In my last post I think I may have explained that I was accepting a third round of inpatient treatment, which I hope will go some way towards explaining my temporary absence from the blogsphere.

It’s been four weeks.

Four weeks of a graded increase in food.

Four weeks of setting up my small bedroom and equipping it with things that will make it look less like a hospital and more like student digs.

Four weeks of adjusting my routine; of getting used to eating six times a day,  of sitting still in a crowded communal lounge for a total of four and a half hours each day, often subjected to death by American ‘comedy’ interspersed by the even more torturous Jeremy Kyle show and Hollyoaks.

Four weeks of sussing out the eight other patients; logging their individual idiosyncrasies… getting to know who experiences distress at the mention of the weekly menus,who cant touch anything after eating for extreme fear that there exists a phenomenon whereby calories can be transferred onto any object she touches.

Four weeks learning to tread carefully around topics others find ‘triggering’, learning who responds to a hug and who shrinks from it, leaving and receiving little notes of encouragement and kindness.

Four weeks of interacting with different staff nurses and health care assistants.

Four weeks of twice weekly ‘weigh ins’; the unavoidable moment of fear, where figures flutter round, and then pierce, the early morning brain fog.

Four weeks and I feel hopeless and despairing because the pain of weight gain, albeit gradual, feels increasingly frightening and I just don’t know if my courage can hold out for the long haul.