one, two, three, four.

That is the number of things you have to accomplish before you allow yourself to have a drink of water.

You’re organized with this. you make a list; you check off the tasks as you complete them. But of course they are long jobs: sweep all the floors on the lower level, mop them, polish them, vacuum the carpet in precise lines, clean up the kitchen; empty the dishwasher; wipe invisible specks off the countertop.

The hours tick by and your mouth is dry, but you’re not finished – you still have to lug the vacuum upstairs and use it on the carpet there. You begin to negotiate with yourself as you feed the toddler guacamole and starfruit. I need water to function, you tell yourself. your mind clicks its tongue in disapproval. You aren’t done. You haven’t earned it.

This is what recovery from an eating disorder might look like, this might be its form, the daily bartering.

You take a sip of water.

You feel like a failure.

You weren’t done.

You’re on the floor with your toddler now, playing, teaching him the colors of the toys you pass back and forth between his little hands. His cup is full of the special drink you blend for him every week. he is happy. That is what matters most.

You move between him, between your homework, between tending the dogs. From time to time, you gaze out the window, though it’s only 10 a.m., and no one will be home until 5 o’clock.

Your mouth is dry again because you had to do penance for that unwarranted sip of water. Now you have to clean the toilet, the sinks. Straighten the shoes.

Your son follows behind you, throwing into disarray each semblance of order.

Your mouth is parched, but your chores are done. You can have a bottle of water. It’s 1 p.m. You’ve been up since 645am or 7. You’re allowed a snack now. You’ve earned it.

The never-ending cleaning has its own logic: you grew up in an apartment with rotting food in the fridge, a locked pantry, metallic tap water. Cockroaches moved slyly in the darkened corners. Even now, the sight of a glittering beetle sends you into a whirl of panic.

You are mostly able to hold off the spectre of anxiety and the three-lettered diagnosis of OCD away with humour. You barter playfully. you roll your eyes and sigh loudly at its demands.Bbut every time

you

give

in

You function on unearned water – on the slippings of your children’s leftovers. Their eyes are bright – their mouths filled with endless smiles. For this, you do not mind the shrinking of your soul or the dried tongue in your mouth. Your sacrifices are made so that they can live in a house never dominated by filth, so that the shade of your mother never comes to call. She haunts you, but not in the sort of way romanticized by television – no, she is there each time you raise your voice, each time a spate of anger grips you, each time you leave a plate in the sink or the laundry unfolded. Will I become her, you wonder in terror, this tormented woman who screamed in the dark, who spent her days giving you forbidden candy, walking with you in the sunshine.

Your mother’s smile was rare and yet radiant, the sun to the universe of your six-year-old soul. Her nights, however – her nights were spent in blackness, in slavered railings, in wringing shrieks and cries from the tortured bodies of her daughters – only then was she free to sink into oblivion, to surrender herself. she had done her penance, righted her wrongs upon the flesh of the children gotten in sin.

You are afraid to tarnish her memory by thinking of these things, by talking about them, by writing them down. She f***ed us up, you tell your sister during a phone call. Yeah, she did, is the rejoinder, and then the pair of you move on quickly and with relief from the thorned edge of this ugly ghost.

You don’t want to spend your life in a welter of pills, but you want to be well.

You don’t have the luxury of both, but you will continue to coexist with this. You will let it happen. you will not strive to win, but to survive, for no matter what happens, or how many prescribed drugs you shove down your throat, it will always be there.