It was harmless, I mean, until it wasn’t.
Like many of you, I cannot pin point exactly when my ED began to manifest. Upon reflection, I obtained disordered tendencies and behaviors for the vast majority of my teenage years. I remember yo-yo dieting with friends throughout high school, I re-joined the gym more times than I can count on both hands. We are all familiar with the cycle. It was innocent. I was your typical teenage girl, living in admiration of the unrealistic beauty expectations that society had shoved so far down all of our throats that we didn’t even realize we were choking. But it was harmless, I mean, until it wasn’t.
At eighteen I jumped back on the bandwagon. ‘New Year, New Me’. The only difference this time, was that it didn’t phase out. Just as quickly as the weight fell off the compliments rolled in. It fed something inside of me. A sense of security I never knew I was lacking. I felt as though I was in control. I was not.
I was addicted to exercise. I was obsessed with movement. “The more I move the more I can eat” I would tell myself, but I never did. I used exercise as a means of earning nourishment. Despite the toxicity of this, I looked the ‘healthiest’ I had ever looked. I felt the ‘fittest’ I had ever felt.
Then came the day I stepped on the scales.
I became fixated. With every kilogram lost I felt a sense of achievement. It was a high. Twelve months later and I was a shell of a human being. I hadn’t just lost weight, I had lost my life. I had lost my smile. I had lost happiness. I had lost love. I had lost fulfillment. I had lost the ability to care for anyone or anything besides food and exercise and weight. Food. Exercise. Weight. This was my life now. And I didn’t know how to stop.
Over time my Dad began to seek external help from the Butterfly Foundation, who proceeded to refer me to my dietician. She has been the most incredible support; to this day I still visit her for regular check-ins. But I didn’t want the help back then. No dietician or psychologist or doctor could help me. I simply did not want to get better.
December of 2020, two weeks before my 21st birthday, I was taken in the ambulance to begin inpatient treatment in the ICU. The doctors were unsure whether I would make it. They told us that had I ignored the signs and taken myself to bed that night, my heart would have stopped beating in my sleep. I wouldn’t have made it to 21. I was bound to a wheelchair, under constant heart monitoring, and being fed through a nasogastric tube. It was the most dehumanizing experience I had ever had to face. I spent my 21st birthday in there, Christmas too. All I wanted to do was go home. I wanted to give up.
Fast forward to now, almost two years later. I am in the best place I have been for longer than I can remember. I feel safe. I feel happy. I feel at ease. My brain is no longer consumed by hunger. I enjoy all foods without guilt or fear. I no longer have any attachment to exercise. I have the capacity to engage in old hobbies. My relationships are stronger than ever. I have gained weight. My hair has grown back. My peach fuzz has fallen out. My eyes are no longer sunken. I sleep. I have a libido. I practice spontaneity. I listen to my body. I stopped playing the robot. I am me again.
It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. Recovery has been two steps forward, one step back, one step forward, a ‘fuck what am I doing’ turn around and run, pick myself up, two steps forward, an awkward sideways jump, a relapse here and there, a ‘maybe if I pretend I’m recovered but actually just behave like an anorexic’, another step forward, a strange period of standing in the one spot for a really long time without knowing where to go or what to do. You get the gist. It hasn’t been linear.
But it never is.
I remember thinking, on more than one occasion actually; ‘I wish I could just wake up and be recovered and all of this could go away’. But what does recovery even look like? It’s a journey, an important one at that. Without the really shitty parts of recovery, we wouldn’t know to appreciate the good parts.
I don’t hate Anorexia. Even if it almost took my life. I don’t hate it because it made me who I am today. I am so much stronger for having experienced an eating disorder. I am a better person because of it. I remember reading recovery stories in the peak of my illness and thinking ‘that will never be me’. I remember the countless times I sat trembling hysterically, in sheer terror, as I forced myself to eat my ‘fear foods’. Now, I eat those same foods daily without a second thought. I didn’t believe that recovery was possible. It did not matter how many times my team would try to convince me that in order to gain clarity, I would need to gain weight. And that once I allowed myself to, the majority of my bad body image would go away. I thought that I would be trapped within the walls of Anorexia for a lifetime. But here I am; the proof in the pudding.
Recovery IS possible. It’s hard, it’s messy, and there sure as hell isn’t a ‘quick fix’. But it’s worth it. And so are you.
the skinny elephant 