Please don't tell me I look thin

I remember it very vividly. I’m in fifth grade when I notice the way my belly sticks out. I can’t say why I see it now and never before, but I can’t un-see it. And I hate it. Round, plump. Childlike. Determined to make it go away but still blessedly unfamiliar with the language of dieting, I try to simply suck in my breath, tucking my little extra belly into itself. I find that it’s a delicate balance to suck in enough to look flat, but not so much you get short of breath. Sometimes I forget and I notice the roundness protruding when I glance down. It requires constant vigilance.

I’m twelve when I start my first diet.

I’m thirteen, trying on bathing suits with my mother. I come out of the dressing room and she says “Yep, you have my thighs.”

At fourteen I lay in bed in tears, clawing at the circle of pudge around my belly, and vow not to eat for a week. The only thing that can make me hate myself more than I do in that moment is when I eat dinner a day and a half later.

Sixteen: I craft elaborate ‘zero net calorie’ diet and exercise plans with the help of a fun new weight loss app. I say, “I’m getting healthy,” instead of “I’m getting skinny.” I’m hungry all the time. I learn a lot of nutrition facts, like how many calories are in a stick of gum.

Nineteen: I’m at a friend’s graduation party. I can’t say no to the cake. And I try, I really do, but it’s like an out of body experience. I actually watch myself accept the cake, say thank you, and attack it like a ravenous hamster with a tiny burrito. As soon as I regain control I’m in the bathroom retching over the toilet. It’s the first time I’ve done that.

So yeah, I wouldn’t say I have An Eating Disorder, specifically, but my eating has pretty much always been disordered.

My experience is not important because it’s unique (it’s really, really not) or even especially dramatic (it’s not). It’s important because it is the context in which I view my body and it’s very painful. It shapes the lens through which my image passes every time I look in the mirror, or see a photo of myself. It is the filter through which every compliment or criticism passes. It’s the residual guilt I feel when eating carrot cake, and the unshakable compulsion I have – to this day – to walk around my own house with my breath half held in for maximal tummy flatness.

I’ve basically accepted that the factors that influenced the way I grew into my body as a young girl are not going anywhere. The fashion and entertainment industry is going to continue insisting their army of size zero, 5’10”, light-skinned women are a reasonable and healthy representative sample from which to shape our collective global understanding of The Ideal Female; fat shaming will continue unabated from all quarters; fad dieting will continue to find easy prey in women whose very insecurity makes them most vulnerable to the destruction these diets invariably cause.

What I find difficult to swallow is when shame and pain about my body is triggered by those closest to me.

Coming home for a family reunion and hearing from twelve different smiling relatives that, “Sweetie, you look so thin!”

Friends taking it upon themselves to tell me that they’ve noticed how good I’m looking recently – always just a little too quick to add, “like, not that she didn’t look good before… just, well, like, you know, maybe you've lost a little weight or whatever.” Having my lunch evaluated by every coworker who passes by as I’m eating – “wow, so healthy – good for you!” – their voices tinged with the kind of congratulatory admiration usually reserved for the recently sober.

I know that in many ways it probably seems logical that a woman with lots of image issues wants constant reassurance that she is achieving her aspirational body. And there is certainly a voice in my head that whoops gleefully every time I receive a weight loss related compliment. It is the same voice that still reminds me daily how disgusting my cellulite is and still suggests regularly that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to just, you know, stop eating for a while.

I often spend a significant part of my day arguing with that voice, trying to convince it that no one actually takes note of the subtle roundness that grows and melts away in my face and hips as I fluctuate ten pounds here, five there. But I never sound very convincing, even to myself, and the instant a well-meaning uncle asks approvingly if I’ve been working out lately, the voice becomes so smug and self-satisfied that it doesn’t even have to say I told you so.

What I wish more people (and men, especially) understood is that for many, many women a compliment is not simply a compliment. It is an unneeded reminder that our appearance is under constant surveillance. It is too often a reinforcement that the constricting beauty norms we have spent so long trying to eschew for kitschy benchmarks like “health” and “self-love” are in fact the first – and maybe only – thing that anyone really notices anyway.

