The following article discusses personal struggles and vulnerable moments to showcase the reality of living with an eating disorder. Verbiage may be triggering.
Dear Anorexia,
I have given things much thought, and over the past decade my feelings for you have changed. I thought we would be happy together, but I was wrong. I know you are happy- manipulators always are when their victim feels trapped- but I’m not happy anymore. In fact, I don’t think I ever was.
When we first began our relationship, I used to wake up and wrap my hands around the tops of my thighs to make sure I hadn’t ballooned overnight. If my fingers touched, my weight was normal. I lived in fear of the day I couldn’t force them to glance and wrapped tighter and tighter, measuring how much extra room I had, how much I could eat without getting too fat.
I used to jump out of bed and straight onto the scale because I didn’t want anything to taint my true weight. Normal eleven year olds don’t keep bathroom scales next to their beds. I’d get so dizzy from the caloric deficit that I’d have to take a picture of the number, then sit and wait for the room to stop spinning before I could look at the number.
I’d open the app that connected me to the world of pro anorexia, update my weight, and then plan my food for the day. Skinthinbod was a better, more perfect, always striving version of myself. You liked her better than me, and you used to punish me for not being as perfect as she pretended to be.
I’ve got news for you. I killed Skinthinbod. With one click of the “delete” button, she disappeared. She’s still hanging around in the shadows if you look for her, but her ghost can only say what I taught her, and none of it matters anymore.
Once, when my weight showed 80 pounds, you made me eat burned lettuce for breakfast, three baby carrots for lunch, and spit out my dinner carefully into the toilet as I got only tastes of the food. But tasting the food was too much, too, and I spent hours exercising instead of writing my history essay.
I’m tired of waking up in the morning, staring at my popcorn ceiling, and wishing I were dead. I’m tired of running my fingertips along my jawline and collarbones mentally measuring how much fat sits between the protruding bone and my scratched skin.
As I sit in this cafe, two years after our initial break up, with a half eaten piece of cheesecake and a cup of coffee in front of me, I wish you would leave me alone. I want to finish my cheesecake, drink my coffee, and not obsess over the calories, fat, and sugar. I hate you for walking through the front door disguised as the body I used to have, the body I want to have again. I hate you for making me stand in line and search for the calories in each variety of cheesecake to find the one that wouldn't make me fat, and- big surprise- according to you, they all will.
I thought I had control until I did so many sit ups on the cold tile floor that the skin over my spine split and I awoke clammy and with my mint green pajamas- the ones with the ice cream print- glued to my paper thin skin with my own blood. I bought the pajamas because I missed the cold, sweet calories that you won’t let me have.
I thought I had control until the anxiety overwhelmed me and I threw up in my own lap, scratched open my chest, then fainted and slouched there until my therapist found me fifteen minutes later bloodied, and vile, a pile of bones and torn skin.
I thought I had control until you told me that a razor would cut out the fat from the back of my arms, until you convinced me to buy a scalpel, until you landed me in the hospital and the doctor who walked in recognized me instantly. His mouth greeted me, but his eyes wondered what you had done to me this time.
Do you remember when they attached me to a heart monitor and decided I was too weak to walk, that I couldn't afford to burn the extra 10 calories an hour? You decided that if I wasn’t going to be burning those calories, I couldn’t afford to drink water. My blood thickened and wouldn’t flow through the needles, so they used bigger needles. You told me that I deserved the pain and bruising. You wouldn’t let me ask for lidocaine and you poked and prodded my bruises every time I took another bite.
When I couldn’t remember the last time I genuinely laughed at something, a time when I wasn’t faking it just to be okay in the eyes of others, even for a split second, I decided we needed to break up. Until then, I had hidden the tears with the blade and the knife and the purging and the restricting. I had hidden underneath the hot three AM showers where I did nothing but sit in a huddled heap on the floor of the bathtub, the shower stinging down on me, still wrapped in my sopping towel, because I was too scared to take it off and to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see what I looked like, what you had formed me to be.
But you wouldn’t let me go, so I ran away. My parents drove 6 hours while I cried and shook and bled on the backseat of the minivan and left me for almost 10 weeks to think of ways to escape you. I took medications and saw therapists and dieticians and yelled and screamed at the other girls who were thinner than me. You told me that they were a healthy weight and they were still thin, proudly wearing their single green wristband to indicate their newfound health. No tubes and chews and midnight panic attacks for them, you told me. But if I got healthy, I’d also get fat.
When I got home, I apologized to them all. They saw you lurking in my shadows and blamed you, not me. Thanks partially to you, I have new best friends now. But also thanks to you, I left that beautiful place before I was finished with you. I thought that maybe, just maybe, the time I spent fighting you had changed your mind. Maybe it had changed you. So I allowed you to write me letters, and that was a mistake.
Recently, I found myself drinking apple juice mixed with water at midnight while using the exercise bike I purchased instead of a couch. A week ago, I tried to throw up my antidepressants because you warned me that they’re going to make me fat. When I couldn’t, you split my skin open and made me take pictures. Yesterday, I sprinted until my lungs burned and my legs collapsed after refusing to drink water all day.
No more letters, no more phone calls. No more. I am worth more than your abuse, and I refuse to let this abusive dance continue. I refuse to let you think you control me. You are not in charge anymore. No matter what you tell me, I am not dependent on you to survive. I am dependent on myself to thrive, and I will.
Goodbye forever,
Sarah
