Recovery Relapse

I have not written for quite some time.  Truth is, I'm partially ashamed of recovery.  And I suppose that's the state of being in which I currently find myself.  I have relapsed into recovery once more.  Yet, there is a part of me that gobbles up health like the food I once denied.  Health is happy.  However, there is always this smear of nostalgia that taints the glossy layer of my now rosy cheeks and crimson lips.  I open my closet doors tentatively as though I am opening a tomb, gently remove the double zero pants from their hangers, and cradle them like corpses.  I lay them on my bed like burial shrouds, and one by one I slide my legs into them.  They catch on my thighs, others on my hips.  So I stand in front of the mirror, remembering how they once pooled around my ass, and I cry.  I clutch them like I would a lover, mourn for them like I would a friend.  It is this anger and this overwhelming sense of loss that washes over me.  I hate feeling as though all the time I spent and the hard work I invested, all the pounds I shed and people I pushed away, was all for nothing.  It is a profound sense of failure, of having lost something you worked so hard to earn and rightfully deserved.  I have watched the scale creep up week by week and have felt my flesh catch in lovers' hands.  It is a sensory acknowledgment of a battle that for the past several months I've been winning.  It is a strange thing recovery....  It as though you're waiting for some acolade in the form of a medal?  Trophy?  Fuck, I guess a simple pin would do, that would bestow some distinguishment, mark you apart from the rest.  That there would be some reward for all that time spent bobbing up and down exercising in your living room at 4 o'clock in the morning, or spewing food forth from cold, wet fingers, or feeling unsteady on your feet.  At the very least, you expect to be granted the gift of some amazing self-control.  But all that is left are the comments which remind you how average you really are and how you failed to succeed at being something other than normal, "you look fuller," "you look healthy,"  "you don't look like a skeleton anymore!"  It is as though I have suffered the death of something internal and there is nothing for which to memoralize it.  Only the pants draping in my closet.  Like the death of a loved one, life goes on.  People forget or either fail to remember.  But I am still very much affected.  I birthed the disease and watched it grow.  I raised it like a child and celebrated its milestones.  And then I killed it like an avenger.  And now a guilty prisoner, I try and atone for my sins.  I sit here and remember the crime of gluttinous starvation and wonder with embarrassed amazement how I was able to get so far.  A feeling of pride swells in your gut when you think of your disease and how well you managed to hone it.  A feeling of ownership and even a feeling of  incredulousness.  However, there is now also a sense of bitter sadness that one could hate herself so much to purposefully impart such cruelty on her physical and emotional integrity.  That one could be so lost on a misson of self-destruction that you forget what it means to live.  I am ashamed because I feel as though I failed at something for which the only true measure of success is death.  I am ashamed because I feel as though I am an outcast to a prestigous private club to which I was once a beloved and devoted member. Recovery is an interesting dichotomy because I yearn for something I once believed I didn't have.  I yearn for the bones my eyes never saw.  When you are sick, you fail to register just how incredibly sick you really are.  It is only in health that you are able to look back with sheer wonder upon that which, at the time, you saw as never being quite sick enough.  Where is the irony that only when I've gained have I suffered the unshakable feeling that a part of me is missing?  Associated with recovery is also the feeling of fear.  Fear that you'll never be "skinny" again...fear that you will be.  Fear that there will never be a sense of satisfaction with one's physical self or that the voices cackling in your head of diet and weight will never shut up. I try and discern why I fell through the looking glass to begin with...why I chose to jump head-first into the abyss of nothingness.  I suppose there are many reasons...some beyond my recognition and some very blatant to my consciousness.  But it is not the why I crave...although it peaks my analytical sense of curiosity.  It is the how I lust for.  It is the high of the how I am forever chasing.  I try and allow the compliments and praise of loved ones to be my high, the laughter of friends at my corny jokes which lay dormant for so long, the whispers of my lover's words which rustle the sheets which lay starched and cold for so many months.  I try and cherish the warmth, colors, and contours of this woman's body as I lay my head on my pillow at night, and sometimes I am successful.  Sometimes I believe that I am okay.  But sometimes is not all the time, and it is that vacancy which haunts the corner of my bedroom where my mirror is perched.  It is that vacancy which haunts the scale awaiting me in the early mornings of dawn.  It is that vacancy which beckons me back and which simultaneously advances me forward.