A Sombre Summer Morning
By: Fatima Al Jarman
Tags: Reflections, Thinkpiece, Summer, Essay, Eating Disorder Recovery

My summers are terribly reflective. And so, naturally, I write this piece reflecting on the reflective nature of my summers.

Summers were always very meaningful times for me, be it in beautiful or terrible ways. Beyond the warm sunlight tracing my skin and the flush of my face were extended periods of time. Periods of time where I was not consumed by my schoolwork and the everyday routines of it. Time I can spend idling around, basking in my boredom, basking in the sun.

Summers meant spending days with my family, both my self and my identity reduced to the Fatima that my family members knew. It meant lots of time alone with my thoughts and ideas. This summer is no different. Amplified by the fact that I can no longer make long-term or particularly eventful plans, I spend my time idling around, trying to find some use for myself and coming up with half-plans and ideas. Somehow, whatever plan I put down on my checklist always ends up being a reflective activity of sorts.

Yesterday morning looked pretty much like the way all my mornings have been looking lately: I woke up, made myself a warm cup of strawberry tea, and then got to work. I had been procrastinating more things than I can count and needed to get through them, my guilt and anxiousness already beginning to eat me up on the inside. One of the main tasks for my morning was to go through my blog — a little SquareSpace space I had made for myself towards the end of 2019.

I didn’t have grand plans for the blog when I started it, to be honest. As someone who tends to be terribly forgetful but also deeply nostalgic, the goal was to create a small archive of my work and experiences, a space more for myself than for anyone else really. It also felt like somewhat of an obligatory step in my journey of trying to carve out a writing career.

If you delve into my blog (which hasn’t been updated yet, by the way), you’ll find a little bio of myself acting as the current home page. The words I’ve written have a smidgen of Orientalism and touch upon varying aspects of my identity. Beyond that, you can browse through a page displaying my zines, one with a few blog posts, one dedicated to Unootha, and a horrid one titled “written”, where I’ve linked some of my past articles.

I spend my morning beginning my process of mass renovation, reading each page and word all over again, sifting through the dust, and getting rid of all the anecdotes and syllables that don’t sound much like me anymore. I polish the phrases that still hold some truth. And I also make a profound realization.

I had left the aforementioned “written” page for the end. The thought of looking through it made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I knew that I probably wouldn’t be proud of most of the pieces I’ve linked there. I power through the dread though eventually and carefully scroll through the page when it hits me: there’s a pattern in the page that I recognize immediately, a collection of synonyms and keywords all falling under the same theme. Most of my published work is about my past eating disorder.

Each one tackles the topic from a varying angle, dissecting my trauma in various packages and shapes. The first article I had ever published was in the summer of 2018, an article in The Tempest titled “It took years to tell my Arab family about my eating disorder”. It was an article that was months in the making, my first think piece that had my name attached to it, me coming out publicly and sharing the reality that plagued me for two years.

From there came more writing opportunities. A short-term staff writer position and a long-term one. Faced with deadlines and uncertainty, I wrote what I knew about. At 17, all I had known for the past two years were the ins and outs of my illness, from scientific and experiential standpoints equally. I was always taught to write what I knew, and so I did. I wrote endlessly about those years of suffering and confusion, packaging them in different titles and names, securing acceptances with the bat of an eye, getting told that I was so “brave” over email by well-intentioned editors.

It all feels like a fever dream in retrospect. But I also know now that it was just a coping mechanism for me at the time. A way for me to chase my dreams of being a writer whilst also simultaneously unpacking the God-knows-what of the two years I had suffered from Anorexia. Despite what may appear to be articles that tackle the breadth and depth of the illness, I truly can’t remember much of those two years. I can’t remember what most of my days looked like. I can’t remember what my mundane daily routine was. I can’t remember what I looked like. I can’t remember how I felt. Writing, unconsciously, was my way of trying to stitch together memories of a time period in which I did not feel completely present. My years with my eating disorder felt like I was always floating in time and space, transcending the laws of physics and religion, existing on my own plane and frequency, marking my commandments and laying down the providences. I felt powerful and weak all at once, happy and sad, complete and empty. But I also can’t remember a thing.

I write this in the summer of 2020. Two years since I had started to recover, and four since my illness’s development. My issues with body image and food still exist every single day. They look different now, are not as time or thought-consuming, but I can always feel their lingering presence, guiding me at times, sometimes holding me back.

Being nineteen feels heavy for the most part. I still feel as confused as I did when I was fifteen and could not figure out for the life of me why I was so terrified of food. But sometimes it also feels freeing. I sit down and cultivate my blog right now, changing up the color palette (no more black and white mono-chroma), trying to add some humor to it all, and trying to make sense of things. Mixing and matching all the pieces and memories and experiences together, all in an attempt to make something whole.

I spend the summer of 2020 in grief, in navigation, in reflection. I think of my teenage years and of my mental illnesses. I think of my family and my friends. But, honestly, I think mostly about myself. Sometimes I feel like the world has taken from me more things than I can easily let go of. But it has also gifted me with things that I would not trade for anything at all. Friends that love me. An unwavering need to grow and change and be better. A reflecting, introspecting heart.

As I carefully scroll down the horrid “written” page, carefully studying titles and subheadings, reflecting on the fact that I can’t remember two years of my life, I bring the cup of strawberry tea to my lips and let the warmth carefully consume my insides. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, reminding myself that although I have lost those two years, I only have things to receive from here.