Despite a horrid summer fluey bug, I actually feel much better than I did

For months I couldn't even click onto this blog, let alone write it. I couldn't face eating disorders. I steered clear of my Facebook page and anything else to do with eating disorders. Meanwhile I drowned my sorrows in psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and other self-soothing activities. Perhaps they've been helpful because this is the first time for months when I've felt perfectly happy to click onto this blog and write something. As I sit here in bed, coughing up nasty green stuff and feeling physically shattered, I feel incredibly positive inside my head. After going through a very tricky time, Bev's-head-wise, over the past 6 months or so, that has to be Good News all round.


Ben has almost completed his first year at university - just 2 more exams to go. I'm moving him out of his student flat next week, just like millions of other families across the country. A million miles away from last time I moved him out, just 2 days into Freshers' Week, on his first attempt at university in September 2012.

Ben is doing well, mainly getting 'firsts' when it comes to grades. He loves the studying and has adapted to that side of student life brilliantly well with the self-discipline and knuckling down that is so evident with young people that are susceptible to eating disorders and so on.

Okay, the social side hasn't been too brilliant. Not in Sheffield at any rate. Back at home he's made a whole new circle of friends who he sees most weekends and spends ages gaming with on Xbox. He also went for a meal with some of his old school friends the other Friday until I fished him out of some strange girl's university apartment where they were all getting up to no good as midnight approached.

I know he's a bit fed up with me worrying that the slightest issue - like a bit of weight loss - is heralding a relapse into the anorexia. He keeps telling me until I'm blue in the face that he hates the eating disorder and what it stole from him. Now he is successfully getting his life back, no way is he going to let it trap him again. He knows what to look out for. He knows how to tell any inner whispers from the 'ED voice' to sod off.

I always know when everything is OK with Ben because he sings. And he sings most days, usually while he's cooking. He still cooks huge, tasty meals - often so huge I can't manage them. But he can. And then he'll have 2 puddings afterwards. He still has 2 breakfasts every morning, a 'good' legacy of the anorexia.

In my opinion he is still thin. But he eats a heck of a lot. And he keeps an eye on his weight every so often. Any slight loss and he ups his food intake automatically.

So all of this is Good. And my get-my-life-and-brain-back activities are Good.

But I still find myself avoiding various eating disorder related things.

As a friend said to me the other Friday: "You've got eating disorder burnout." She's noticed it with so many mums in the post-ED world - they reach burnout stage.

But, like the Glasgow School of Art, I am hopeful that there's nothing that can't be reconstructed to resemble what was there before the destruction.