From gray-scale to colour

It’s been a hell of a year. I think I’ll remember 2017 as the year of first times, clean slates, and new beginnings. Speaking up for the first time, sharing my story for the first time, letting myself be visible for the first time. The year of not letting my fear of being heard keep me quiet. The year of not letting my fear of falling stop me from standing up in the first place. I’ll remember 2017 as the year that I finally started to feel like maybe my future is worth being optimistic about. It’s been a whirlwind of a year. And just like that, it’s over.

I think what’s been especially different about this year is that everything has been so intense. I don’t “numb out” things the way that I used to. I’m aware of it all, in touch with it all, feeling it all. The ups, the downs, and the everything in-betweens. I no longer walk 20 miles every morning, I no longer maintain a weight significantly lower than healthy. Sure, I control my food intake meticulously but for the most part, I am present and showing up for every single second of my life and frankly, it hurts. I wouldn’t trade what I have now for what I had then. To “numb out” again would mean shrinking my world back down to a place where nothing but food and weight and exercise mattered and that was a painfully lonely place to be. It was predictable though and I miss that. I live in a world of colour now after years of living in shades of gray. It’s intense. Everything feels loud and overwhelming at times, but it feels like I have come back to life, like I am on my way to something, to somewhere worth being. Somewhere with purpose and meaning. Rather than when I was ill, and I lived my life in an anxiety-driven frenzy of rituals and routines with just fleeting buzzes of what I mistook for happiness when I would see a glimpse of a lower weight on a scale. That little snatch of ‘happiness’ would then be replaced with panic at the thought of that number rising again. I didn’t have space to think or to dream or to smile. I was too caught up in my own internal world, trying not to get caught by my own shadow. If being numb means returning to that world, I’d rather keep living in colour, as painful and loud and overwhelming as this world can be at times.

Years ago, I was in New York, having not long left an inpatient treatment facility. When you undergo treatment for an eating disorder in hospital, change can happen quickly and when I was discharged from hospital, I found myself in a place I didn’t recognise. In a flash, my world had changed from gray-scale to an intense and vibrant colourful place, from silent to a happy cacophony. I was walking down West End Avenue one morning in glorious sunshine, under the bluest sky I had ever seen, when I saw a puppy on the street with its owner. They were playing “catch” with a tennis ball on the sidewalk, and some kids with their skateboards had stopped to watch. They were all laughing. I can still picture it now. This is the kind of thing I wouldn’t have noticed before. I was too wrapped up in my head, focused on walking and the route I had planned out, doing elaborate calculations in my head of what I was going to eat that day and if I was eating X calories from suchandsuch a food, and Y calories from suchandsuch a food, then how many calories would that be? Round and round I would go. I wouldn’t have been aware of the puppy, let alone the kids or the owner or the ball. But that day in New York, I stopped. And I sat on the bench with some of the kids and before long, we were all laughing. It was just one of those moments where suddenly I realized that everything was different, where it became obvious quite how much had changed since I’d been admitted to hospital.

It’s been slower this time around, this “coming back to life.” And so, it’s been harder to notice. There’s not been the sharp contrast between then and now. There’s been a dipping in and out, a few years of testing the waters. Maybe it’s been better this way. More sustainable, perhaps. Slower, and more manageable. Though this year it’s felt like I’ve been thrown in the deep end. And yet, I haven’t completely unraveled. I feel like I’ve come close a few times but I’m still here and I am doing okay. And maybe this is another of those moments where I am meant to notice how much has changed. Because no matter how much I feel like I am clinging on by a thread, I remember that year in New York, how things fell apart and I became unwell again very quickly. I’m finishing 2017 not quite upright, but I’m still standing.

So, here’s to moments of looking back for no other reason than to see how far I’ve come.