Grief, ED recovery, Mental Health and all the lovely things that give my Sisyphean rock meaning
Protein isn’t diet culture. It’s survival fuel. In recovery, fat gain matters — but lean mass matters too: bones, heart, muscle, even your brain. Fat doesn’t magically turn into lean mass. Only food, especially protein, rebuilds you. Recovery is bodybuilding, whether you like the sound of it or not.
This week I tried to keep moving through depression, cluster headaches, and recovery — with help from my son, 300 biscuits, and a catastrophic betrayal by Greggs. Recovery isn’t neat. Sometimes it looks like emailing Tate & Lyle about syrup and finding strength in the small, ridiculous things.
I thought I was building an impenetrable castle, but the concrete hasn’t set yet. One bad night of clusters and relapse slipped back on like old slippers. Recovery feels fragile, but still I patch the walls, clinging to rain, coffee, and my son as reasons to keep going.
Cluster headaches steal everything — sleep, appetite cues, even silence. Every attack feels like the worst one yet, a knife through my ear into my eye. Survival takes all my energy, while recovery waits in the background. Sometimes posting the raw reality is the only self-care left.
A raincoat shouldn’t unravel me, but it did. Change — even good change — destabilises me. Clothes, food, identity: all shifting at once. I dropped anchors in Cyberpunk and macramé, but none held. Only a latte in my hand, flimsy against the storm, reminded me I’m still afloat.
Recovery isn’t a straight line — it’s whiplash. Some days I can eat without thinking, others every bite feels like a fight. I delay meals, restrict without meaning to, and feel crushed by my body’s weight. It’s like crash-landing from space, suddenly aware of gravity pressing on everything.
Recovery feels like regret stacked on regret: my knees burn, my wallet bleeds, my coping is gone. I grieve everything at once. Yet in the smallest moments - wearing shorts, playing games, hearing my son say he missed me - I know regret says “go back,” but I’m still moving forward.
Today was a masterclass in being spectacularly wrong - from misreading dates to creating chaos worthy of a sitcom. Between ADHD brain noise, accidental drama, and Clippy-level self-critique, I somehow still found joy in coffee, pastries, and my son’s laughter. A disaster? Yes. But a warm, funny one.
Sorting my clothes in recovery AGAIN isn’t a cute “new wardrobe” montage. It’s expensive, exhausting, and a reminder of how fast my body’s changing. I’m saying goodbye to trousers I wore Tuesday, selling Jellycats to afford leggings, and discovering even Primark sizing plays cruel games.
Being sick in recovery forced me to stop, and without distractions, all I could do was feel. Getting better meant facing my changing body, creatine panic, oedema, and weight gain — all at once. And through it all, I realised something: coping mechanisms work so well, they stopped me from coping.
Absurd Universe 