Putting recovery to test

Presently I am nearing the submitting deadline for my college coursework. Up-to-date and previous deadlines smashed, I spent Monday waiting for work to be marked, I have enormous issues with the use of time, I really struggle with the concept of time being wasted as therefore I find it really difficult to spend a day doing nothing. My anxiety grew throughout the day but I managed to keep my treacherous mindset from seeping into the strength and management I have mustered up recently to keep my eating disorder at bay; by pacing backwards and forwards between the library and my class and aimlessly downing cup upon cup of black coffee. 

Monday night dinner was a complete catastrophe in the form of a voluptuous pasta bolognaise; which may I add I reluctantly ate after considerably persuasion but as the night wore on I found it hard to distract myself from my academia worries. I just couldn't contemplate the idea that my work might not be marked, leaving me no time to correct errors, meaning I wasn't able to achieve the ridiculously high grades I had set myself, I may have well have failed, there was no point to life. To the outsider my irrational thought patterns may seem over dramatic, excessive and pathetic but to me the lack of control; mixed with the idea that I may not have excelled, mixed with the prospect of not having enough time petrified me and worried me profusely. 

After a ridiculous gym session I got home and had the first of 5 anxiety attacks of the next 18 hours. Suitably calmed down and moderately reassured I was probably overreacting I attempted sleep. 

I cannot place the precise moment I fell asleep but it was certainly past the tomorrow mark. As Tuesday began I became more and more anxious.

Several horrendous cups of cheap college coffee, a cluster of anxiety attacks later and I had distinctions in all my work. But I was not calm and 'anxiety-free' until I had completed my lunch. 

I am asked so often how to recover and it pains me horrendously that I cannot tell you how to cope. All I can say is what I've learnt today and that's the important part food and weight gain has had on my recovery and being able to cope. I would never have been able to cope in my emaciated state I was in six months previously. I would have been crippled with anxiety and preoccupied without of food. But instead, today, after a minor meltdown, I was able to collectively realise that my teachers weren't going to let me fail and that restrict my food intake and not eating/ being thinner was not going to change my grades for the better - it would worsen them, not would it speed up the teachers marking, these were factors beyond my control. And today, fully nourished I could just about except that. Food is the fuel for success.