Answers

My therapist’s eyes are so pretty and blue, they make me want to cry. Sometimes, I have to avoid making eye contact with her because I’m afraid I’ll start weeping. Instead, I’ll stare at the wall behind her, or focus on the spines of books piled on the little coffee table next to her chair, or I’ll just look at the floor as I give answers to the questions she asks me. Not all the time, but every now and then I’ll look at her eyes and start to feel tears welling up in my own. Not because I’m sad, but because her eyes are just so kind and beautiful. I don’t know how to explain this.

I am strange.

Anyway.

Last week, I was telling my therapist about a recurring dream I have where I am standing outside of a huge, abandoned house. In the dream, it’s usually snowing or raining and I am out on the street, staring at the house with all of its broken windows, a rotting, sagging roof and crumbling, decaying walls. All of the trees in front of the house are dead, their limbs bare and brittle. The porch light is crooked and casts an eerie, warped beam of light on the front door that blasts open in the wind. On the street, I stand looking at the deplorable house and I am overcome with fear and dread. I can’t seem to make my feet move, even though all of my instincts scream at me to turn around and run away from here. I know that nothing good exists inside of the house, it’s dark and cold and lonely. Nevertheless, the dream always ends with me ignoring my fear and pushing through the wind that is raging hard against me until I reach the front door. I walk inside and disappear into the darkness, because in the dream I know that this is my house. It belongs to me and nobody else. I am the sole owner of it.

I told her that I think this dream can serve as a metaphor for where I am at with my recovery. I think the house represents my eating disorder and although I have escaped the house and have learned how to separate myself from my anorexia, I still sometimes slip away into old ED behaviors, even though I know that it won’t fix anything or make my life better in any way. What I need to learn now is how to turn away from the house--to turn away from my eating disorder--even though it’s something that is mine, and leave it behind me for good. I can’t afford to keep falling into my eating disorder. I know anorexia has nothing good to offer: it’s dark and cold and lonely.

Anorexia is misery and I can’t seek it out as my shelter anymore. I need to bolt the door shut and just let the ruined walls collapse behind me. My answers are not inside of that house. My answers were never there at all.