It’s like an anthem - summertime is the time of change. It’s the time of suntanned stomachs, of doomed love affairs and lying in the grass covered in dew. For me it’s also always been a time of reflection, like I have three months to rewrite who I am before the next year comes.

First, I always start by erasing, which is easier than it sounds. It’s the new story that’s the hard part, because you can’t always see what’s coming or why or how to make it better. Here are the three summers that made me who I am:

The First Summer

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Summer one. It’s the summer of 7th grade, and next year I will be older and a teenager and almost a high schooler, but none of that matters to me. I am sick.

I know that, but nobody else seems to care. I am alone, but nobody else would know that, would they? I am sick, but I am tired of being sick, I am tired of being called crazy, and I am tired of being called fine. And most of all, I am tired of not getting a say in what they call me.

It’s the first summer since my world changed forever, but saying that sounds so corny, so I say it’s been my first summer since the lockdown ended or it’s the first summer since I slept for two years (awake or not, trust me, I was asleep.) Whatever. It’s my first summer, and I am done with not knowing what or how to be. I am tired of myself, and I am tired of my body.

I stop eating. I exercise for hours. I curse at the foggy mirror.

This is how I become sick, and this is how I get better. The wanting. I want to be beautiful more than I want to disappear, and so I find my reason to live. I don’t live well, do not be mistaken, but I do live, and I do try just a little harder than before, and maybe if hating yourself means thinking about yourself then what I did wasn’t all so bad after all.

The year begins, and I am still sick, but in a new, less painful way. I trace the gap on my thighs and I avoid birthday parties so I don’t have to gaze wistfully at the cakes. It feels like a sacrifice worth making.

You have to understand, I’ll tell anyone who asks, I know exactly what I’m doing. I know what it’s like to be numb, and I know what it’s like to be hungry, and if you’ve never felt one, don’t tell me the other isn’t better. Don’t tell me to learn to be happy- this is the closest I will ever come.

I have sworn revenge on my body. I study like I’m building a weapon. I have learned that makeup makes me feel stronger.

It is February, the hottest month in India. I am laying on my grandparent’s bed, counting the specs of dust on the ceiling.

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The Second Summer

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This is my second summer, and it’s also my second winter. I am miles and miles away from the horror of my 8th grade year, which makes me feel happy, but it also makes my knees want to give way. There’s something strange about me that I never want to do anything ever again but lie in my own bed and feel hot water scald my skin.

I have plenty of friends, but only one I want to talk to-Eliza. Which I do sometimes, but then I hang up and I remember where I am and I’m sick of feeding her lies about how great this trip is when all I want to do is cry. I hate this hellhole and I hate myself for hating it.

I can’t starve myself anymore, not as well, and without it I’ve forgotten how to be. I’m on the phone with her, but the more I talk the more I spin this little tale.

“I can’t diet,” I was thinking. “And I don’t know how to stop. I hate that. I hate that I don’t know how to feel this. I hate that I don’t know how to tell you.

But I don’t tell her that, because I also hate relying on other people, and because honestly, this seemed like I was on the edge of something beautiful, like I could find all the answers if I just looked a little further. I’m a little too calculating when I tell people my secrets.

But then, my secrets are the only thing I have. I’d been here before, I remembered it. I’d been on the edge, that’s how I learned to stop eating in the first place.

This was a little less hard. Maybe that meant I could make the right choice.

I still remember the day that brought me back to life. It was so simple. I’d eaten every meal my parents had given me, however much I fought.

I could have just gone to sleep. But my mouth watered.

And I asked for an apple.

As I stumbled back into my real life, I promised myself I was different. I was never going to fall again. I was never going to be sick again. I was free.

It has been two months. The best two months of my life. I was happy, I had never known it was possible to be so happy. I had never known that there were lives like this out there.

It has been three months. It is the last day of school. I have been counting every last day for months, timing the seconds on my fingers.

It is the last day of school, and I am free. I am free and I can do whatever the [censored] I want to, and there is nothing in the world that can stop me anymore.

I am scared though. I am a little scared. I am scared of what will happen now that I have all the freedom in the world.

Now that I have something worth protecting. My recovery, right now, is the thing I need to keep in mind. It is the thing that I need to remember even at my lowest point.

I have learned so much. I have found so many things I love more than I ever thought I would. have been given so many gifts. And I would do anything to keep them. I am scared.

The Third Summer

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It has been five months.

The memories came slowly, just like they had in the past. As days turned into weeks and I remembered just why I did what I did, every single thing I had left slowly caught up with me. It’s the way these diseases work, they don’t attack you, all at once.

The honeymoon stage of recovery never lasts, and you have to take the time to grieve, and learn to live with parts of it. People think once you start to get better, that’s it. Nobody ever mentions the after.

But it’s okay, because I am stronger. It’s funny, I’m starting to think. My disordered eating felt like a friend.

Like my rock. And my recovery does too, but a stronger one. I am stronger, right? I don’t want to lose this, I keep reminding myself, and that feels like a warning sign. Because.. shouldn’t I know that? Shouldn’t I know how important this is? Shouldn’t I want this?

Now I’m scared. Now I am really and truly scared, because how do you do the right thing when you don’t know what it is? I’m too tired to work any harder.

And every technique I’ve ever used is only making this worse. Because I do something stupid, and I try to hold myself accountable, but then I just feel worse and then I can’t stop. And it doesn’t feel like holding myself accountable anymore; it feels like self-harm.

It just feels easier to punish myself for not fixing this. I had everything, and I let it this far. And every now and then I remember, oh, yeah, all’s not lost. I know how to calm myself down, I know when I’m going down the wrong path, but I just don’t know how to get back to where I was.

Then I remembered this article that I had read, long ago, and had all but forgotten about. That night I had crawled into bed and logged onto my phone, searching and searching.

The title was in [censored] letters. How Giving Up On A Perfect Recovery Actually Helped Me Heal From My Eating Disorder. I skimmed through it, waiting for the words I needed to hear. “I didn’t understand it then, but I had not really failed (at recovery).

Instead, I was entering a new stage of my recovery. I was also about to expand my definition of the word. ..I am starting to add something new: I am thinking of recovery in the present tense.. I have started to feel like recovery is more like a cyclical state, with seasons that mirror nature’s own.

Immediately, I began to make a list. I made a hundred reasons to keep going. And shame was something I promised myself I would leave in the past.

I pasted the article into it, along with some other quotes and stories that had helped me through in the past. Reminders that there isn’t a magic cure. Reminders that there aren’t any promises. I think the biggest thing that helped me though, is this.

I don’t really consider myself God-fearing, I’m too much of a skeptic to believe in any sort of organized religion. But if God does exist, then there’s one thing that has to be true. God gave us free will, the opportunity to do whatever the [censored] we want to with our lives.

He never gave us any sort of path, any directional map. And with that power comes the responsibility to use it to get what we want and need out of life.

My recovery is important to me, and it always will be. But it is not who I am. And it isn’t solid.

Maybe recovery isn’t really the right word. Lifestyle would be a better one. Because it’s job is to change with me as I grow. To be whatever I need it to be. Change isn’t linear because life isn’t linear.

You learn to fall in love with the word recovery, and then you learn to let go of it. I don’t think the point is to be better anymore, but to be happy.

The reason I don't consider this year a relapse is because I have gained one thing that an unhealthy person would not have- trust. I have trust in myself to find my way back to the road I want, and I have trust in fate not to give me more than I can handle. That is the greatest promise of all.