It is Tuesday morning at 8:30 A.M. My alarm goes off and irks me awake. Bed is comfortable and safe, I do not want to leave. But the day must start. I make my way to my bureau. The mirror that is sitting on top stares back at me. I look up from my phone after checking the weather to see a girl I do not recognize.
The girl in the mirror has the same hair as me, the same eye color and looks a bit like me; but she cannot be me. Her eyes are puffy from insomnia and her body is near gone. I look down at myself in hopes to reassure that in fact what I am looking at is not a reflection. I look down, and I see the body I have had my entire life -- well, mostly. My breasts no longer a DD cup as they were a month or so ago, my waist is now small. Shoulders that used to be too broad now hold a nice frame and my collar bones perfectly illustrated across my chest. A gap takes place where my thighs used to rub together. The girl in the mirror is, in fact, me. I break down crying.
Skinny is all I ever wanted to be. The definition of attractive in my high school mind was not my personality or my intelligence, it was my physical attributes.
College came around and things started to change. My brain hardwired for "Star Wars" debates and art museums. Over time I began to fight myself. Fighting off the quirks I had learned to love, fighting off the dorkiness I once held dear. Slowly, I lost myself.
I am still not sure where I lost myself. Maybe it was in the boy I lost my virginity to, maybe it was the anxiety, or maybe I needed to lose “myself” to become me. Among other things hunger got lost. Food no longer felt right. It did not feel like nourishment, it felt like stones. I lost myself in exercising. I told myself I liked that I was getting stronger. In the sense that I could in fact control my body, despite how the panic attacks made me feel.
During all of this: “You look so good!” echoed in my ears. At first I thought nothing of the compliment. Then slowly I came to realize, I did not look good -- I looked unhealthy. I dropped 20 pounds in less than two months. I never had been that small, nor did I expect to be so tiny. I ordered a dress last May and laughed when I tried it on, it could not zip up. I told myself I would never be able to fit in that little black dress. Six months later that dress I laughed at for being too small, is now too big.
“You look hot.” Thank you, I guess. My curves were now gone and my body was angled. I looked hotter when I was myself. This is not myself. In the mornings I am supposed to see the “me” I have seen for years. The “me” with a little bit of love-handles, “me” with the retainer, and the “me” that I know. This new body is not one I feel comfortable in. It feels as if I have cheated the system. Years I spent training and eating well and not losing a single ounce of fat; and here I am in college and my body is eating itself. I simply do not recognize who I have become.
Composure comes over me. I have class in 20 minutes. I wrangle my emotions as best as I can. It is not until later that week my friends pull me aside. They are concerned: that I am not eating. I scoff and brush it off. One of them looks me in the eye and tells me she has been in my shoes and knows what it is like, and she knows what eating looks like and I am not eating. Overwhelmed, I fall silent. For so long I thought I was fine, eating when I was hungry -- which was never.
Eating disorder never came to my mind, nor my doctors."Healthy" is what my BMI read. The drop from 145 to 120 pounds went relatively unnoticed. I was still “healthy.”
Over Thanksgiving break my family took turns policing me and my plate. Dinner became a time I dreaded -- all eyes were on me. I could not be excused until my parents felt I had eaten enough. I felt juvenile, my freedom had been taken away. Here I was, a 19-year-old that has to wait for permission to leave the table, which I had not done for years. Part of me knew it was for the best. But part of me was infuriated, I was an adult, after all. It was my body and my lack of hunger. My mother soon began to refer to food as medicine, which made it even more repulsive to me. Medicine helps you get better, but I was better -- I was the best I had been in years. At least I looked like it.
In actuality, my life was falling apart. My confidence was at an all-time low, my insecurities were at an all-time high. School had hit me, hard. My personal relationships were strained at their best. My mind was crumbling as my body was eating itself. Inside I felt so much pain. Anxiety and depression became pervasive in my life. Some days getting out of bed was near impossible. Functioning was perfunctory. I did what I had to, and nothing else.
I lost my appetite: to live and to eat. It would take me weeks to allow myself the leisure of eating food, and digesting life. Understanding that hard times will pass, just as certain spices dance on the tongue. Making you appreciate the other flavors and the good times as they return back to your palette.
