It's not you, it's me.

Follow, unfollow, friend request, unfriend, text, ignore, visit, walk away... all things throughout my recovery I've done over and over again. I'm still not sure where I stand on it either. I'm unclear on what is helpful and what holds me back. But I'm starting to figure it out, finally. 

Yes, I'm talking about being friends and surrounding myself with people 'who get me', who 'understand how it feels', who know instantly who or what 'Ana' is and why I still stress over a pick and mix. But really, I keep asking myself just HOW helpful it is to be 'friends' with other people in recovery.

It'a a similar situation as when I used pro-anorexia websites, they got me too. We were there same and they were my 'friends' who understood me, for a while (when I'd lost the plot). It may have been more toxic than talking to people in recovery, but sometimes it's too close for comfort.

The theory is, that as a group we can almost normalise the real abnormal - do non-eating disordered people really write the word **trigger warning** or live in fear of letting their weight or BMI slip out in conversation. Do they really ask 'are you okay hun, I saw you ate more potato'. The answer is No. If I am aiming for non-eating disordered life, surely talking to those with EDs more than others is unhelpful?

I'm guilty of craving the understanding and those conversations now and again, I just want to indulge in purging all the eating disordered craziness I'm dealing with to someone who 'gets' it', but really, how helpful is it to maintain these relationships? Is maintaining them, keeping me in my illness? Yes, I think it is.

Don't get me wrong 'breaking up' isn't easy, you do share a lot with 'recovery buddies' but sometimes on my account it's about approval and acceptance, I want to 'check in' with people and see that I am doing okay, comparatively. But here is the problem. It's NEVER going to be healthy for me to compare to anyone, let alone someone else living with, recovering from or who's beaten an eating disorder. 

Of course, some people I've met during my recovery are now some of my closest friends. They are the ones I usually rant with, they are the ones who know my weight and I don't care that they know it. I know their weight and it doesn't matter. I trust them - because we've shared a bed, hour-long phone calls, spa days and meals out where we've both gone 'fuck, this is normal'. But there were people in the past that I thought were the same, but turned out to be toxic to me and my recovery. I had to let them go as well.

Yes, they left a hole and I craved their 'friendship' for a while afterwards, but at the end of the day, my recovery is about me, and this is the classic cliché of 'it's not you, it's me' and we all need to be selfish on these journeys and in all honesty, I miss my life-long friends who I pushed away for the the understanding from 'recovery buddies.' I prefer days spent with colleagues and friends - not THINKING let alone talking about anorexia. It's not always about the eating disorder now, it's about living. 

Sometimes clichés DO have a place and I am starting to think (again) in recovery, they really do.