Sometimes I miss being sick, the grimiest part of me wished I had stayed in that familiar city of grey and mental illness and whatever the opposite of healing is, where there was nothing to laugh about but plenty to write about. I've concidered myself to be on the road to recovering from my eating disorder for almost a year, but I still talk about it in present tense, just like how I still have all my exes phone numbers saved. For once I don't want to write about this I am finally embarsssdd instead of proud of all the insane things I have done for "happiness". Still, when a friend at dinner makes a casual comment on calories the scoreboard in my head lights up. Once I cut a ribbon, the size I wanted to be, and wore it around my wrist as a sign of my "triumph", bathroom scales make me feel nastolgic, like a scrapbook I flip through, snapshots of my sickness. Reminders of the dinners of tobacco smoke and red lipstick how I used to pack my lunchbox with floss and teeth whitening strips, last night I painted my nails when I was hungry, I couldn't eat until they dried. I am not going to go into more details in case you mistake my recount for an instruction manual, but I don't know how to talk about the rabbit hole without leading you down it. While recovery isn't always tea, yoga mats, and Avacados, it is work, it's reminding yourself that sucking on ice isn't a meal, is asking your body to forgive you because it's not healthy to drink so much water to curve hunger that your body becomes a huge bathtub with organs floating in it. Even though I'm on my way to recovery some days trying to ignore the calorific calculator in my head is like trying to ignore the television subtitles and sometimes I just can't, body forgive me. Recovery is hard work, not wanting to die is hard work, sometimes I still mistake "full" for "fat" and I'm trying so hard not to do that, I'm trying so hard to un memorise the calories in a peppermint. Wanting to die is not the same as wanting to find a home and I'm still trying to remember that. I am on a journey to recovery, it's not easy, I still have a long way to go, but body forgive me for scaring you, forgive me for making you weak and dizzy, forgive me for exhausting you so much with calorie counting you have no energy to do anything else. Body I am here to make peace with you, I am comfortable with you, please forgive me.