The Season of Fall Makes Me 'Fall' Into My Eating Disorder

For the past three years, I have spent the fall months

(September-November) relapsing into anorexia. Somehow, I am always newly discharged from treatment just before these months, then medically unstable and in the hospital by December. It feels like clockwork, as if my body and mind are primed to sabotage everything at this time of year. This year has not been so; I am still in treatment. I’m struggling but not fully relapsing. It feels different, foreign and “not right,” even though I know it is. This is the farthest I have come thus far in my recovery. I am aware now, and that is more than I have been before.

I felt it today. The pull with the change of weather and the change of season. For years now, the transition from summer to fall has signified my descent and “fall” into the depths of my eating disorder. Something about the cooling temperatures and the smell of the brightening yet dying leaves stirs up the urge within me to double down on what I know best: restriction. I find comfort in burying myself to feel empty and numb. This comfort is more than just reaching for your coziest wool sweater, a cup of steaming hot cider in hand and a blanket. It’s more than being surrounded by the warm glow of the orange sun, spice scented candles, pumpkins, bright monarch colored mums and sweet candy corn. These are the only comforts that this season is meant to bring.

In some ways, the need to succumb to anorexia in the fall reflects the change of season. Like leaves falling from their source of life, I fall from mine. I fall away from the root that keeps human existence alive. Like the leaves cut off from chlorophyll, I begin to wither away from life. And yet with this season, I also reject it. I revolt against it’s natural callings, like the geese flying south, the squirrels running around gathering nourishment for the harsh winter months and humans making warm soups, pie and casseroles to warm themselves from the inside out.

I turn against this season’s natural necessities. Instead of warming myself, I make the freezing temperatures more frigid and unbearable. Instead of storing up, I ration. The squirrels fur thickens while I shrink away. Just before the leaves fall, they brighten. Perhaps they do this to comfort us in their parting, knowing that they will leave behind a dull world. My fall into anorexia is void of a splendid display of color. I become the definition of lackluster; my eyes dull, my face turns ashen, a purplish hue surrounds my lips and extremities, my perspective narrows, my thoughts are slow motion drifting through dense fog. My falling is dim, not bright. It does not soften the blow of death like the leaves.

At this time of year, there is always this yearning. I am aware of it, that’s all.