I live in a small town, and it was very noticeable when I first developed anorexia four years ago. The roller coaster of recovery and relapse also has been very noticeable, and each time I find myself having to explain either weight loss or weight gain. It's frustrating because I am more than my eating disorder.

Eating disorders can be extremely isolating and lonely. Counting calories or throwing up your food after you eat makes it hard to be around other people. There is the fear that you might eat too much, or that someone will notice that you are just pretending to eat. It takes a lot of energy to hide your eating disorder symptoms, and that makes it easier to stay home and disconnect from your friends. I have been very lucky. My friends know about my struggles with anorexia, and we have stayed close in spite of my attempts to isolate and hide at times. This week I was again reminded how important friends are to me, and how they play a role in helping me stay in recovery.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." ~ Joseph Campbell I have struggled with anxiety and depression for weeks. Several mornings I stay in bed, huddled under my covers where it feels safe, until the very last possible moment. I think about the life I had before I developed anorexia. My husband and I were still together, sharing life and love, enjoying each other's company and spending time with family and friends.

For some reason, I knew drinking a glass of wine at 9:30 in the morning was not a good way to start off the week. I have been struggling, and that includes continuously arguing with that Nazi Brunhilde voice in my head that keeps telling me I am fat and don't deserve to eat. It has been a bad week.

Many days I don't want to get out to bed. I am dealing with some difficult life issues right now, and of course the first thing I turn to is restricting my food intake in order to numb the pain and anxiety I am feeling. There are some days that I feel as if this will go on forever. I contemplate my future and I can't see the light at the end of the eating disorder tunnel.

My thinness is an outward manifestation of my inner pain that I am unable to voice. This is my last year of graduate school and I have started working on my thesis. It will be a creative non-fiction piece divided into two parts. One part will be about my struggles with anorexia nervosa, and my ultimate decision to begin the work of recovery in the midst of personal chaos. The other piece will review the memoirs and creative non-fiction writings written by women who have experienced anorexia and/or bulimia. I deliberately chose to write my thesis about women only, in part because I plan to apply feminist theory to my thesis and I believe that eating disorders develop differently in women and men. I have been enmeshed in writings about eating disorders these past few weeks, and I have found a common thread throughout the writings that resonate with my own experiences with anorexia. Silence. At some point, each of these women have written about feeling silenced and having to regain their voices during recovery. I believe at heart that eating disorders are illnesses of silence, of an inability to speak about inner pain, to give voice to what we are feeling and going through in the deepest reaches of our souls.

I struggle with anorexia even now because eating disorders are complex and deadly illnesses. They manifest differently in each individual. For me, anorexia was not about being thin. And yet it was. That is the paradox of anorexia. I was addicted to starving, driven to be thin. I could never be thin enough, and it took years to break the chains of those thoughts. But have I completely broken free?

The glare of the dressing room's lighting was unforgiving and pointed out every flaw — real and imaginary — on my body. My thighs were too wide, my stomach too round, and my overall body too short and squat. I didn't have the flawless, smooth and stubble-free underarms and legs of a magazine model. I wanted it to magically become wintertime again so I could hide my body under leggings, loose jeans, and oversized sweaters. I kept telling myself that the sizes didn't matter, that these labels were an arbitrary measurement most likely chosen with little thought by some clothing manufacturer in China or Taiwan. But part of my mind wasn't buying it. As I stood contemplating the clothes and the various sizes surrounding me, I felt a little dizzy and my first inclination was to run as fast as I could from the dressing room.

My therapist said to me today, "This is your recovery." Each person is unique, and that includes people with eating disorders. There may be a checklist of symptoms, but how an eating disorder manifests itself in each person is different. It is logical that each person's recovery process from an eating disorder also would be unique. Then why do I find I compare myself to others in recovery and often feel I come up lacking?

For months, I have felt consumed by anxiety and depression. I would sit down to write something, only to feel that the blank screen was taunting me. I would attempt to read something for graduate school, but could only manage to read a few sentences until my mind wandered off into nothingness. At its worse, I would pace the house and twist my fingers into knots, trying to will away the anxiety and do something, anything, useful. Today it hit me — anorexia nervosa has stolen key parts of my life and now I must fight to reclaim myself.