The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up: A Memoir

by Evanna Lynch

But the more they focused on this thing they had termed my ‘problem’, the more it felt like it was my entire identity.

Quite

anorexia quite openly at home now, though I couldn’t say the word. I still find it hard to say it, to even write it, like I’m in the presence of royalty, a mysterious darkness, a powerful force of which I’m not worthy.

Worthy

that. It was more like: stuff the eating disorder with food so no one has to see it anymore.

Smother

One key thing about anorexia is that the longer you have it, the more your life deteriorates and the better you become at maintaining your disorder, until the only thing you’re maintaining is your disorder.

A

It’s apt because in eating disorder recovery, you’re literally trying to recover a whole person, the one who was there before the eating disorder, the one you didn’t like and tried to bury, the one who fades into the background

Whole

Every day you’ll feel flawed and vulnerable and ordinary, and you’ll find that life stings a thousand times more without your armour of skinniness. You’ll know you’re deeply, incurably flawed, and some days you won’t be able to cope with that, and all you’ll want is your comforting dysfunction back.

Word