It’s been four years since you first reared your head, and It’s taken me until now to accept just how toxic my relationship with you has truly been. For four years, through good times and bad, you’ve always been there. I never saw anything wrong with you, if anything I considered you my biggest supporter. You were always there looking out for my best interests. A constant reminder in case I forgot to put down that bag of chips or to run that extra mile. At times I thought I controlled you, but it was you who actually had control of me. For four years I’ve blamed being a vegetarian for my decline in weight, fainting, fatigue and depression. It’s only been recently that I’ve referred to you as what you truly are, an “eating disorder.”
In high school it was easy. Skip breakfast, eat a snack bag of Doritos for lunch, then crazy binge and purge as soon as I got home. I liked being able to eat whatever I wanted then being able to get rid of it of just as quickly as it had been consumed. I never saw anything wrong with that and no one had to know a thing. I look at photos of myself from my sophomore and senior year of high school, the two years that I struggled the most, and I see someone whose happiness does not reach her eyes. It didn’t matter how small my waist got, how large the gap between my thighs was becoming, or how prominent my collarbones were. It was never enough. Every day I found a new flaw or something more I needed to work on.
Going into college I knew that living in a dorm with communal bathrooms would make it impossible for me to be able to purge the amount of times I used to. I hated the thought of people hearing me and asking questions. I thought what I was doing to myself was healthy, and I knew no one would understand that. It wasn’t until I started college that I realized how much of my life had been taken over by my eating disorder. How many panic attacks I’ve had before going out because I absolutely despised how I looked. How many opportunities’ I’d missed because I feared others seeing what I saw in the mirror. I realized that what my mind was doing to my body was slowly killing me.
So, I’ve started fighting back. Blocking out that voice in the back of my head dictating every calorie I consume. I am tired of being constrained by my eating disorder. I still have days when I hate seeing my reflection and start to feel close to spiraling back down that dark hole. I stop and remind myself of all the good that is coming from taking my life back. I can’t say that I’m “recovered” today or that I ever really will be. For now I can say that I’m working on becoming the healthiest and happiest version of me, for me, and that I will never let you take control of my life the way you used to.
