Why does it always rain on me, is it because I lied when I was 17? No, Travis. It’s because I hate change, and I’ve gained so much weight since I last needed a raincoat that now I don’t have one that fits.

Normally, rain is my favourite weather – comforting, steady, safe. But this time the downpour hit differently. What should have been soothing instead triggered a full-blown recovery burnout.

Jason and His Technicolour Two Sizes Too Small Raincoat

Yesterday morning started mostly normal. We had to go to Lidl to get food, but I was looking forward to Greggs afterwards. It had been a while since I’d had one – and in recovery time, “a while” is a week, which feels like a lifetime when your cravings involve a caramelised biscuit iced latte.

I got dressed, did my hair, and then it started raining. “Lovely,” I thought, “my favourite weather. I don’t even mind going out in it.”

Until I went to grab a coat.

And that’s when I remembered: I don’t actually have a raincoat that fits me anymore. I’ve gained enough weight that my relapse ones don’t do up, but not enough that the pre relapse ones fit either. I’m in the awkward in-between. The messy middle of coats.

Recovery has meant constantly buying clothes as my body changes, but I can only afford bare necessities. It’s summer, so I’d put off the expense of a coat. I still haven’t bought pyjamas or underwear yet. It’s even MORE difficult when your weight changes AGAIN and the new clothes you bought don’t fit AGAIN. Clothes feel disposable and temporary currently, because they are.

I see people say “people with anorexia don’t like to spend money”, on recovery websites and it drives me mad every time. I’m not trying to replace one control method with another and control the uncontrollable and it’s not that I don’t “like” spending money, it’s irrelevant. It’s that I DONT HAVE IT TO SPEND ON EXPENSIVE CLOTHES AND FOOD EVERY FIVE MINUTES.

Anyway. I hadn’t bought a coat. And it was raining. So I tried on every single one in the house: either they drowned me, or they wouldn’t fasten. I ended up in an oversized hoodie, resigned to getting soaked, and headed out. I thought, maybe I’ll pop into Asda and see if they’ve got one cheap.

Meanwhile, I’d already accepted my hair would be a frizz bomb and straightening it earlier had been completely pointless.

The Marie Kondo of Lidl

In Lidl I was reminded of what else has been changing – my food preferences. The me of two weeks ago doesn’t eat like the me of today (though the caramelised biscuit latte has remained a loyal constant).

It’s destabilising, because I keep buying food for “past me”. I’ve been changing so fast I cannot keep up. My cupboards and fridge are now full of things I don’t even want, and it will take me months to get through them. On top of that, part of me still hoards food without even noticing, so I end up spending money I don’t have on items that no longer fit what my body wants.

At one point, my kitchen could have passed for a Biscoff factory – but lately, sugary foods make me feel sick again, even in small amounts. That shift came out of nowhere, and suddenly I’m surrounded by food that doesn’t feel good anymore.

Whenever I open the fridge, it lights up all the changes I’ve been through like a beacon of recovery. I’ll still eat it – my unshakable “DO NOT WASTE FOOD” value remains constant – but it’s going to take me a while. One Biscoff product a day instead of five.

Biscoff the bear would be going hungry if not for my son’s current obsession with Biscoff Trek bars.

Normally, shopping is simple: I memorise what I need, buy the same as last week, and stick to strict routine. But this time, in recovery burnout mode, I wandered Lidl asking myself, “Will this packet of biscuits bring me joy?” Like some sort of Marie Kondo of the biscuit aisle.

Then we headed to Asda to (hopefully) find a coat.

The Asda Identity Crisis

I thought getting a raincoat would be simple. But it wasn’t. They only had black coats. And black reminded me of how much my identity – and my clothes – have changed. Black used to be my hide-from-the-world uniform. Now I wear beige, brown, and navy.

“How much simpler it would be to just go back to black,” I sighed to my son, frustrated by the expensive lack of choice – and immediately triggered my brain into looping Amy Winehouse on repeat for the rest of the day.

But I didn’t want to spend money on going backwards. It might seem silly – it’s just a raincoat, who cares what colour it is?

For me, though, going back to black would feel like undoing progress. Recovery isn’t about slipping back into the old uniform, even if it would keep me dry. It’s about carving out new paths – purposefully – even when the old ones are easier and worn smooth from years of walking them.

It’s like footpath erosion. Once people start walking the same shortcut, the grass never grows back. The ground flattens and it looks like the only way through. That’s what my old habits feel like: the beaten paths I could follow without thinking. But recovery is saying: you can’t walk there anymore. You have to step into the long grass, even when it’s uncomfortable, and purposefully wear in a new path, one step at a time. It might just be a black raincoat, but it could mean easily slipping back on to the wrong path.

