When I was six I used to stand naked in front of the mirror of my parents’ bathroom for hours as I carefully examined the curves of my 1st grade belly. I would step on and off the scale just to check the amount of space my body took up on a given day, despite the fact that I had no context for knowing how much I was supposed to weigh. I had an inkling that my body was probably wrong. It was certainly too big. Too tall, too wide, too much; far too much.
In fourth grade I decided to go on a diet. It was a new school year and I was determined to have friends this time around. I was certain that I was too fat and that is why I had so much trouble making friends. So, I developed a plan that I was sure would be foolproof. I constructed an entire system of points and colors and numbers that would assure I would become the skinny fourth grader I had always dreamed of being. Of course, fourth graders are quite busy being concerned with playing outside, learning how to use PEMDAS on math homework, and being 9-year-olds, that diets might prove to be rather challenging (and also ludacris). I learned this to be true, albeit the fact that every time I ate something “bad” I would feel a rush of tingling guilt throughout my entire body.
If we fast forward to sixth grade, we will find me with a worse off body image, but even more resolve to get that “perfect” body I had always imagined. I decided that I was just going to have to throw up everything that I ate because it seemed like the magic answer I had been waiting for. I was eleven.
I had gotten the idea to purge from a book I had been given that featured narratives from young girls across the country chronicling their battles with body image and low self esteem. Instead of feeling inspired to love my body just the way I was, all I picked up from that book was tips and tricks on how to have an eating disorder. Of course, I never thought that I would actually ever develop one, I was only focused on achieving happiness through having the perfect distribution of fat on my body.
The thing about eating disorders is that they are progressive diseases that will not just go away. They only continue to get worse. So as I navigated the choppy waters of middle school, I took my eating disorder alongside. I was caught purging a few times by my mother, and was chastised and sent to therapy. I told the therapist I was okay, because I didn’t want to be in trouble, but secretly I just restricted more and more of my intake in order to avoid feeling the need to purge. I thought I was doing the right thing. My therapist had told me I wasn’t sick, and I didn’t believe I was either.
In high school I did everything I could to be normal and happy. I was on the cross-country team, I made some friends, and I never got in trouble. I was in honors and AP classes and I also decided to join the theater department and participate in plays and musicals. All the while I was constantly restricting some sort of food, feeling guilty about my intake, and staring at the mirror in disgust. When I got my driver’s license, I was most excited about being able to drive to the drugstore to buy diet pills and have the freedom to drive myself to the gym whenever I wanted. Still, I was sure I didn’t have an eating disorder.
See, when we think about eating disorders, we think about a frail but tragically beautiful waif-type. We don’t think about the violence the eating disordered inflict onto their bodies. We don’t think about stomach bile and hair falling out in clumps. We think of women (never men) who sit passively by in their slouchy-chic clothing, picking at their salads with ultimate willpower and a sense superiority. This is so very far from accurate. Yet, I felt undeserving of the diagnosis. I was not good enough to be healthy, nor was I good enough to be sick.
In college, everything got much worse at an almost exponential speed. I was manically working out and purging, and my only thoughts were about food. All day every day I could only think about calories in and calories out. My food rules took up so much space in my head that I hardly had time to study or do any sort of schoolwork. I choose not to share the details of my behaviors in this article because I find it to be triggering to those with eating disorders, and I don’t want to give anyone any ideas. What matters is that I was not well and torturing myself. I was exhausted all the time, and I was sick nearly every week.
My sophomore year was when I really scared myself. I could barely leave my apartment, and nothing else mattered besides my body and what I was or wasn’t eating. I knew that I needed help but I was so scared to ask for it. I was great at keeping everything a secret. It was hard to tell that I was sick because second to being sick, my life’s greatest work up until then was keeping my disorder a secret.
When I finally did ask for help, everything became much harder. I wish I could say that once I told my parents how sick I was, the road to recovery was an easier alternative to living with my eating disorder. This was not the case. I tried to recover “on my own” in outpatient therapy, but found myself more and more emotionally volatile and a danger to myself. All of a sudden all of these emotions and trauma had come up after years of numbing myself out to the tune of my eating disorder. It turns out I was extremely clinically depressed and horribly socially anxious. I was scared to walk to class for fear of running into someone I knew and having to hold a conversation. I was trying to eat again, and it was horrifying.
Eventually I went to an eating disorder treatment center where I was safe to feel, eat, and just be again. It was hard. I fought with my parents constantly. I had panic attacks about the food I was being served. One time I walked into lunch and had to be treated by the staff nurse because I became orthostatic at the sight of pasta. I yelled at the therapists and told them I thought they were just making me fat. I hated myself so much, but I also knew I didn’t want to anymore.
During my recovery, I learned about the power of words to paper; or fingers to keys in my case. I discovered that there was something in the world that made me feel good that wasn’t unhealthy. I found so much wholeness in writing. While I was working on different pieces, it was as if that oppressive sense of emptiness I was constantly trying to escape wasn’t real. I began to think that maybe if I could feel so much good in something, then maybe life in recovery was actually worth living.
I was still so scared to let my eating disorder go. It had been my best friend. When I was lonely, sad, scared, full of self-hate, and empty, my eating disorder was there to take those feelings away. Without it, I was going to have to experience real feelings. But here is the thing – in avoiding these negative emotions, I cut off all of the positive ones. I could not enjoy spending time with my friends because I was too busy coming up with ways to avoid food at all costs. I could not take pride in doing well in school because no achievement mattered except seeing the number on the scale decrease. I could not accept love from my family and friends because I felt so undeserving of it. But in shedding the tight grip the eating disorder had on me, I was able to feel the good things again.
The thing about eating disorders is they give us a false sense of purpose. My life was driven by my food fears and rules, and my body was a representation of failure or success. And guess what – in an eating disorder, the body will always be a failure. That’s bullshit. I have so much more to offer the world than a shrinking body. I am smart, talented, and powerful. 18 months ago, I would have never been able to say those words about myself without feeling nauseous. I have so much more time and headspace now. I am a better friend and daughter. I am a social activist. Instead of changing my body I want to change the world. I know what I want to do with my life, and it has nothing to do with the way my body looks.
Recovery is by no means easy, I must confess. Sometimes I still get panicky about meals and may find myself wanting to run out of a grocery store screaming. It’s important to remember that these disorders are not about food or fat, but about feelings and underlying mental illness. Body image is still tricky, especially because I am trying to accept my healthy body. But I am patient and gentle with myself. I work hard. An eating disorder is not the center of my world anymore, and I am okay with that.