Lindsey Hall

Kitty is makin a strong recovery despite that grumpy Gus look on her face 😂 thank you all. Wanted to give a brief update of my own: • There’s alot I could say in regards to my post last week, mostly thanks. To all of you. but really all I feel equipped to share rn is that it’s mentally hard trying to put weight back on and I don’t feel like talking online about it much. can’t trust my writing at the moment, which really means I don’t trust my subconscious. • Forgot how hard it is to go through putting on weight. To eat normally. Uncomfortable at best and fighting against that part of my brain that craves the high of the cycle, when the cycle isn’t warping me senseless. • Tough shit. I don’t think anyone should be lied to about it. Weird to be doing this rn, in the prime of my life - like how did this shit happen? • Feel like what have I even been doing for 8 years of recovery just to be 32 somehow doing this again bc doctors tell me I need to. Right when I’m living out dreams. • What do they know, I wanna say. I’m fine. • It’s odd to love my life and be abusing it in some way too. Like I’m not unhappy - I’m just unhappy rn lol trying to eat like I know I should. So then it’s weird to be like well I felt just fine before so why am I just making myself unhappy now. • I guess I remind myself bc I know this shit won’t last. The cycle can’t sustain itself. I’ll lose everything. Am I writing that for you - or for me? It’s hard to know sometimes. • I love my bloody life y’all. I just love it so much. Would stay alive til I was 365 if I could. So I don’t get why I’d be doing this rn. • It’s like at least when I went to rehab at 24 I know why. I was unhappy and lost and confused and hadn’t ever dealt with anything properly so I coped. • But I’m 32 now. I know and can preach all this shit about recovery and ED and still turn around and live a duplicitous life. It’s unbelievable, jarring. • Mostly just jarring to remember how hard this shit is and how easy it is to be sucked into it. • I love this community, and I’ve also taken a much needed step back to be on my own. It’s meant pausing lovers, exes, social media and sometimes friends. • I learn. I learn. I learn 💛

Life is something y’all. There I am, bags packed, headed to Europe - when my kitty takes a tumble off a 3-story balcony. • Any of you who know me know that cat is like my grounding point. • She is my babe. My travel bud. Van shot gun. She keeps me grounded when I wanna go haywire. She gives me a firm reason to return to center bc she’s my lil responsibility at every moment. • So hearing her jump onto the roof after a bird, and promptly slide off it — fuckin’ oye. • Heard her crash into the tree, and onto the ground. Her lil cry when she hit bottom. • Everything in life can be so confusing until you have that split second where you’re like “wait nothing matters except what I love and value.” • We got a long road ahead, my lil bb. She’s a fighter - we got a fractured leg and we spent 12 hours at the ER yesterday getting her scrapes, inners, and next steps figured out: • And man am I grappling with some intense guilt. • But she’ll be okay. • Cancelled my flights, moved around schedules, losing money left and right, rebooking a flight to be in a French wedding: • But that lil bb is gonna be okay - and I’m grateful for that. • Slept with her in the closet last night like a sap. She can’t jump for 6 weeks and she utterly hates that cast, but there I was, 3am on the ground of a closet, when I feel her tuck into me. Like she did as a kitten. • I got you baby girl, I whispered. • I’ll always have her lil current peg leg back, she’s my babe. One day, I like to think she’s helping make me into a mother 💛🏴‍☠️ • #cats #catsofinstagram #catlover #petlovers #petsagram #pets #kittycat #catlife

