This Crazy Life

I thought I knew about eating disorders.  Anorexia, you don’t eat, you get skinny, end of story.  Bulimia you binge and purge.  It seemed easy enough.  I never realized how far off the little bit I knew was.  I didn’t know not only could anorexia kill you but it could destroy the entire family.  The entire family.  From this one disease.  Our entire universe has changed.  I don’t think anyone in my family is happy.  We were happy before.  My older kids don’t like being home.  There is so much tension in the house.  I want to take a family vacation this summer.  Something we haven’t done for over 2 years and I’ll be honest, I don’t even think it will be fun.  How are these 5 virtual strangers going to get along for a week alone together?  They won’t.  Are family vacations really a thing of my past?  I love vacations.  We loved vacations.  We loved traveling.  Thinking about it now actually makes me want to cry.  Prior to anorexia invading my family we always ate at the table.  Always.  Whether we ate together or separately you always ate at the table.  Now people eat in the living room and in their bedrooms.  We have one of those houses where dishes disappear to the teenagers’ rooms.  We were never that house before.  It may seem like a silly thing, but it’s not to me.  It just shows how much everything has changed.  My oldest daughter used to always camp out in the living room.  She was always around.  So, we would talk.  Now she hides in her bedroom.  And to be honest, I hide in mine a lot too.   My sick daughter now has a fridge with a lock in her room.  We have 2 dishwashers, now 1 is only hers so her pans/utensils don’t get contaminated by calories.  She also has a video camera in her room so when she does leave her room, she knows that no one is touching her stuff.  It may sound extreme, but she’s eating.  We’ve been out of the hospital for 8 weeks.  We’re down 3 pounds.  Is she good?  Is she fine?  No, not even close.  But she’s eating.  About 5 safe foods.  But she’s eating.  And that’s the other thing.  People expect her to be well.  They ask, how’s she doing, anything new?  How do you answer these questions.  She’s alive.  That’s about all I’ve got.  She’s not good.  There is nothing new.  There is no cure.  Honestly there is no hope.  But she’s alive.  And she’s eating.  So that must be good, right?  But it’s not.  It’s not even close to good, and people just can’t understand this.  There is no way they could possibly understand unless it was their child that had been through the same thing.