We then decided to dig through the messy rails of the sale section and still had no luck. But I did find a pair of fake Ugg slippers I’d been eyeing up for months – half price, in tan. They felt right. More aligned with my new identity, the right colour, and well, I needed a bit of joy and self-care. At least I’ll have something pyjama-esque to wear that won’t shrink out of my life in two weeks.

My son, ever encouraging, told me it was a good idea. I still felt guilty that it wasn’t a coat, but he reminded me joy matters too. We walked the rest of the aisles, stocking up on his favourite frozen chicken while it’s still half price. I told him to load up – he deserves his favourites as much as I do.

Raincoat mission: unsuccessful. But as we left, the iced caramelised biscuit latte from Greggs was calling my name, so we headed there despite my just wanting to go home.

And Another Sausage Roll Please.

Sensing a growing hole in my recovery armour, like Legion in Mass Effect – “There was a hole” – Clippy (my ED) popped up like I’d installed too many toolbars in my brain and it had turned into a deranged trojan horse virus.

“It looks like you’re going to Greggs, would you like help pre-regretting that?”
“If you think about it, Greggs is exactly why we’re in this position. Is it really a good idea?”
“Just skip it, have something else at home.”
“Don’t gain any more weight or we’ll have to deal with this again. Don’t have Greggs. Eat something less.”

I was so exhausted I didn’t even notice Clippy had already driven a giant wooden horse through the hole in my armour. Suddenly, I felt like I didn’t even want Greggs anymore.

At the counter, I just asked the lovely giver-of-sausage-rolls lady for an iced biscuit latte, and one sausage roll for my son. “I’ll just get the latte – then I can have something else instead of the sausage roll”.

And then I caught myself. That’s the old path. That’s not what I do anymore. I don’t skip Greggs. I have both a drink and a sausage roll. So I apologised to the lovely Greggs lady and asked: “Actually, can I have another sausage roll please?”

In that moment I reasserted my footing. I stepped off the eroded path and into the fresh grass of recovery. Another change, yes – but at least this one is tasty. Still, my feet get wet in the fresh grass.

Carrying my Caramelised Iced Biscuit Latte home while still getting wet in the rain, I whispered to it silently: “At least I have you now.”

Cry Me A River Of Iced Biscuit Latte

When I got home I wondered why I got so messed up by a lack of raincoat. I’ve replaced so many clothes since I started recovery. Why did the rain seemingly upend my entire day?

Then I realised it was because my entire life has been upended.

I don’t deal well with change, even good change. It completely destabilises me. I just want time to stop so I can breathe and get used to the changes.

I remember being in geography – exactly where I learned about footpath erosion, funnily enough – and it was the last day of school. All my friends were signing shirts and buzzing with excitement to leave. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to go.

I looked back from my friends and stared at the clock, willing it to stop ticking. Just let me sit here a moment before everything changes.

It’s also the reason there are so many physics references on my blog. I thought if I learned about time, I could deal better with it changing everything. It didn’t help, but it did give me a lifelong passion for quantum mechanics – albeit as an armchair physicist.

I began listing everything that had changed SUDDENLY in just a few weeks:
– My reflection in the mirror. My face has changed.
– My body is unrecognisable. It’s not even like the body I had before my relapse – it’s a completely new body, with muscles I’ve never had before.
– My body image, completely different, because of that unrecognisable body.
– My body feels different too – dense, hard, way heavier. It feels like carrying heavy weights everyday.
– My clothing preferences have shifted.
– My identity has shifted. I’m not the me of my relapse, not the me before my relapse, not even the me I was two weeks ago.
– My food preferences changed overnight.
– My routine is different: I now eat four times a day, when even before my relapse I ate once a day for four years.

I started to panic, reeling off these changes. I reached for my anchors – Cyberpunk 2077, macramé – but every time I tried, they didn’t even feel like me anymore. Is this depression? Depression has come for my special interests many times. Or am I in between states of self, just like I’m in between coats with neither fitting me? Who knows. All I know is I feel unmoored.

Sitting there with my iced biscuit latte and sausage roll, I felt like a ship on stormy waters. I kept dropping anchors anyway, but none held. Even my latte – my one constant – felt flimsy. I wished it were stronger. I needed more than this plastic cup to hold me here.

The raincoat wasn’t just a raincoat. It was a message. My ship is adrift with no anchors, and I have to move with the tide despite hating the movement, hoping that at some point, I’ll run aground somewhere safe – somewhere I can find myself again.

And if or when I do, I’ll be glad I made all of these changes. I’ll be glad the me of right now started to tred in the fresh grass. But right now I just feel awfully lost for not having a path to follow.

Why does it always rain on me? Because the rain will come, the same way change does. And even if you will it to happen – you’ll still get wet.