Relapse, Recovery, Rewind

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I don't check in over at PostSecret much, but I did this week, and lo and behold. I don't know at all that this sender has an eating disorder as opposed to, say, an illness that requires habitual treatment with steroids or an antipsychotic that causes weight gain, etc. But I can imagine. And this week, after the last two and a half months, after travel and funerals and holidays and the attendant changes of sceneries and plans and foods, I can imagine very well. Tonight was my first normal day in a while when conditions produced a perfect storm of ordinary circumstance and ordinary behavior. Just a normal work day, no holidays, funerals, trips out of town, or odd errands - and "normal" behavior, absolutely, abnormally on purpose. I feel nauseous, panicky, irritable, and trapped. And this is after one day. Of mostly normal behavior. This is what I intellectually knew would happen if I decided to relapse, and what I disorderedly decided wouldn't happen if I just happened to relapse. Because the excruciating process of recovery is the NUMBER ONE THING on any good anorexic's or bulimic's list of "Why I Don't Want to Relapse." The sad thing is, looking back over the past year, I'm not sure I can pick out any other options than "relapse" as comfortable coping mechanisms for what a shit storm 2009 was. The more that I think about it, I think I will definitely retract the last post's invitation to 2010 to "bring it on."

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A friendly reminder from your neighborhood Nymph: This blog is basically semi-anonymous (to borrow a phrase from a friend). If you see me about using something other than my first name or nickname (say, on Facebook), please bear in mind that while I don't exactly go to great pains to distinguish Cynical Nymph from my other online presences, I don't go trumpeting the blog name about, either. That being said, would y'all do me a quick favor and toss this up on Facebook, Twitter, your blogs, etc.? It's an interesting perspective and deserves to be discussed more widely. (Why, for instance, the HuffPo didn't publish it, I dunno, BEFORE the holidays leaves one scratching one's head.)