My box of fears: why I was scared of anorexia recovery (I)

At the beginning of my anorexia nervosa recovery, I did the exercise of writing on little scraps of paper all my fears related to that process and placing them into a box. Then, I put that box at the Lord’s feet, offering to Him all those fears and granting Him sovereignty over them. It was an act of trust, meaning that I was going to do what I had to do, and the result depended on Him. I was going to work on my recovery for Him, in spite of all the fears that overwhelmed me, and He’d take care of me and protect me from all those consequences.

Today I’ve decided to open that box and I’ve found just what I had imagined: many of those fears haven’t become real at all; others have, but now it doesn’t affect me anymore: I can see it’s a good thing.

Let’s see 8 of them, and I will do another post to talk about 7 more:

“That my bones won’t poke out anymore”

I used to find some kind of morbid pleasure in passing my hand through my body and feeling all the prominent bones. Now I see that was something degenerated in my mind: it’s not beautiful.

My bones haven’t either disappeared towards the depths as I feared: the collarbone is still visible, and I can feel all of them if I want to touch them. But they’re rightly covered by fat (yes, a small layer that is good, healthy, and doesn’t make you look fat at all) and, better yet, by muscles! When we think of gaining weight, we usually visualize it as gaining only fat, but it doesn’t have to be like that at all.

VERDICT: partially fulfilled, but I’m ok with it. Things are better when they’re in their right place.

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