Blurred lines

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail completely out of the blue from a woman I met at a conference a number of years ago. She had e-mailed me, asking if I was interested in contributing a piece for a new book she and others were producing about a specific chronic illness which I had suffered from. After a few days of thinking about it, I decided to oblige with the request, thinking it might help someone.

I have not submitted my piece to her yet. However, I have done a lot of thinking and do have some handwritten material on nice yellow lined paper of a legal pad. What I'm having trouble with is remembering. Not the type of memory of not knowing what happened, but rather what was attributable to the chronic illness or the eating disorder.

The lines feel so blurry. How do I know whether my constant fatigue and foggy thinking was from insane high liver enzymes, anemia, or the eating disorder? Logically, I'm sure it was all attributable. However, for the purpose of this piece, I do not necessarily want to go into details of the eating disorder as that is not what the book is about. But then again, it feels phony too?

Another aspect is that at one point in my treatment for this chronic illness, I went off my medication for really stupid reasons. It didn't bode well for me, but it also gave a window of opportunity to try another medication which fortunately "cured" (and I use that lightly) the illness.

It's interesting how these types of matters can jumble all together. I even read through my old medical records to jargon my memory. That only helped with establishing a timeline but didn't help otherwise.

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Blurred lines haven't ended there however. Recently, on facebook, other people have contacted me who know nothing about the eating disorder. I'm sure some high school friends suspected something, but it was certainly not something I spoke about in public. People who have met me later in my life really don't have an idea of the eating disorder, because I've simply hid it.

So now as the lines blur between what is private and personal, I struggle with what to do. Do I "out" myself? Do I make a new account? I should also note that this is exacerbated, because I found out one of my posts had a referring link to facebook. I checked the links and got my facebook page or some person whom I did not know. I still cannot figure out how that happened.

As I try to figure this out, I'm reminded that all blurry lines do is ask more questions than they answer, giving headaches and a glare of fuzziness.