Losing shades of grey.

We laughed as she reached over and poured some more Cabernet into my glass. I didn’t need more wine, and she certainly didn’t! We were having a hilarious time playing a new card game, even if her elderly mother was cleaning us up while simultaneously asking over and over for help understanding the game rules. (Yeah… we all fell for it. Though who knows whether it was her age or Panamanian accent that lent to our ill-advised pity prior to her winning all three rounds and offering us as consolation a grin that spanned well past where her cheeks could easily stretch to.)

More wine meant more sourdough crackers (which, for the record, don’t actually need wine as justification they are so lethally addictive!). And, more crackers meant more Gouda, a little of the sheep milk something, and maybe some of the French stinky one (descriptive, eh?!).

For a split second after I took a sip and handed my glass to my husband to have a taste, things went a bit fuzzy. (No, I hadn’t had that much wine!) The chattering and laughter disappeared for a smidge of a moment too. Something felt different- as if a little hint of recognition was tugging on my subconscious bringing a subtle awareness to the event that had just taken place without due appreciation.

A smile grew. Though indistinguishable to the outsider from that which had adorned my face through much of our evening, it had nothing to do with the cards, the friendship, the wine, or the fact that I wasn’t losing too badly.

Another piece had fallen off.

Were we to rewind time by four years you’d hear me proclaiming this with fair regularity. But even then, recognition was delayed. By how long? I’ll never know.

That’s the thing- when someone shoulders burdens, addictions, bad habits, negative thought patterns, and even simpler things like unhappiness for long lengths of time (months, years, decades anyone else?!) they are just kind of always somewhat “there” until one day you realize the aren’t. But just like with any positive change and growth- think building muscle, learning a language, rehabbing an injury, taking music lessons- the changes are often so small and so slow in the making that it can feel not dissimilar to watching a caterpillar crawling along a twig at the height of summer and hoping you’ll actually see it turn into a butterfly.

With disordered eating, as with most challenging issues people face (a given being that they actually decide to do something about whatever it is…), neural networks have formed in the brain creating new “normals” by which we exist. It’s how the body and brain adapt and change over time through something called neuroplasticity. Extremely malleable, our brains have this innate capacity to change for the healthier and better, but also for the worse, which is what happens when maladaptive coping mechanisms are used to make up for a deficit of internal resources needed to deal with impeding stresses or traumas.

For the first very very very long while, change is initiated through a mind over matter approach. You can read more about this idea in my previous blog: The Art of Flipping a Coin. You basically do what you know to be right to do (according to internal wisdom, outside knowledge, supportive guidance) despite not feeling like doing so. And, in fact, it’s very unlikely you’ll feel like doing what you know is right to do for a really long while. Why else would it be so hard to change?

As a rule, humans don’t like change. It feels like it’s messing up our chi like a room with the furniture all out of whack! Thankfully, feelings are often not the truth. And, more often than not, it’s our already-messed-up chi from however we’ve been dealing with life’s problems, for however long, that brings us to the breaking point where we have to start making these changes.

And the mind over matter decisions we have to make in order to change can feel like they never end. I used to tell my husband “If it’s not hard, I’m not working hard enough”. That was how I kept myself from stalling because I knew I had a long road to travel down when I started recovery.

But contrary to my wildest dreams, it wasn’t hard forever.

I remember the night I looked down at my polished plate (quite likely actually finger-licked clean) and realized that I had just eaten supper without a single thought. In fact, “Where did my food go?!” I explained to Shane that I literally felt like

“a huge chunk of anorexia just cracked off” of me.

Had it really? No, of course not. I’d been working through feelings around food- from what I had, to when I had it, to how it was laid out on my plate, to which spoon I used- for months at that point. So bit by bit neural networks were being created while others were being disassembled. But it still always felt hard, until one day it wasn’t.

Not dissimilar to when I realized I had just eaten half a quart sized jar of mixed nuts while fiddling on my phone and (key recognition) didn’t panic when I realized this, I was both elated and terrified at the same time.

I felt like a part of who I was had just disappeared. My superpower, if you will. The thing I had spent well over two decades perfecting and my most costly skill: restriction.

gone.

For the first while, when a part of who you’ve been dies, or you see it disappearing however slowly from your life, there is often a time of grieving. After all, “she” helped you through life’s rough patches. “He” was always there when no one else was. “She” made pain feel better- at least for a while- when nothing else seemed to work.

So, of course I had reason to cry. A lot.

My first blog post, Finding Balance Again, described life as a pie chart, with all the various activities, relationships, goals, and parts of our daily journeys making up the slices. As the food, body-image, addiction, or fill-in-the-blank slices get smaller, it can take time for the others to expand, or new slices to be put in the empty space.

In ways I felt like my colors were fading. I didn’t know who I was anymore. But given time, the true colors of a me that was lost, or maybe a me that had never yet been truly known, start to shine through.

Like a chunk of mud chipped off of an ancient mosaic as it’s uncovered by an archaeologist, or dust cleaned off of an heirloom painting, the splendor underneath isn’t fully revealed until the shades of grey and brown are wiped away. Sometimes, like a car that’s kept outside in the springtime, you don’t even realize it needs cleaning til someone writes you a message on the back window…

And you never know how truly magnificent what lies underneath really is until it’s all completely polished.

I thought life was getting pretty good, as far as my pie chart was concerned and the food slice taking up its rightfully-sized share of my life. But just like every other time I realized a chunk of anorexia had fallen off somewhere along the way, even more colors were revealed that night that I wasn’t expecting as I helped myself to fourths of everything and welcomed that second pour.