Last night, during a period of mental-health-led impulsivity, I lost control. I binged and ate until I felt sick – the way I used to. This morning I woke up with that familiar shame-hangover and the urge to punish myself by skipping food.

But I didn’t. I went to Greggs and bought a sausage roll. Not because I felt healed, or brave, or even hungry, but because months ago I wouldn’t have eaten at all. Sometimes what matters most isn’t whether you fall, but how you pull yourself back up.

The sausage roll didn’t fix me, but it was healing all the same.

“Wait is this me?”

My mental health has been declining with all the stress and change lately, while I’m still trying to recover from anorexia. I think I’m in some kind of episode. I couldn’t tell you which one, because it feels like all of them – which probably means a mixed episode. Ah, bipolar.

At first I thought it was burnout and waited to hope it would fizzle out. Maybe I hoped it was burnout, because burnout ebbs and flows and I have some control over it. In burnout mode I can feel like the ground is going to swallow me whole, that everything is covered in a thick fog – and then something small brings a spark back. Seeing my pigeon. A Starbucks coffee with plushies. A beautiful ornament in a shop. A Lush bath bomb. A new issue of New Scientist. Those sparks remind me that I want to live, even if only for those little joys.

Episodes aren’t like that. Nothing works, but I try anyway, telling myself to “snap out of it” the way I sometimes can with burnout. Then I get frustrated that I can’t. Instead of perking me up, all the little things that usually help just leave me flat, and the emptiness deepens with the memory of how they used to make me feel. I’ve been trying for over a week, in between obsessive cleaning due to bed bugs I don’t even have (Don’t know why this wasn’t a sign) and wearing myself out further.

Yesterday I was drowning in that emptiness – trying, failing, and turning the blame inward. I’d done all the things: Starbucks with my son, Halloween movies, keeping on top of daily tasks even though they feel like mountains. None of it worked. Not even the tiny spark of completion.

When I’m not well I thankfully get flashes of, “Wait, this isn’t me,” and that’s what happened yesterday. When I’m unwell, I become hyper-upset about things that normally only bother me a little. I’m still me though, but dialled up to over 9000 with no filter. I always care about food prices, but usually I joke about it – throw in some Johnny Silverhand commentary on capitalism in the middle of Asda. When I’m ill, though, I don’t want to spend a penny on myself. I’ll eat the cheapest food, or skip it altogether. I don’t deserve effort or nice food anyway.

The last four days I’d been getting back on track after Covid – bringing back my high-effort meals because they help recovery – but suddenly I was furious at the cost and effort. While making food I thought, “Wait, isn’t this burrito important? Didn’t I fight to bring this back? Why am I angry about it?” Red flags everywhere.

So I did the checklist:

Rapid thoughts of self-criticism, hate, despair? Check
Flat mood, waking up in it? Check
Irritability and agitation? Check
Restlessness but unable to follow through? Check
Sleep problems? Check
No spark or too much spark? Check
Behaviour changes? Check
Hopelessness and deep sadness? Check
Sparks of euphoria followed by a crash? Check

Oh no.

Things only got worse from there.

The Prometheus School of Running Away Badly From Things

Despite feeling atrocious and ridiculously angry about the effort and cost of eating my burrito, I still made and ate it – but it was difficult. I’d planned a low-effort evening. My son and I decided to hate-watch Prometheus. Hate-watching is just as bonding as loving the same film, and that movie is one long meme. Both our generations agree: do it for the memes.

I knew it wasn’t going to “work” in the way I wanted – to snap me out of this episode – but it was something. The point is to keep trying, but more importantly, to try without expecting it to cure anything. Hope can be a blessing and a curse. Real hope in mental illness is that episodes end one day – not that this movie or that coffee will fix everything. The second kind of hope isn’t hope; it’s another symptom.

My son hadn’t seen Prometheus before, so it was fun to watch his reaction to the famous scene from The Prometheus School of Running Away Badly From Things – getting flattened by a rolling spaceship instead of taking one step to the side. Apt, really, because that’s exactly what I would do later.

I was glad we watched the film, then we put on Netflix – which turned out to be a terrible idea. We watched A Deadly American Marriage, not ideal viewing when you’re already agitated. It drove me mad. I went on a rant to my son about how Molly is evil for calling the children “tools of evil,” claiming she never hurt them when she traumatised them for life. The children are the real victims, and so is Jason for dying that way. I should probably stop here, because I can feel the irritation creeping back just writing about it.

It wasn’t just a rant; in my head it felt IMPORTANT. Like what I had to say about Molly really mattered, like I was finally seeing the truth and everyone needed to hear it. And at the same time, a quieter voice in me knew I was being too loud – that my son, with his autism, was getting overloaded – but I couldn’t hit the brakes. Both voices were running at once.

That’s what I mean: I’m still me, but dialled up to over 9000 and I can’t dial it in like usual – nonstop agitation. My son was tired (which my brain twisted into tired of me), and he went to bed. I crashed after he was safely asleep, and the comedown hit.

All I could think was how out of control I am. My brain was scrambling for any sense of control and became impulsive.
“Let’s just not eat.”
No. I’m not doing that. I’ve worked too hard to get here.
I tried everything: calming YouTube, music, decaf coffee, snacks, reaching out. Nothing worked.

In those moments you stop being able to see tomorrow; you can only see now, and now feels unbearable. I wish I could say I sat with the discomfort, but I didn’t.

Then it goes blank – as if I dissociated. Before I knew it, I was eating. Too much. I came to mid-binge. I wasn’t even hungry. I stopped myself and cried, a lot. I made my usual bedtime quark, told myself I’m not fit to be awake, took my meds, and went to bed early.