4 months I’ve been nomadic, without a home, in a van, on the road, however you wanna put it - • And you know what it’s given me? Ducking silence lol. I had this immaculate dream of writing a bunch of short stories or like having some profound insights about my life but all it’s done is rip me apart — like I’m so disheveled & undone that I have nothing to say most of the time. • I’m learning. Or maybe I just think I’m learning. Maybe I’m living & not everything has to mean something & we try to put so much emphasis on things. • Maybe I’m doing the best I can. And it’s imperfect in its process. • For awhile, I lost weight. I didn’t wanna talk about it online. Or with anyone for that matter. idk that I thought I would until I had some perfectly worded way to talk about it. • I don’t. I lost weight. I was lonely. It’s not that it was my eating disorder brain flaring - more just a lack of desire to make meals for one. That was hard. Like it’s easier to snack & to make a meal is effort. • It was my eating disorder brain. I’m kidding myself. • N it wasn’t until I was at the doctors & they scared the shit out of me. • “So we have to say this,” he said with a bored look. “But you’ve been flagged for heart rate. You an athlete or something?” • I nodded, fibbed. I didn’t wanna go into my history w an urgent care doctor. • I asked about my Blood pressure. • “But you’re clearly in shape,” he said - and I shook my head to myself. Fucking medical bias. I didn’t correct him. • It’s weird to be happy - & to struggle. • I told my mom. My brother. I tell people - but idk what I want from it. Part of me wants to hide it so I have no responsibility to “be better” than it. Part of me knows it’s a waste of life to engage w it - & that the inevitable outcome will be the same. • I stay teetering the line - I lose everything. I lose focus and business and time. • Or I don’t. But then I have to write shit like this. And now it’s no longer secret and i do have to own this weird dichotomy between being both happy and struggling rn. • The last couple weeks have been better. I’m not defined by ED - but I live with it. • On I keep living — and I do bloody love life. Thanks for being here 💛

Some nights, I feel like texting one of them. I never really know which one - just one of them. • “You’ve been to Colombia,” I want to say. “Why didn’t we go together?” • It’s only a thought. And I don’t do it. Both of them now wake up with women in their beds. And I’m tired of being a vampire. • I don’t write lately. Jot down a convo. Take note of a feeling - • But all this life right now - it’s unfamiliar. I don’t have time to process it before I’m onto another unfamiliar experience. • I feel unattached to the daily. To people. To experience. To time. • I’m not sure how to feel about it. • I lose a ring - one I’ve owned for 16 years - and shrug. • Kiss a human & see them kiss someone else later. Grin. Go get ‘em, I say when they come back to me. Live for the besos. You are not mine to keep. • Someone plays piano for me in Medellin, until 2am, & I cry when they sing. In the morning, I don’t text back. • Part of me feels like I should tap into attachment so that I recognize details again. That really it’s not some metaphorical peace - but apathy. • Part of me feels like maybe apathy happens to re-build something that mirrors attachment. • I am no one’s home right now. Don’t come crying at my door, you’ll find no one there. I don’t want to be anyone’s fucking home. • Thought I’d be back in August, now I can’t see past 3 weeks. • At the peak of my life And I have no fear - other than when this ends. A push and pull to find grounding. It all sounds so boring. • Where do I go when all this is done? I have no idea. And that feels safe. • Board a plane: shove AirPods in my ears: Bright Eyes “Devil Town”. I smile. • My ex used to play it loudly, through speakers, & sing to himself at 8am when he thought I wasn’t watching: coffee steaming & the cat on his lap. • I was always watching. I hope his new partner watches, too. • Settle into my seat, Spanish syllables echoing through flight attendant announcements: • Bright Eyes droning me to sleep: • I was living in a devil town Didn’t know it was a devil town Oh lord, really brings me down, about the devil town All my friends were vampires - Turns out, I was a vampire myself. • I’ll see you when I see you, home 💛 #vanlife

I’m in Colombia 🇨🇴 and it dawned on me yesterday, while walking around - thinking about when I moved to Spain at 22 - how sick I was then. And how maybe at 32, some part of me is so drawn towards being uninhibited and nomadic and “free” because I really am free this time around. • It’s like I’m trying to make up for everything that happened back then or trying to just like fill up my life with all the experiences I wanted them to be but couldn’t because I was so sick in my head and scared of being free and gaining weight or not having a gym. • Idk, just in such a free moment of time: thank god I’m single and doing this on my own. • I think that so many times a day lately 💛🇨🇴💫 • • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfamily

