Some things I have slowly come to realize about my eating disorder since I've been home:

1. Having one was not only a way to stuff down my feelings, but a major inconvenience to any possible plans I could have for my life. I, at least, cannot get good grades in school and not eat, all at the same time.
2. I will never learn to deal with the shit that holds me down if I keep running to restriction like it will solve all my problems.
3. Restriction has never solved any of my problems.
     In fact, I think restriction created more problems than it actually solved.
4. Life wasn't very fun when I was constantly anxious and obsessed about food, and missing fun things simply because I couldn't be around the food.
5. My eating disorder was like an experimental garment.
6. I am OUT OF THAT GARMENT now, as much as I think I ever can be post-treatment, because if I go back into it again it will possess my brain that much more the next time, and be way more difficult to let go of.
7. If I ever intend to do anything worthwhile with my life, it's going to have to be without the eating disorder, because when I had the eating disorder I was totally incapable of doing anything, including school.
8. I have all my older coping mechanisms to fall back on, anyway. I can eat and still be able to be just as self-destructive as I ever was. That may seem like small comfort; but the eating disorder was never my primary coping mechanism, so if I do give it up once and for all, I will have other mechanisms.
9. Nobody who has an eating disorder, when it comes down to it, actually has any fun having an eating disorder. People with serious eating disorders are afraid of gaining even a fraction of a pound; they are afraid of food; they are afraid of the power that food has over them. They live their lives in constant anxiety. What kind of a life is that REALLY? The only thing anybody gets out of it is thinness, and some don't even get that. It's pretty miserable when you really look at it.
10. I think I needed to gain back weight in the program I was in, and get out of the semi-starvation state there, but I honestly think I can take the rest from here, if I do something instead of starve myself to deal with my emotions.

... yeeeah.