In all honesty, I haven’t been prioritizing recovery lately. I’ve let anorexia creep back into my life, and it’s making me miserable. Today, I went out to lunch with my girlfriend and some friends from the GSA. I would have liked to have been able to spend the afternoon catching up with everyone and planning our next excursion to the local drag venue. Instead, I obsessed over calories, compared my plate to everyone else’s and hid in the bathroom debating whether or not to purge.

This is not the life I want to live. I am more than an eating disorder, more than a jeans size, more than a number on the scale. Things are going so well for me right now. I’ve made a ton of friends at school. I’ve assumed a leadership position in the GSA, and I’ve been running meetings recently while our president is otherwise engaged. I have a beautiful, lovely girlfriend who makes me incredibly happy. I’m teaching myself new skills in Photoshop so that I can do more with my photos. I have a new idea for a novel, and I’ve even been writing poetry again. So why have I slipped back into self-destructive behaviors?

Letting people get close to me is hard. When I was a freshman in high school and dating my first boyfriend, I didn’t know how to use my voice, so I used behaviors instead. I would self-harm on areas of my body I didn’t want him to touch. I would purge when I needed him to pay attention to me. I would talk about how much I hated myself to get him to tell me how great he thought I was. My relationship with him set the framework for all of my future romantic relationships, and I am trying to unlearn some of those old patterns. Back when I was fourteen, it was easier to put up a wall of mental illness and self-destructive behaviors and let people get close to that than to let someone get close to the real me.

But the real me is more than a list of labels and diagnoses. I’m more than an anorexic, more than a person with psychosis, more than a lesbian, more than a trauma statistic, more than one single word or idea. I am a daughter, a sister, a best friend, a girlfriend, a writer, a photographer, an artist, a GSA leader, a teller of bad puns, a clumsy dancer, a bow-tie-wearer, a good listener, a learner, a questioner, a Jew, a granddaughter. I am the person my friends can count on when they’re desperate. I am the “mom friend.” I am constantly learning and growing. Why would I ever want to slap a label as confining and static as “anorexic” on myself when I contain universes more than an eating disorder?

I’m not sure who the person under the layers of self-hate and self-destruction is, but I’m going to find her, care for her, and love her. She’s worth it.