Grief, ED recovery, Mental Health and all the lovely things that give my Sisyphean rock meaning
Today’s mission: obtain cheesy hot cross buns, lose yet another psychiatrist, and try not to lose my mind in the process. Clippy is feral, the NHS is playing musical chairs, and my son and I are both running on fumes. At least Beean Beeale had fun. Priorities: coffee, pickles, and survival.
Anorexia isn’t glamorous. It’s painful, exhausting, and deadly. I’m always freezing, my hair is falling out, my body hurts from being too bony, and food is all I think about. I can’t focus, I can’t sleep, and yet I still can’t make myself eat more. This is my reality.
Depression feels like a black hole pulling me in, but sometimes, it’s the smallest things that keep me from crossing the event horizon—a Jellycat bee gifted by my son, the soft glow of a wax melt burner, or a plushie left in my bed to remind me I’m not alone.
My son’s 20th birthday was filled with brownies, Jellycat bears, and love — but also an exhausting battle with my depression. I gave everything I had to make his day special, even when my mind was fighting me every step of the way. He smiled all day. I just wish I could’ve felt it too.
Imagine sitting in the metaphorical waiting room for therapy, convinced your name will never be called. Then suddenly, it is — and an hour later, you’ve had massive realisations about grief, silence, and finding yourself again. My first grief therapy session was unexpectedly eventful, and it’s just the beginning.
Ambivalence is a superposition—wanting and not wanting recovery at the same time. This is what living with an eating disorder looks like: battling decisions that shouldn’t be battles, facing Greggs like it’s a boss fight, and walking away from cheese like it’s a trap. Clippy wants control. But so do I.
Eating disorders in your 40s are isolating in ways no one talks about. Perimenopause, body changes, and the loss of identity as a parent collide with an illness society believes only affects teenagers. This post dives into my lived experience of navigating these challenges while feeling unseen, unheard, and unsupported.
When everything crumbled — blood tests, eating disorder relapse, endless chaos — I leaned into maximum entropy. Physics couldn’t fix it, but it made sense of the mess. So, while our universe succumbed to entropy, I bleached my son’s hair. Order emerged in the chaos, his hair flawless, my new Jellycat pig, Hamilton, watching.
Greggs was my safe haven—until Corrupted Clippy hijacked it. Standing at the pastry counter, dread replaced joy. My eating disorder, unnoticed for weeks, now controlled me in ways I couldn’t deny. I’m grieving not just food, but the pieces of myself it’s quietly stolen. A fight I didn’t see coming
I woke up with one simple goal: put the washing away. Instead, I found myself crying in a pile of clothes while my brain played the “Greatest Hits of My Failures.” Laundry Mountain loomed large, my ribs hurt, and the chaos felt endless. Why is something so small, so hard?
Absurd Universe 