In such an interesting phase of nomad living where I feel really disconnected from everything: this platform, my friends, my own writing even. It’s not a bad thing, just a sentiment. • Headed to Columbia on Saturday. • Im completely untethered lately, but with a lot of really beautiful grounding strings that keep me not feeling like I’m about to fall off a teetered ship. • Love you all who stick around on here. Wish I could meet you all in this world - I mean that too. Man I love humans. I do. • But lately just kinda slipping away, down here by the sea. • Full-Eyed, Kinda freeing all my trust to the unknown. • I think I was withdrawing all summer from love addiction - n I mean that yo. Like it has felt like an absolute withdrawing. Like I’ve come out of it and am stumbling around with so much more space in my mind to be. • Doesn’t mean I don’t think about my ex or think about all that - the stories and the nuance of love. But I’m just less idk less motivated to do things because of it. • My ED stuff has been weird this summer I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. Some of y’all so kindly (🤔) started publicly writing comments on my posts and instead of addressing it I just let it all sit there. • But I am okay and I guess I just didn’t really feel like defending myself online. I go up and down and my ED is something I have to manage. Sometimes I get passive towards it, but I come around. I always come back around. • Have gained back weight - been lifting a bit. Used to love looking frail - how 90s chic 🙄. But at some point I return to the reality that I wanna be strong and vibrant and walk places and travel everywhere and see everything while I have this minuscule amount of time on earth. • EDs just don’t compute with my lifestyle lol. Like literally I can’t go back to my ED or it’ll fuck up everything and maybe it’s just that sentiment alone that keeps me walking back off the cliff. • Anyway that’s all I got - a stream of consciousness today 💛 • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfamily

I f*cked up, I said to a friend. Have I actually learned shit from this whole summer? From all the attachment workbooks? From all the love withdrawal. And the being alone? Or am I just reading & not absorbing anything? • I moaned, “it’s like the second I could revert back to old patterning I did. The millisecond even!!” • I don’t remember what my friend said back. I frankly wasn’t listening. I wanted to pity party myself to her ear drum. • The art of unlearning is hard. It keeps me dancing. • Came home from being away, plopped myself back on my yoga mat. Sneered. What is the good in all this mindfulness anyway, if I can’t even go a weekend out without reverting to some tired patterning? • I think this as I hit play on a yoga session. As I lay with my head begrudgingly on the mat, as I cook dinner and whip up some more stupid couscous I’ve had 800x this summer. • I think it at 10pm when that dude I was seeing before I left texts me. And think it as I shelve the text and think “what is the point? You’re an avoider.” • I think it at midnight last night, sitting alone in silence, mind racing. And as I drag out the piano from the wall and hit keys bc I don’t wanna think about all of it anymore. • I think about what’s the use of this summer as a melody comes together: and as I get up this morning to feed the Kitty. • I think about it as I play the piano again, on the deck, to no one and everyone. I think about it as the chords come together and it all feels like forgiveness. • I think about my ex when i play this song, our years together whip by in a blur with each note, I think about how this is my life. • This is my f*cking life: and it brought me here. • And I am just living it the best I can. And doing the best I can. • That being alone has, in fact, gotten easier. And my heart didn’t flutter when that old fling texted. • And that even though I fucked up an opportunity to prove my growth, I am still proving it in a million different cataclysmic ways: in new hobbies, & consistent self awareness. • In the moments I hear the song in my head come out into the world n smile (slide 5) • I am learning it all - it’s just not how I thought it’d be. Maybe that’s healing 💛

🚐 Month 3 of life on the road: fueled by attachment theory, family, confusion (what is love????), open ears, elevated sunsets, heartache that spews everywhere, a quiet loneliness, and strengthened friendships. • I am so tired yall. Yet equally as happy to be at this point in my life - one i thought would look much different, all those years ago - when I envisioned #vanlife • Thought I’d write a book - instead I’m just listening. I am trying to hear - what a difference that makes 💛 • • #vanlifediaries #vanlifetravels #womenontheroad #vanlifestyle #nomadlife #nomads #recovery #edfam #edfamilyrecovery #edfamily #mentalhealth

Thought I’d write a book this summer but instead I blew myself wide open and now have nothing to say as I sit unlearning all my relationship and intimacy patterns that have brought me to an unmanageable point. • Funny how life has different plans for you. • I think I’m all suave getting a van and cruising about America, like my confidence and knowledge couldn’t be any higher - and then bam. Now I’m like sitting knee deep in my own shit, wading through so much stuff I didn’t want to face. • It’s strange I do worry that all this work on my relationships will translate into me being unable to write about relationships anymore in that kinda “way” I’ve been used to. • Will I just logically look at all my relationships through the lens of attachment theory and not lustful romance? Lol riveting. • Idk. It’s hard. And also, good. Im not as mad at my ex lately. Im not as heartbroken by the past. It’s like I see it all through a different lens, one that is more factual than whimsical. • But god it makes for boring writing. I wonder: will I ever see someone in that light again? Or is love just supposed to be a calm heartbeat? Idk y’all. Hard shit. • Instead of writing a book, I’m re-writing myself. And Idk where that goes yet. All I know is I’m taking more time off social, feeling more comfortable being alone, with no tortured side love flings, and getting acquainted with me. I find I like eggs scrambled, but I don’t even really care much for them like I once assumed I did when past partners cooked them daily. • Some days, i feel like I can finally think again - about some much other than my relationships or food. • A true gift 💛🚐 • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #recoveryfam #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfamily

