I’m just beginning to kick towards the surface of one of the worst spells of my recent life. I was hospitalised again, some eight weeks ago, and then transferred to an anorexia treatment centre on the other side of the country. While there, I quickly established myself as a piece of utter filth. I think I’m contriving to un-recover the others.

Today, I couldn’t choke down dinner in time, so they offered Fortisip (think British Ensure). I was terrified that they’d give me more than what I’d left of the food, so I asked them to show me how much I would have to take. They told me that that wouldn’t be helpful, as if a gaggle of sink school dropouts fresh from nursing college know my fears better than I do. I held onto the plate, thinking that it would be easier to try to eat it than take that stuff. A particularly boorish nurse pulled it from my hands. I grabbed at it and he pushed me back into the chair. A hysterical impression of a screech owl ensued. Eventually, I wound up with a big red “refused” in the nursing notes, my “privilege” of being able to go for a walk tomorrow morning revoked, and my image to the other inmates utterly ruined. They look at me with such unflickering pitying contempt. I know I’m making it more difficult for them, and I hate that. They have every right to dislike me. I wish I had more scope to avoid them, but we’re corralled together so much.

I’ve restricted every single day since the first day I subverted the meal plan. I’m not “recovering”. Every day I snap out of it for a little, maybe one scheduled snack or one meal or a moment caught between bites, and do what I’d typically consider as “binge” but what I’m now told is “comply”, and then go back.

I’m pathetic, and I don’t know which makes me more pathetic - that I can’t stick to the meal plan, that I question not-sticking-to-the-meal-plan and do it of my own volition sometimes when I could get out of it, or that I can’t decide which way to go. I hate you, anorexia, with a passion.