One Year On, The World Seems Calm…

A year ago this happened. My posts at the time describe the trauma of a single muffin and a glass of milk or the exhaustion of day in, day out battling with anorexia through a fog of depression, against the merry festive backdrop of Christmas.

The Friday before Christmas this year is different. L comes home from The Boyfriend’s house, full of plans for her nose piercing that day. She snuggles in bed, squealing about the potential pain and wondering if a shot of vodka would be helpful. I hear about her evening out and what she describes as “Woman vs Burrito” as she ordered a meal that turned out to be enormous and she laughs at the memory and I’m confident she ate it all. At lunch she goes to Nando’s for chicken burger and chips and we meet at Starbucks where she orders a gingerbread latte topped with whipped cream.

In the evening we go to the zoo, lighted up for Christmas and The Boyfriend is adorable with her, affectionately mocking her Christmas jumper that lights up. She says she can’t quite face pizza that evening after Nando’s, but she eats it anyway, along with wedges and bread. I’ve bought a new bread maker and she has plans to make different types of bread, that she wants to eat. “Aww, mate, bread, I am so into it” she tells me, as if it is a new phenomenon. Which it is.

But it’s not the food. It’s the laughter. The confidence. The excitement about gigs and the discussion about dip dying of hair or the next piercing. The emergence of a new person who cares about things other than food. Or avoiding food. She still has some way to go and some weight to gain. But the world this Christmas is a calmer, happier place than the terror filled miseryfest of 2013. And there aren’t the words to describe how happy that makes me.