really hard to eat today. Every bite just reminds me I’m fuelling this body I don’t recognise – this mass I carry around that hurts, stretches my skin, makes clothes dig in and rub. Every time I eat, I grieve harder.

Healing is nothing like what you see on blogs or Instagram. It’s not a slow walk in the woods with a smoothie. It’s not a candlelit journal session. It’s me, crying in Asda, trying to afford a cardigan to hide my stomach.

It’s pain. It’s panic. It’s money I don’t have.
It’s grief. Constant grief.
It’s a mess of tears and a washed-out red face you don’t even recognise in the mirror.

The internet keeps selling a healing journey that doesn’t exist – and all it does is make you feel more broken when yours doesn’t look as aesthetic or algorithm friendly as theirs.

So I’m posting this – not for sympathy, not for aesthetics, but so someone like me might find it and feel less alone. Less broken. And if that happens, then sharing this mess will have been worth it.

Now I have to go eat my expensive food while hating every bite.
Because I’m healing.
Because I have to try.
Because that’s what healing really is.

“You say the ocean’s rising like I give a shit
You say the whole world’s ending, honey, it already did
You’re not gonna slow it, Heaven knows you tried
Got it? Good, now get inside” –