the aformentioned affirmation

This is me. This is my body I have now, but it is not the body I am going to have forever. But it is me - that is something I need to accept in order for this to work. No more disassociation, no more denial, no more blocking it out with mind-altering substances.

I don’t want to ever forget the way this feels - uncomfortable, unattractive, disappointing, bleak. I am too young to feel this way.

I am too young to be this unhealthy, this unhappy. I make things too hard for myself, and I struggle too hard for what I need to do. There is no need to purge, starve, binge, purge, starve, binge, binge, binge - obviously it is getting me nowhere if I have been repeating these behaviors over and over for 5 years. In those 5 years, I can only pinpoint a dozen or so months that I was actually happy...for 5 years this constant battle has kept me from living my life. I have been a prisoner to my eating disorder. Those few months I can remember being happy, I remember being happy because I felt relatively comfortable with the way my body looked - I only felt happy because my eating disorder allowed me to feel happy. It has not allowed me to feel what I want to feel, do what I want to do, for the majority of my teen years. My eating disorder has stopped me from concentrating on and being passionate about anything else. It paralyzed my passion for writing, for learning, for being around friends, for jogging, for playing netball. It paralyzed my ability to show passion towards other people - boyfriends, friends. I did not want anybody to get too close to me, to get close enough to see what was hiding underneath this bloated form - which I feared was nothing anymore. My eating disorder robbed me of my sense of self. I may be speaking in past tense, but this is not past tense. Not yet. I am amazing myself with how the words are just flowing onto the page as I write this, they seem to be pouring out of me with little to no conscious thought behind them... most of the time I find it difficult to string a sentence together because I am distracted by thousands of different stimuli sent to my brain by the eating disorder sitting on my shoulder, weighing me down... he is making me mindful of the waistband in my pants. He is forcing me to calculate calories, sums, BMIs, compare, contrast, always scrutinizing, always criticizing, never quietening down. He creates so much noise in my mind that there is little to no room for anything else. His demands, his commentary has become a fixture in my everyday life. It doesn’t feel unnatural...but that is exactly what it is. My eating disorder was not created by nature; he was created by me. He is mine, I am not his. I do not belong to him. He belongs to me, and it is up to me to disown him. Every time he tells me to feed him, gorge him, saying it will be okay because I can purge it later, I will refuse. Every time he asks me to lie to protect him for now, and tells me he will save me later by giving me the strength to starve myself skinny...I will refuse. I will refuse, I will refuse, I will refuse. He is a slick liar, full of false promises. In the past his promises may have been true - I did lose weight after I stopped eating for a fortnight, I did feel lighter after purging dinner, I did stop feeling hungry after I scratched at the skin on my finger until I bled. But these promises are past, their results are past, and they only worked for the me of the past - a younger me, a more naive me who did not realize how unreliable my Ed was. Ed is flighty. Ed comes and goes at his leisure, mucking up my plans and disturbing my life. He appears at the times when I want him around least. Lately he has been appearing less frequently as he used to, and as time goes on I expect his visits to get further and further apart until he stops showing altogether. He will get the message that he is an unwelcome guest. And with no one left to harass, belittle, torture and goad, his purpose will disappear, and so will he. I will be the only person who I need to listen to when it comes to food, when it comes to how I see myself and what I am going to do next. I see myself in a positive light. I see myself as someone who is valuable. I have value. I am caring, I am a listener, I am a joker, I am a scholar, I am an imaginer, I am passionate, I am friendly, open minded and non judgmental. I love things, and I am capable of receiving love. I am worthy of receiving love. I have worth. I am deserving of a healthy, productive and rewarding life filled with rewarding, loving relationships and wonderful adventures. I am not destined to be locked up in my dark house with only Ed for company. I am destined to be an active participant in life - I have much to give, and I am ready to receive everything life has to offer. I am prepared to battle the hard times in order to get to easier times, and ultimately... happy, content, great times.