Triple Point: How I've Come to Understand My Recovery
In chemistry, there is a small but notable phenomenon known as the triple point, the point at which the three states of a pure substance—solid, liquid, and gas—can coexist. My practical and scientific side as well as my poetic and emotional side both delight in this unique physical occurrence, since I’ve found that many metaphorical truths can be gleaned from it.
Fall is, to me, the triple point of the seasons. Fall’s weather, at least where I’m located, always feels like a melting pot of the yearly climates. Toward its beginning, fall allows for remnants of summer’s heat waves, while its central weeks largely imitate spring’s temperance, and as it closes, winter’s chill finally tapers in.
The ambiguity of fall’s weather served as a haven for me during the years that I struggled with anorexia. My habit of wearing heavy sweatshirts during the hot summer months would later on become a talking point with my doctors, having been one of many indicators of my deteriorating health. In the fall, though, no one could point out the oddity of wearing extra layers. I was able to hide an otherwise visibly weakening body behind layers of sweatshirts and jackets, hence diverting attention from my worsening sickness.
In this way, I felt safer in the fall. But it was a false, sickly sense of safety—safety from a looming confrontation, not safety from what was truly my greatest danger.
When I was sick, I held only a shallow penchant for fall. Trapped in illness, I was never able to truly admire the majestic beauty of the leaves changing colors and the landscape transforming into a vivid scene. I never felt the conspicuous air of playfulness that rolled in with Halloween, the sudden flip of perspective as fear, usually a paralyzing barrier, became something to have fun with—something to be overcome. And the homely foods unique to fall—ciders to cool you down, spiced drinks to warm you up, and arrays of cuisine in the Thanksgiving tradition, prepared with love to satisfy any taste brought to the table—were lost on me.
It was only after slowly but surely shaking off the cold grip of my eating disorder that I was able to rediscover all these beautiful aspects that compose the fall season. As I did, I began to rediscover my special kinship with fall, seeing in its triple point a reflection of my own triple point of recovery.
There is no single set of steps a person can take to heal from an eating disorder. I didn't stick to one correct habit and have everything else fall into place. Recovery, I've come to understand, is not a permanent place or a fixed prize. Rather, it is a choice that people who have struggled with eating disorders must make every day.
I now believe there were certain factors that came together in such a way as to ultimately enable me to make and continue making that choice. No one's triple point of recovery is going to look the same. Some may have a double point or a quadruple point. We're extending beyond scientific terms with these, but eating disorder recovery isn't formulaic like chemistry. I've mapped my recovery with a triple point, and although it by no means provides a definitive explanation, it provides a foundation, some scaffolding, for my own understanding of how I recovered.
Why would I want to understand? Why would I desire to continue to reflect on that difficult period of my life? Because I want to be prepared for conversations, when they happen, about my recovery. If someone asks me how I healed from a disease that almost killed me, I don't want to give a nonanswer. I've been tempted before to say that I simply left my eating disorder behind and moved on to more important things, as if it were an easy break-up. Or to brush off the question, saying it just happened, it's over, and I don't like talking about it. The painful memories of the years I spent starved of energy, of life, are something I have until recently wanted to keep buried as a thing of the past. What I’ve missed about this, though, is how I am simultaneously burying the opportunity to help those who may be caught in the same cold grip of an eating disorder that I was able to escape.
I no longer want to treat my recovery as if it were a secret or mysterious thing born out of fortune and circumstance. The truth is that I took my life back from anorexia. And this, I believe, is how:
Choice
As I began my recovery journey, more options opened up to me. Options of food to eat, clothes to wear, and ways to move my body without hurting it. With the broadening of my horizons came freedom and independence as I relearned how to take care of myself as a human being with very real limits and very real needs.
Support
I never would have been able to reclaim my worth as a person deserving of nourishment and energy without support. The individuals who met me in my suffering gave me strength and determination when I didn’t have it myself. The communities that embraced me as soon as I was ready to resume the hobbies and passions that anorexia had prevented me from pursuing gave me a sense of purpose and belonging.
Stimulus
I had a why. And as time went on my whys grew in number. Eventually, I had so many whys that they started to eclipse all the why-nots. Why recover? Because I wanted more from life than I was getting. Because I wanted to stop dying. I wanted to let go of the hatred I felt toward myself. To be strong. To be colorful. To paint the world with myself. Why not recover? That question became increasingly more difficult to answer, until I could provide no answer at all.
I was given choice. I accepted support. I found stimulus. This is how I recovered from a sickness that could have taken my life.
Your recovery might have looked different. Or maybe it’s ongoing, or still on the horizon. This, though, is something I’m sure of: each of us survivors has our own triple point. Even if yours seems distant now, I promise it isn’t too far to reach.
