recovering vs. recovered

i have a hard time knowing what "recovered" means, or if it even exists.

i used to think it meant that a person had absolutely no ED thoughts, urges, or behaviors; they'd officially eradicated their ED from their lives. of course, this ultimate state of recovery is not believed in by most. how many times have you heard, "full recovery is not possible," or "your ED will always be with you?"

i can say with full honesty that i was in this state of full recovery once - oddly, it wasn't decades after my eating disorder (i'm only 2.5 years into recovery), it was early recovery. as soon as i gained all the weight back, the thoughts disappeared, and my body image was phenomenal. so was my mindset - i truly didn't give a shit about what i ate or whether i gained weight or what the fuck ever. i was a recovery powerhouse, as you might have seen if you've read my earlier entries. i told people that i was recovered, because that's how it felt.

it all changed when i relapsed last year. while that relapse has strengthened my recovery in some respects, i have to say that i haven't been the same since. i do have thoughts and urges, sometimes on a daily basis. i also have periods of time where i'm not bothered by my ED at all and feel very immune to it. my state of recovery seems directly related to what's going on in my life - at least for the most part.

what can explain my fleeting time period of "full recovery"? i can only guess.

1.) weight. i gained beyond my setpoint. i was closer to overweight than normal weight, and i'm someone who's been naturally underweight for most of her life. to get to this stage, i of course was eating massive amounts of food... during refeeding i was eating 4k - 6k every day, and later was comfortable with 3k.

2.) immense gratitude. i'd just escaped rock bottom and a horror show of medical complications. i had survivor's high and wanted to kiss the ground i walked on. my anorexia nightmare was so fresh in my mind that to even conceive of going back there was impossible. i had to do a mental 180 to get through recovery, and that made me pro-recovery in a rather intense manner.

3.) i had very little going on in my life, apart from my recovery. this is normal for anyone in recovery, especially if you've had medical issues that needed to be addressed. even though you're getting healthier, you're still hidden from the world in a lot of ways, like you were when you were sick. i was concentrating mostly on eating, therapy, and honing my recovery for the longest time.

to compare all of these factors to what's been going on in the past year:

1.) my weight is down... way down. i lost my refeeding weight without even trying, and went down to the setpoint i've always had, ever since i was a teenager. anorexia wrecked my immune system, so i've been sick a number of times and lost weight from that. on top of this, i have a hard time maintaining my weight because my hunger signals are still abnormal, and i seem to have a permanently high metabolism ever since refeeding. maybe being on the cusp of "too thin" has triggered my ED. i've read that it's best to be around a BMI of 20 so you have a buffer against unexpected weight loss. how do you do this when your setpoint is lower than that? it would feel disordered of me to overeat all the time to keep my weight above what it wants to be, yet i can't help wonder if gaining some weight would help with my thoughts.

2.) i still feel grateful, quite often, for being alive and healthy. but it will never be as intense as it was straight out of rock bottom. you can forget so easily how shitty eating disorders are, and in my experience it doesn't take long at all to start missing them. that's what happened to me when i relapsed, and the relapse was a great reminder that i can't go back to that hell. but how often does someone need reminding that they shouldn't go back? at what point have you relapsed and struggled enough to be completely turned off by your ED? does that even happen?

3.) i truly feel that outside factors have had a lot to do with my fluctuating modes of recovery. i've had a shit load of stress to go through lately, to say the least. you can spend time in therapy all you like, but nothing prepares you for the unexpected problems you'll face in the future. you are always vulnerable to being fired, losing a family member, getting into a car accident, being called fat by a loved one, etc... the list goes on and on. there are countless sources of stress and challenge in our lives. for every problem that comes up, you have to learn how to cope without using your eating disorder. it can be very hard to do this, because nearly every situation is a new surprise, and you have to be on the ball all the time- to react using healthy coping mechanisms, and not your ED, no matter what it is. it's this risk that makes me doubt that full recovery exists. take the strongest recovered person out there, and see what happens if some awful tragedy happens in her life - is there any guarantee she won't relapse?

for this reason, i think recovery status strengthens with time and experience. the more that you go through and survive without turning to your eating disorder, the stronger your recovery is. it's a constant learning process. even then, the stress might be so high that your ED is taunting you against your will. this conflicts with that recovered definition of having no thoughts or urges. is it possible? i don't know. i know that you can get through life without your eating disorder, but how easy that is seems to be at the mercy of what life wants to throw at you.