You Will Always Be Loved Even When You Feel Alone

You will always be loved even when you feel alone… something hard to recognise when loneliness consumes your mind. There is a middle section between darkness and light, a part between the hardest of times and brightest days. Recovery is not liner, nor does it have an expiration date; you will never entirely abandon your past, yet you can and have learnt a lot from it. You wake up every day and battle for a better future, one where you treat your body with kindness, feed it, wash it and do not bring sharpness to its surface. Some days you do not succeed, but that does not mean you have failed; You’ve simply taken a day off from what feels like an impossible battle. 

You are not weak. You’re strong, and strong women are often afraid. Many people look up to you, a woman filled with such love and hope, joy and laughter, but I see you, I see you’re still hurting after all this time. Your hurt does not make your laughter false or insincere. Your wounds make your laughter more admirable. To bring a smile to others faces despite it all, to make other feel warmth when you feel nothing at all.   

Time has passed, yet I see the way you look at food; there is love and lust in your eyes, but I also witness the pain. I see your fear of jelly pots, hot cross buns and cheerios; they remind you of a time when you were fourteen years of age and ignored the signs of hunger instead ate to the number. 

I do not pity you, for you do not need my pity. You’re tough, independent and full of life. You are, however, in-between, the intersection of recovery. You are a fearless self-loving woman who teaches others how to live. You use your past to show others that the size, shape and texture of their body does not play apart in their worth. Yet you’re also the woman who struggles to see her own worth, finds her skin rough and hard to love. You’re a woman; on somedays, you wish to smash the patriarchy, and other days, you lack the strength to wash your body. 

This is your story, a story about Xanthe, but this is also a story about the gaps we often miss, navigation of life with mental illness, disordered eating and loneliness. However, this is also a story of a strong woman who laughs a lot and loves deeply, one of life itself.  

On the days you feel strong, I will be there to laugh with you, and on the days you do not, I will be there to hold you. An apology, i apologise for not seeing your struggle all those years ago, for I was only a child, a child with a lack of education much like the rest of society. I did not read into your weight loss or soical habbits. Still, I see you now. I know that time does not heal all, and hurt does not mean weakness. I shall work on forgiving myself. I shall be here not as a spectator to your pain or recovery like before, but as a hand to hold in the sunshine or on the cold bathroom floor, for you will always be loved even when you feel alone...