I either want to be completely recovered or completely emaciated. It's the in between that I can't stand, the limbo of failure where you know that you haven't done your best at one or the other: dying or living.
Marya HornbacherI grew into it. It grew into me. It and I blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.
Marya HornbacherI know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.
Marya HornbacherIt is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no 'cure'. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and I found myself stronger for doing it. Much stronger.
Marya HornbacherThe idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the word. That I might be, forever and ever amen, a Crazy Person. That's what we'd suspected all along, what I'd been working so hard to disprove, what might be true. I preferred, by far, being dead.
Marya Hornbacher