Y’all know I am balls deep into attachment theory right now - and contemplating all the ways my eating disorder was “protest behavior” to feeling or the perception that i was emotionally or physically abandoned/overwhelmed/etc in critical life junctures. • It’s not all about your parents either FWIW. It’s first loves and formative ties and bonds that break or are taken away (however perceived) in critical years. I think about how grieving prob played a role too. • Y’all I just feel like I’m in relationship rehab lately - and it’s everything I needed. Like it’s the thing. • It’s why the ED came about in the first place me thinks. • And it’s tough ass work, like I’m emotionally exhausted and nothing looks the same anymore and I can barely write bc Every experience with love I’ve had I’m seeing in a different lens, and that makes me kinda… sad? But knowing I need to reframe 💛 • Ps read “Attached” - the book. Mind blowing if you’re anxious or avoidant in relationships. • • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #recoveryfam #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfamily

In a strange time where I look at every intimate relationship I've experienced & question what was functional love & what was anxious/codependent. Hey, even healthy love? Healthy can exist, right? Even amidst all the toxic dynamic? Is that possible? Am I fooling myself? • Was I ever able to hold both? But, but, I write. Haven’t I been the one to leave 90% of my relationships? Does that *really* make me anxious attached? • Oh. MAYBE I’m avoidant. Avoidant seems much cooler. More tolerable. • Even me writing that suggests I’m definitely anxious. • What were the narratives I had vs the reality that happened? For some of these relationships, do I even remember? Or have I bloated it in writing - in pretty sentences - that the experience of the love is actually quite different than reality? What is reality? Do I even want to know the difference? I would much rather go on adoring old lovers. Blowing up my 4-week romance in Ireland. Or talking about the day they walked into my classroom in Spain. Isn’t it nice to idealize? • Frankly, I can’t stand the thought that love just fades into oblivion. Sometimes, I think I’m a love warrior for making sure I hold onto mine til the bitter end. • I didn’t think when I left on the van, that this summer would entail so much questioning. Unraveling. • It’s like I bought the van & put myself in self-imposed relationship rehab. But this time I’m not making out with someone in a phone booth in between group therapy (yes, of course I did that - are you even surprised?) • I read & I see many of my exes so clearly. Every other page “wow - YES MATE.” I wonder how different things could’ve been had I framed it all differently. • Though I say that & then for me I’m still all “ugh, I guess that’s me… but like I’m not JUST that.” • It’s confusing to decide which insights to take. How much to work on. And then when am I just losing all fire & passion for love. Which EW. • I notice: Smudge will forever act like my ex - an avoidance to being over-loved that I take too personally. I find it hilarious that even my avoidant cat senses my anxious attachment & it feels like she punishes me for it. • That’s all I got tonight, folx. Love you all. lol.

There are so many I can rattle off in this thread but these are just the ones that popped into my head this AM and remind me of my own experiences so pls don’t think I’m signaling Anorexia only — the restriction part of my cycle was much more “loud” in manipulation than my binge eating. I binge ate out of restriction most of the time, or out of feeling out of control. Ugh. Cereal. I still think about the special K boxes I downed. Like why special k?????? what a boring grain cereal to binge eat. Wasn’t even creative in my binge eating (not trying to make light but y’know. Sometimes I shake my head.) • Add your own in the comments if you’d like - but no triggering foods or numbers of course 💛 • • • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #recoveryfam #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfamily

