Several months in

When I tried recovery last year I counted the days. After 10 days of eating something we celebrated. Then 20, 50, 100. 100 days was amazing. I'd managed not to starve for 100 days. After 100 days I started counting weeks, then months. After about 6 months I stopped. Because I was relapsing. So I counted hours of exercise, calories eaten, pounds lost.

This year I didn't bother counting. The whole recovery thing has been very half-hearted. In fact I don't even think of it as "recovery". More "loosening the grip anorexia has on me". I don't know what I weigh now. I try not to count lengths when I swim. I try not to exercise too much. Sometimes I manage, sometimes I don't.

On first impressions you might think I was more likely to succeed last year. I mean, I was driven, I appeared to be doing the right things. But I was doing it to get the doctors who were going to section me off my back and keep L and my parents happy. This year is different. I'm doing it more for me. After the winter I had, in and out of hospital on a weekly basis, ending up on a chest drain on one admission and injuring my head so badly after I collapsed onto it that I had a stroke....I'm terrified to go back there. So I eat, not because I want to, but because I know that I should've died so many times but I didn't. Maybe there's a reason for my survival. And while I never wallow in the past, by letting anorexia kill me is letting my abuser and rapists win. I don't want to be a victim of my past.

But it is a full-time job trying to eat. And now my body is changing. I no longer look emaciated. The bones are still there and everything, but I have a little bit of muscle now, and I'm getting a bit of boob. I swell up and down with fluid but that's because my kidneys suck. It's really hard coming to terms with the loss of my anorexic physique. It's like grieving for a loved one. I guess if you've never been there it's really hard to understand that. But I can't go back to being that ill again. For one, I won't survive another relapse. But also, would my relationship survive another relapse? L's stood by me through so much already but the worry crippled him last year. On 24th May, in 22 days time, we were going to get married. After my head injury he postponed it to May 2009. I don't want to have to do that another time. We've waited to marry long enough! Then there's riding, babies, a career. I want it all. I just need to be strong enough to not starve.