The Inner Struggle

I recently read a book by Helen Brown: Brave Girl Eating. Brown's memoir chroniocles her teenage daughter, Kitty's, battle with anorexia. The memoir is both hearbreaking and insightful.

Brown is successful at recognizing a common thread between all types of eating disorders. She describes Kitty's battle with her "inner deamon" that is anorexia.

Personally dealing with "Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified" or "ED-NOS" I can relate to Kitty's "inner deamon." One have the biggest things I have learned in recovery is that no matter what behaviors you may engage in, an eating disorder stems from similar deamons. In treatment, I look around the room and see my peers. Without words you see the neglect, self hatred, worthlessness, DEAMON in them. We affectionately refer to this deamon as "Ed." He is our Eating Disorder. But he is so much more than that.

He is depression sinking in my chest, weighing me down in bed. He is anxiety robbing me of steady breath. He is the diet coke, coffee with splenda, cigarettes, sugar free gum. Ed is water bottles littering the floor of my car, the 500 calorie count on the treadmill, the cast on my ankle, the scars on the knuckles of my right hand. Ed is a creepy whisper, a deafening shout.

Needless to say, my life has not been much of a life recently. My former life has been ispected, disected, analyzed, sifted through by many handelers. Pediatritions, psychologists, psychiatrists, case managers, social workers, peer at me over my file with the same concerned eyes.

It's a thick file.

Old, worn, professional hands grip the thick white binder. They flip through an observe my messy history: benzodyiazapine abuse, EDNOS, traits of clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, celexa, klonopin, prozax, buspar, neurontin, emergency hospitalization, detoxation period, inpatient hospitalization, Intensive Out Patient intake, IOP discharge, Partial Hospitalization Program intake, IOP transfer, PHP transfer.

Ed is summed up in neat black ink, laminated, hole punched, and bound. The truth on paper does not do the deamon justice.