I also hate that I wrote “stop” I find that so annoying lol like you’re gonna think what you think, but alas this post is a bit older and I’m learning. • I went on a jog last night and thought about how I used to do this at the heat of the day in the Florida summer sun as a 21 year old. N how I’d black out from being hot and yet still keep on, then be dead to the world later in the day from exhaustion. • An eating disorder will have you do the most self destructive shit n maybe it’s not all the time or maybe you’re like whatever it hasn’t really affected me yet — but it does. And it will. • The amount of perseverance we had trying to lose weight or bulk or be “fit” — channel that energy into recovery. A different kind of shedding 💛 • • • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #recoveryfam #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfam #edfamily

When I taught you Bananagrams in that CO town, you learned fast, & swiftly won all three games: my attempts at being alluring quickly squashed. • I made excuses: “too many Qs.” But truth is you were better, & you knew it, but humored me anyway - whether out of disinterest or care, I’ll never know. • (I probably know.) It was all already ending. • Sat in the saloon, you ordered another whiskey shot & wouldn’t look me in the eye. You took it too fast, briefly nodding thanks to the server. • I looked away, your desperation off putting, & flipped over the tiles, one at a time. As we’d played, I knew what someone had said about your IQ was true. • A sinking feeling that I’d learned something true abt you - but that it probably wouldn’t matter. That learning more of you would be pointless. • You really are smart as hell: what a living hell it must be. • “I played this in rehab,” I casually mention. I don’t know why. I know you don’t want to know more abt me. But sometimes, I use stories at clout. “I’m interesting SEE WHAT I OVERCAME.” • You nod, try to engage. But clip the conversation. In normal instances, I’d call it out. But, I don’t know you well enough, I’m realizing, though we’d been bunked up in an Airbnb. Before that, your home. Moving out of my house just to live - in flux - at yours til I left on the van. We’d dated for the shelf life of eggs. • God, what have I done? Think of my ex: imagine he’d feel glee in my anguish here. • You turn, looking over me to the TV. • Peer around the bar. Is there someone I can flirt with? Remind you I’m great? • Scold myself: Manipulative. Besides, I am woman. Hear me roar. I don’t need you to want me. • (I want you to want me. This is miserable.) • We moved too fast, you’d say later. I freaked out. Idk how it happened. We just… too fast. You’re leaving. • I knew exactly how it happened, but said nothing: a pattern so familiar it hadn’t phased me. • You pulled away when I left. One day, I’ll thank you. • 3 months later, teach my friend Bananagrams n think of you: the pain of that night. When we finish, I hug her. • I think: the heart is a muscle for love. Love - in all its different forms. • Lately, I use it for Friendship 💛

I’m really bad about opening sentences to these posts I always go with “I don’t know who needs to hear this” lol bc i guess it has a ring to it or something but I don’t really like it and it always feels so commanding and like I think I’m some wise monk when I’m not I’m just a person that has lived recovery and an eating disorder for now 16 years combined. • Anyway, been chatting a lot in my stories about codependency and how my love “addiction” (is there a better way to phrase this?) might actually be far harder to tend to than my eating disorder. I’d venture to say it might be a crux of why I have an eating disorder but I’m still mulling through that. • Y’know what’s so … just ah… telling? I get on IG last night and the person I was seeing before I left in the van “liked” a photo over at my personal IG and dude that one encounter - just that one connective tissue, caused me to straight up dream about them last night. • Woke up all groggy and like “wow I am such a love addict man.” • We haven’t communicated truly in months outside of two apology texts and a note I left when I left Boulder after a visit. But we’ve played the social media game of me (sheepishly) re-following their account to be “friends” and then this like “oh I liked your photo” so now they’ve liked mine back lol. I hate dating. Hate social media sometimes. • In some ways grateful my ex blocked me so We don’t have to play this crappy, weird nuanced thing. • But it’s hard. Have never been the type to hold up social media boundaries or “unfollow” or “restrict” an acct until this last person. but as I dive deeper into attachment styles and issues I wonder if I’ll have to one day be a bit more commanding over what I see online from former lovers, partners etc. • Idk you tell me lol. I’m just doing a lot of digging around right now - and it’s why my book is going nowhere. It’s like I’m at the next level of recovery and yet starting all over again. • Love you all 💛 • • • #edfam #recovery #anarecovery #eatingdisorderrecovery #edrecovery #anorexiarecovery #mentalhealth #recoveryfam #dietculturesucks #recoveryispossible #anorexianervosarecovery #bulimiarecovery #bingeeatingrecovery #edfam #edfamily