Identity crisis

Whenever my life starts looking up, I think I freak out a little.
"But I'm sick!" my brain tells me. "You'd better prove you're sick or you won't be you anymore!"

So I relapse a little, in one way or another (it's my eating disorder this time obviously). That way I know I'm still me. I'm still the sick person I'm familiar with. So this just happened and I'm trying to pull myself back in. Okay, I did it, I proved that I can still be sick externally. And I need to stop before it's all the way out of my control. I've done this a hundred times it feels like. And it never changes. But this time, the acceptance that I have to stop--go back to a "recovery" way of life, eat normally like I know how to do--is like ripping my heart out. It's always hard, getting over these little lapses, but now...
I think because I understand where the desire is coming from, it somehow makes me cling even tighter. I'm rambling, sorry

tl;dr: I lapsed, trying to stop now, hating everything because my ED is a huge part of my identity, so giving it up (again) is like killing a very dear part of myself (that I also hate).

I'm not asking for help or advice or anything, I just needed to get it out. If you read this whole thing, thank you. Hope I'm not being too...something, I don't know.
Sorry.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Can I add another thought to your logic that sometimes is where I find myself.....is that I'm sick because it has become the way I cope with things that come up in my life......yes, I'm sick, but its my coping skills that aren't working are the virus that's causing my sickness & it's those things that come up in life....stress has always made me feel sick & not want to eat as the baseline for my coping skills that stop eating so I can feel some level of control in my life, the virus that is at the base of my sickness.

With ED, I know everyone is different, but there's usually something at the very bottom of the ED that is core to why it started in the first place. It's our coping skills that we have developed through our life that keep coming back which is why it's so easy to identify ourselves as being our sickness.

I struggle constantly even though I'm working on the skills & trying to force myself because even small stresses that are at the level that causes me to feel like not eating can trigger the longer term fact of not eating....when a long term stress hits....it's all that much more difficult & forcing one's behavior to be different than what we want to do.....is a DBT term called "opposite action urge" which we have to put in place in the bad times....not easy to even want to do when one sees the weight dropping off....which triggers a whole different almost addictive response in my case also....put them all together .....& you have your ED in action......& the virus that causes our sickness.

Hope you will be able to be doing better soon......know it's difficult to fight...but sometimes is we realize that it takes as much control to counter the ED as we feel we get control by having the ED....it can help.

ugh yes, you hit the nail on the head. and I've done SO MUCH DBT. I've actually taught 2 DBT sessions on my own; I know DBT--I just don't apply it anymore.
And yeah, I absolutely use my ED as my coping skill, but it's so much more than that, and that's where my identity problem comes in.
Thank you for your response and your understanding

--Edna St. Vincent Millay