The Version Of Me That Breaks My Heart...

There are photos and videos of me that i struggle to look at not because i miss that version of myself, not because i want to go back and not because i'm ashamed of how i looked. It's because i remember who she was, i remember how poorly she was. I remember how much of her life had been taken over by an eating disorder and sometimes, if i'm honest, i wish i could forget she ever existed. It's not because i hate her but because my heart breaks for her.

When i look at those photos now, i don't see an eating disorder i see a person who was suffering and a person who deserved help long before things got that bad. Sometimes i want to shake her, tell her to stop listening to the eating disorder and tell her to ask for help or tell her she doesn't have to live like this. Other times, i just want to hug her because i know something she didn't. I know that one day, life is going to become so much bigger than the eating disorder she was holding onto for dear life.

What makes it so difficult is knowing how much she didn't know, she didn't know that one day food wouldn't be the first thing she thought about when she woke up. She didn't know the entire days would pass without calories, numbers, purges and eating disorder thoughts consuming every spare second. She didn't know that one day she'd be able to sit in a coffee shop and focus on the conversation instead of what was on the menu. She didn't know that life would become bigger than food. Bigger than the eating disorder and bigger than her body. Maybe that's what hurts the most because whilst she was spending every day trying to survive, she had no idea how much life was waiting for her.

She didn't know she was going to fall in love. She didn't know she was going to laugh until her stomach hurt. She didn't know she was going to make memories that had nothing to do with food, weight or recovery. She didn't know she was going to build a life she would actually want to wake up to. Instead, she was trapped inside a world that felt incredibly small. A world where the eating disorder had convinced her that this was all there was and when i look at those photos now, the saddest thing isn't about how poorly she was but how hopeless she felt. She really couldn't see the life that was waiting for her.

I think this is why those photos still upset me not because i hate the person in them... it's because i know what she was carrying. I know the thoughts that followed her everywhere, I know how tired she was, i know how convinced she was that things would never change. That this was her life. That this was her future. That this was all she would ever be but she was wrong, completely wrong about it all. The eating disorder told her she was losing everything when in reality she hadn't even begun to discover what life could be. She hadn't discovered freedom and she hadn't discovered who she was without the eating disorder.

She certainly hadn't discovered how beautiful life could become when food stopped being the centre of it, when i look at those photos now. I don't see someone i want to forget but i see someone who deserved so much more than the life she was settling for and maybe that's why i find it so hard to look at her. She just didn't know what was waiting for her.

With Love, Niomi 🤎