Learning to live with mess

I've been thinking a lot about the myth of a 'perfect recovery' -I recently came across what I must admit was a very beautiful looking example, filled with instagrammed bowls of fruit and yogurt, a delicate size 8 girl daintily sipping on chai lattes, carefully arranged plates of vegetables and cereal bars, steaming bowls of soup, and so on... Well of course I desperately wanted mine to be like this. Or rather some part of me did... but who REALLY wanted my life to be like this? Well my anorexia of course. It's swapping one illusory guide to perfection for another... Recovery is necessarily going to be messy because life is messy, and I have no doubt that this beautiful illustration of recovery masks the same fears, tears, and self-loathing, as the hidden mess of my recovery which I try to hard to mask... When I stop and think hard, I absolutely do NOT want to live my life photographing every meal, making a shrine of cereal bars and hot chocolates to replace the books of calories and rules.
Well why do I try to hide this 'mess' that is my path through recovery? Is that reinforcing the shame, and supporting the illness? Perhaps. But this has happened for a reason - and it happens time and time again... The more I think about it, the more stigma and misunderstandings around anorexia trouble me - and I worry that I absorb this too much, and it further fuels my need for secrecy.
Most recently this has come up at work. I feel bullied half the time, but then the other half I'm told what a great employee I am. I've been told to keep my anorexia a secret - because "it's not like disclosing depression, admitting to having had anorexia". Apparently anorexics tend to have problematic personality traits. I regularly feel my personality is being attacked and am anxious and sleepless throughout the week, and then exhausted by it all by the weekend. In this context, it's hardly surprising that I am feeling more self-critical and ashamed again. But yet I feel powerless and scared to stand up to this. So I am pretending that I'm doing better, that I'm in control, that my life is like the pretty instagrammed images I saw. And this seems to be what people want. I still get criticised and laughed at, but it makes it more difficult for my anorexia to be used against me.
All this has been nagging away at me, and then this morning I read a powerful and moving post on the voice of anorexia... It occurs to me, that voice is not so different from the one at work. Most of the time the anorexic part of me tells myself how shameful and awful I am, berates me for every mouthful consumed or unwalked mile, but then intermittently it gives me a warm glow of relief and praise for the uneaten snacks or extra miles walked... Basic psychology tells me that should be reinforcing, and it is. The thing is, as time has gone on, at work any praise feels empty and manipulative - it has lost all impact or meaning. Sadly my anorexia has not. I still have that scary rush of relief if I discover my weight has gone down - it is quickly followed by shame and attempts to mask it, but it won't go away. It's totally irrational, but it feels safe and kind and a shield from all the horrible stuff out there. At the moment I am not losing weight and so I am terrified to go anywhere near the scales. No amount of reasoning will convince this part of myself that I am not out of control and fat, despite the fact that I know full well that I am not overweight and I'm more in danger of losing control to anorexia than to greed.
To make matters worse, when I recently tried to explain this internal war zone to someone from the EDU that I was admitted to 2 years ago, they attacked the anorexia and questioned my commitment to recovery. This went on for a few weeks and before I knew it I was lying again, just like I did when I was there - because I feel shamed for struggling with anorexia as opposed to wholeheartedly hating it, and being committed to the beautiful recovery meal plans and pretty pictures of food.
I WANT a rich and messy life full of spontaneity, imperfection, truth, and love... Home-cooking, not tidy, precise apple segments; rich, connected relationships, not superficial, safe ones; emotional highs and lows, not predictable impassivity... A life with fewer rules and more mess and fun. But I struggle to face up to just how horribly messy and imperfect I am without the urge to go running back toward the bomb shelter of anorexia - the anxiety becomes too much, the self-criticism to great, and I find myself numbing it out again. I desperately want to be good at recovery, but that isn't what recovery is about - it isn't something to be good at, it's riding out the storms and mess and whirls of anxiety and self-criticism and holding faith that this is the only route to taking life off 'pause' and embracing one's dreams.