A few months ago, I “got rid” of my ED clothes. Except… I didn’t.

I bagged them. Boxed them. Moved them out of sight, but not out of my life. And I kept everything else too – clothes from before my relapse, clothes that didn’t fit anymore but might again, someday, in some version of me I hadn’t let go of.

So my wardrobe became… crowded. Not with clothes, but with versions of myself. I could feel them in the room. It started to feel like I was hoarding clothes for two ghosts.

On Wednesday, I decided to do something about it. Something more permanent this time.

Two Ghosts, One Mirror

The last time I tried to do this, I wasn’t ready to let anything go. My relapse after 12 years of recovery didn’t come out of nowhere. There were many reasons, but the primary one was grief – losing my best friend WeeGee to cancer.

Those clothes weren’t just smaller clothes. They belonged to that version of me. The one who was devastated. The one who was visibly not okay. The one who was weak, underweight, and falling apart in a way the world could see.

Letting go of those clothes felt like letting go of that version of grief. It felt wrong. I thought if I wasn’t devastated anymore, it meant something about how much I loved her. Like I’d be letting her down, as if the intensity of my grief was proof of the intensity of our friendship.

So I stayed stuck. Because if I moved forward, it felt like I might lose her again.

My ED gave my grief a body. It made it visible. Undeniable. Something no one could look at and say, “you seem fine.” In a strange way, that became a symbol of my love for her. Because I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t okay. And I didn’t want to be.

But something has shifted recently. Not in a dramatic, “light a candle and heal everything” way Instagram likes to pretend exists. Just slowly. Through recovery. Through doing the work. Through existing in it. The devastation softened. And I didn’t expect what came next.

It brought her back to me.

When she first died, I couldn’t think about her without it destroying me. Memories hurt too much. Anything that reminded me of her would pull me deeper into that emptiness. But now… she shows up again. Naturally. Without me forcing it.

“That reminds me of WeeGee – she would have loved that.”
“WeeGee loved writing like you.”
“She was doing creative writing courses too.”

And every time it happens, it still catches me off guard.

I still get hit with waves of sadness sometimes. Out of nowhere. The kind that stops you in your tracks. But most of the time… I’m just really, really glad I got to know her. Writing that just made me cry, but it’s true.

I’ve changed a lot in this recovery. I’m not the person I was in my relapse. I’m not the person I was when she died. I’m not even the person I was before all of it. I’ve grown into someone new.

And this version of me didn’t want to be surrounded by ghosts of her past self in her closet anymore.

The Pilot of the Organism

The last time I recovered, I didn’t reconnect with myself. I gained weight and distanced myself from my body as much as possible. I hid in all black and felt like my body was something separate from me. I described it as being a pilot of the organism, which sounds as detached as it felt. I lived like that for the next 12 years, carrying this constant sense that my body wasn’t mine.

It felt alien, foreign, and I just wanted to hide it. To be an NPC in a crowd. To not be seen or remembered. The only parts of my clothing that said anything about me were my gaming pieces, and even those were still black. Subtle things, things only people who had played those games would recognise. An N7 cardigan from Mass Effect. A black Samurai hoodie from Cyberpunk 2077. I was hiding, just not from fellow Mass Effect or Cyberpunk fans.

In this recovery, I’ve done something completely different. I’ve spent considerable effort finding a style of clothes I actually want to wear. Colours that feel like me. T-shirts that show my love of physics. Wearing more than one colour at a time. Window shopping online for things that genuinely catch my eye, then trying to find something similar in stores.

It’s been less about “what hides” and more about “what feels like me.”

I RegrettED Starting

The first thing I did was pull all of my clothes out onto the floor chaotically. This was the exact moment both I and my brain had regrets. My ED (who I call corrupted Copilot, after Microsoft’s dodgy and unhelpful AI that no one actually needs) immediately started its usual one-sided tirade about keeping the smaller clothes “just in case” I lose weight, and “maybe you should lose weight to be safe, you wouldn’t have to do this then.”

I’ve never tied my worth to clothing sizes, and thankfully my ED hasn’t really either. Clothing sizes are a terrible social construct like all social constructs. There’s no consistency between stores, or even within the same store. No rules that make any sense.

I’ve always had problems with clothes at every weight I’ve been, because of my rib deformity and now having more muscle than average. Clothes have always made me feel different, because no one makes them with bodies like mine in mind. My ED likes rules. Clothing isn’t a rule. It’s a suggestion, and a very bad one at that.

Sifting through the disaster on the floor, I had that immediate “I’ve started this now, so I guess I have to finish it” feeling. My brain was flooded with memories with each piece I picked up. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was sadness. I remembered how sad I was when I wore them, how devastated I felt. And it didn’t stop there. When I picked up clothes from my pre-relapse weight, I thought about the last time I recovered, and everything that came with that version of me too.

Looking at everything laid out like that, I realised I was going to have to say goodbye to all that black armour. The armour that shielded me from thinking about that separation between self and body. The armour that became a mask I wore constantly. And I realised that if I wore it again, I’d be choosing to hide again.

I don’t want to go back to that.

I didn’t expect that even my pre-relapse clothes wouldn’t feel like me anymore either. That was the part that hit the hardest. It showed me just how much I’ve changed, not just in recovery, but in my grief too.

Those clothes helped me. They protected me. They kept me safe. At times, they kept me from drowning. Letting them go felt like letting go of the version of me from before everything happened, the version of me before WeeGee died.

It felt like accepting that she’s gone, and I won’t ever be her again.

I think I was scared of that more than anything. Because this version of me now isn’t the person WeeGee met. I worried that if I changed too much, if I became too different, then maybe she wouldn’t have known me, or chosen me in the same way.

But she’s frozen in time, and I’m not. I’m the one who has to keep going. And I know she wouldn’t have wanted me to stay stuck there with her. She was all about change and growth. I think she would be proud of me. Of everything I’ve done this time. Of who I’ve become.

Letting go of the version of me who met her felt like losing her a little bit more. But at the same time, there was relief in it too. Relief that I don’t have to be that person anymore.

That I can just be who I am now, and whilst I am still learning who I am exactly, I can recognise where I am different.

I spent so long trying to claw my way back to being exactly who I was when she knew me. There is a relief in not having to do that anymore.

The Bin Bags Full of Ghosts

A few hours later, the chaos of my bedroom had started to return to order, with six black bags filled with different versions of me. I felt nervous about permanently getting rid of them. Everything in me was screaming to keep them “just in case.” It gave me a fair bit of anxiety, so I immediately took them down to the recycling room. No do-overs. No going back. No retreating into avoidance.

There was relief too. My bedroom wasn’t hoarding ghosts anymore. They had been cluttering my mind the same way they cluttered the room. Every time I walked in, it felt heavy.

Now, all that was left in my wardrobe was navy, cream, grey, and brown. No black, except for my lounge wear.

Black is a style many people rock. But for me, it was never really me. It was about hiding.

Having a style has helped my recovery more than I ever thought it could. And I’ve realised just how far I’ve come when I’m recovering out of the supposedly “recovered” person I was before.

And having WeeGee in the forefront of my mind, like she always was, without breaking down just because she’s there… that’s something I didn’t think was possible just a few months ago.

I wasn’t just hoarding clothes. I was hoarding versions of myself that I didn’t know how to let go of. Getting rid of them didn’t erase anything. It didn’t undo the grief, or the love, or the years I spent trying to survive. It just made space for something quieter, something more mine. Something softer than hiding myself in mourning colours.

An End Once and For All from Mass Effect, feels perfect for this type of ending.