It's no secret that eating disorders are largely understood by the public. Sufferers are a mystery to some and a punching bag to others. We are thought to be vain, crazy, selfish, greedy. But these are not the only ways we are misunderstood. In fact, most of those who claim to understand us are still off course.
Most people in my life think I starve myself because I want to be thin. Because I have terribly low self-esteem and want to make myself beautiful in the worst ways possible. They think I starve for days, eat three days worth of food then puke my guts out because I want to change my appearance. And for the longest time, that's what I thought too. But that's not all this illness is.
When my eating disorder started, I weighed close to 160 pounds and hated my body. A month and a half later I weighed 120 pounds and still hated my body. No matter how thin I got or how little food I ate, I was still never satisfied. It was never enough.
So one day I asked a therapist why I felt this way. Why I could never be thin enough. Why the number on the scale never satisfied me. She told me that my starving and binging and puking were not my problem. They were symptoms of much deeper pain. Being hungry for food distracted from being hungry for attention and acceptance and happiness and hope. Not feeling thin enough disguised my feelings of not being smart enough or pretty enough or worth enough.
This was not the revelation that led to my choice to recover, but it is the revelation that keeps me fighting today. Every time I relapse, I am trying to distance myself from life. To be a shadow on the wall counting calories, instead of a real person making mistakes and feeling emotions and growing.
A passage from one of my favorite books, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, sums this up. "Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie."
My eating disorder at its core is about blocking everyone and everything out. It's about avoiding life, trapping myself in a bubble where the only things that matter are calories and weight and recipes. I wasn't trying to be pretty, I was trying to escape.
As I learn to accept my body and keep my food down and stop focusing on the scale, I am also learning how to feel my feelings and experience life and not block everyone out. It is a process, but day by day I am making my way out of the snowdrift.