In the way Charlize Theron ran from that spaceship, I’d done the same with my impulsiveness. Instead of stepping aside, I let it roll over me – but I did manage to stop before it completely flattened me. I didn’t feel any better for stopping it, just furious and confused that it happened at all.

Bingeing in Anorexia Recovery

I bet you’re thinking I couldn’t binge because I’m in AN recovery. Maybe you’ve read the “all-in” dogma that says every urge for food is nutritional – that every impulse means your body needs more and you should always lean into it. I believed that last time. Unfortunately, it isn’t true.

You can binge in anorexia recovery. It has been well documented. It doesn’t mean it’s turning into binge-eating disorder, bulimia, or AN binge/purge type – but it still happens. Not every impulse my brain spits out deserves compliance; if it did, I’d have hundreds more Jellycats and no electricity in my flat.

I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t restricted beforehand – I’ve been eating in a surplus for four days. I’m at my lower set point. I’m not cutting out the foods my brain chose to eat. I haven’t had true extreme hunger for months, because this wasn’t that. Extreme hunger doesn’t go on for months.
This was something else, and that something else was bingeing.
Evidenced by my lack of control, the pull toward highly-specific calorie-dense foods (because actual extreme hunger does not care what food it is), zoning out mid-act, and the shame that followed.

After I told my brain, no, we can’t use not eating to cope with these emotions, it picked the opposite: use food to cope instead. That impulsivity came from my mixed state and the decline in my mental health, not my nutritional status.

It’s one of the MANY reasons I regret going “all in” last time. My eating turned into this pattern for months and the urge continued for over a decade no matter how much I didn’t lean in – my brain learned that high volumes of food brought relief, and once it learned that, it remembered. The next time I felt that same way, it whispered, you know what works.

The point now is to be uncomfortable – to sit with it – which is why I stopped myself, continued with my normal food, and went to bed. I didn’t let my brain reach relief, because I needed it to unlearn that this was a viable escape.

And it’s still true: what happens next is what matters most. Because while bingeing doesn’t always start from restriction, restricting to compensate will cause another one – and that’s how the binge–restrict cycle is born. I’ve done it already in this recovery and I don’t want to go back. So when I woke up the next day, I still ate.

The Sausage Roll of Healing

I woke up physically hungover from the binge, full of regret, with one task: buy food and eat a Greggs sausage roll.

Well, actually, there were two tasks – DO NOT WEIGH YOURSELF, and then go and get food.

I was still annoyed about having to buy food at all. My son, the absolute gent that he is, offered to help pay, and it eased the stress more than he knows. He always says he doesn’t feel like he helps me enough because I’ve always said, “You’re my son, not my carer.” Yet he still offers in his sweet way. What he does is more than enough – feeling seen is priceless.

Outside was overwhelming. The noise felt deafening, and Lidl even more so. It was already Christmas-level busy despite being November 1st (thankfully, no Mariah Carey yet, though the countdown was already up). Everything was too loud, sharp, too bright. My anxiety – like me – was over 9000. But somehow, with my son’s help, we made it through and headed to Greggs.

I wanted to go back on what I set out to do – get a sausage roll, no matter how I felt. As we stepped inside, my son said he wanted to treat us since he wasn’t paying for uni food this week. He joked, “Greggs is better when it’s free.” I saw the Pudsey Bear biscuits – adorable, of course – and decided to challenge myself with one. I haven’t had a “dessert” food from Greggs yet. My son got one too, and I ordered my usual Americano.

Flustered, I forgot he was paying and went to tap my card before he swatted me away with his playful no. On the walk home I held the hot coffee near my face, letting the scent calm me after the sensory chaos outside.

We unpacked the shopping and sat down to eat our Greggs together with our plushies. It wasn’t the usual magical moment – no light shining down, no sausage roll wearing a halo – but I was glad I got it, and glad I ate it despite the difficulty. I saved the bear biscuit for later, to not repeat last night. Today, we stick with the structure and routine that’s kept me stable through weight gain and recovery.

If eating disorders are black and white, then the answer is grey – moderation, structure, balance, and the occasional Greggs and bear biscuit.

Touching Grass

The sausage roll didn’t fix me. It didn’t lift the fog or erase the guilt. But it was healing all the same – because it was an act of not giving up.

Everyone says to treat yourself, go out, do something nice, and it’ll lift you. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. And on the days it doesn’t, it’s easy to think the failure is mine – that I’m not trying hard enough, that I’m broken for it not working. But maybe the truth is that some holes are too deep for sausage rolls, bear biscuits, and sunlight to fill – and that’s not negativity, it’s honesty.

There’s only so many times you can touch grass before you touch dog crap and realise it’s your own dog that’s been crapping on it. The metaphorical black dog of mental illness – mine – doing what it does best. It stinks, causes anxiety, and still makes me rage at having to clean up after it. I think I’d prefer to stop touching grass expecting it to cure me, and just do it enough to keep me moving through time, until the day touching grass gives me joy again instead of grief for when it didn’t have sh*te on it.

One day it will rain, and wash all the sh*te away.
And the smell of grass after the rain is one of the best smells on Earth.

All I have to do is stay here to smell it – and hope the black dog stops crapping on my patch of grass.

Oh and by the way, I also ate the bear biscuit while writing this. He felt too cute to eat, but he seemed happy about it.

Heres the anthem for the post, because it’s been stuck in my head ever since I watched World War Z again and it feels like I can feel the entropy increasing.

We have reached maximum entropy – everything, everywhere, all at once. Time blends into itself. My trauma isn’t behind me anymore; it’s unfolding right in front of me. There’s no past or future. There is only now.