My parents came to stay last weekend. My mother in particular I find very hard to get on with, the main reason for this being her own mental health issues.
I desperately want to forgive my mother for being so absorbed in her anorexia throughout my childhood that she forgot to nurture me emotionally. I want to be able to talk to her about my own day-to-day struggles, I want to regard her as a caring, loving parent. Unfortunately this is never going to happen, a fact I often think I have accepted. She is still so deeply involved with her illness that there is no room for the rest of her life, for people that care about her, for the things that bring light and colour and life. I often think I have accepted this fact, and I suppose, on a superficial level I have - I no longer expect her to change anything, I feel sorry for her much of the time. And yet I can still be so angry with her, for not making the decision to break free.
I know how hard that decision is. I have made it.
Amongst the anger is a sense of the most enormous relief, that however hard I find the recovery path, I will not have to go back into the hell that is being consumed by an eating disorder, because I do not want it. Because I hate it with every fibre of my being. Seeing her wallow in it over the weekend, instead of triggering me as it once would have done, reminded me so strongly why I am never going back.
I hate eating disorders with a depth of feeling I was incapable of a couple of years ago. They even damp down negative emotion. There was a time when I couldn't even properly feel the hatred I had for myself, though I knew very well it was there. Anorexia has turned my intelligent, witty, generous, caring mother into the most selfish person I have ever met. It has taken the place of parent, husband, child for her. It is the most important thing in her life - she must please her illness, not the people around her, not even herself.
I am shaking with anger as I write this, for all it has taken from her, but also for all it took from me, because it is not just her that suffers from it, the whole family battles anorexia. Mealtimes as a child were a vicious fight between us (my father and me) begging and pleading with her to eat, and her choosing to listen to the voice of illness and not do so, slowly killing herself. Day to day I would come home not knowing if she would have space for me, or if she would only have ears for the devil disorder on her shoulder.
I am not a fan of separating oneself from ones illness - it is possible to choose not to hear the disorder's naggings, whisperings, at times howls of derision - I do it every day. And yet I long to believe that the illness is not my mother, that it is a separate being with a life of its own. In a way, I know this to be true, but I also know that she has lived with it so long, chosen not to fight it so many times, that it has merged with herself and become a part of her, and I am so grateful that I have been given the strength to say no, not me. I will not choose that path.
It hurts like hell for the child who was rejected by her mother - rejected for an illness of destruction, of dangerous seduction, of enormous power - but to the woman who is breaking free, living independently, not allowing herself to be consumed by illness, it is a reinforcement of the choice I have made. I do not ever, ever, want to let my life be fucked up the way she has.
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