And underlying this is a much darker fear: that our adherence to a very narrowly defined ideal of beauty is the one thing that will be allowed to define us as women, as individuals, as people. That our accomplishments will never matter as much as the amount of space between our thighs, or a letter on the tag of our underwear.

I cannot begin to communicate the horrifying helplessness of this fear.

If you want to compliment the women you love (and compliment them you should) I would challenge you to ask yourself, what is it really that makes these women beautiful? What makes them unique? Is it her eyes – the bright flecks of gold right at the edge of the brown? The way that the lines at the edge of her mouth make it seem like she’s been smiling all her life? The warmth of her laugh? The strength of her convictions?

All I can say for damn sure is it’s not a number on a scale or a tag or a calorie log or a BMI index. These numbers are the cage we’ve been told to live in all our lives.

Living with Ana

There is a voice living inside my head and it’s making me knock on Death’s door.

It tortures me every waking day — pushing me to run on the treadmill for an hour just so I could burn those calories I have gained for eating that goddamn apple for lunch, making me ditch all my plans with anyone just because I still have to do a hundred push-ups, and filling me with a furious desire to lose more than just my weight. This little demonic voice that always finds its way to my head is called Ana.

She penetrated me without preamble. I have no idea how or why she was born and I’m not sure when she arrived, either. All I know is that she made her nest in me. She huddled inside my head — made roots in every part of me and now, my body is possessed.

Ana is everywhere. Her perfect silhouette followed me wherever I go — in the kitchen, looking at me with disgust as I stare intently on the freshly baked cookies in the oven.  Inside the bathroom, eyes fixed on me as I strip, mocking me for the body that I have, laughing at me for not making my bones stick out, and whispering that food is evil. Her voice was so low, yet so trident. She nourished herself from my dark thoughts, from my biggest fears.

The smell of burning ginger and cloves reminded me of my fate. Of how different I was from a normal teenager. Flashes of disgust can be seen right through my eyes and it’s becoming more visible day by day.  Ana flourished and I felt her inside me.

She blocked my veins with filthy words and I could hardly breathe. I lived with her. No, scratch that, I survived with her.

Ana was no friend, but a pretentious bitch companion. She fed me with lies and tricked me into believing that I deserve every filthy word there is. I drank her remarks and wept. Ana grew — like a flower watered with my tears.

The frustration brought by her presence was killing me and the pressure to be perfect was destroying me, in any way one could be destroyed.

I completely have no idea on how to cut her roots out of my body. I don’t know if there is a way I could drag her from my rotting form to the deepest, darkest depths of hell. Because every time I think I got rid of her, well, it turns out I’m wrong. 

A love letter to my body

I want to love you. I want to love the way you ebb and flow to maintain my vibrancy and my health, but I don’t.

I’ve tried—not as hard as I could have, but hard enough. I’ve looked at you, begging my mind to dig through the depths of the insults and criticism, searching for some measure of appreciation for you, but it finds none. It discovers, instead, a deeper hatred for you and the way you let those purple marks etch themselves upon the skin that covers you, or the way you let yourself become an ocean of ripples when I walk.

I love the ocean, but I don’t love that ocean. I love being connected to the sea, with the sand and water mixing and melting in between my toes, but I hate being connected to you.

I think there was a time in my life where I liked you. It definitely wasn’t love; some form of infatuation, maybe. I loved the way you changed based on how I treated you. I loved the way you did what I asked in those years before the betrayal. I fed you exactly 10 almonds for a snack and didn’t let you have any carbs after 3 pm. There was this one day when you demanded more; I was in 11th grade and I had just come home from school. I grabbed an extra handful of something from the pantry before you kept asking me for more, again and again until I couldn’t resist your pleading. I caved before the tears let themselves seep from my defeated eyes, the salty proof that you had won staining the fair skin of my cheeks red. I looked at the nearly empty can of cashews in my hand as I wondered why I had let myself throw all my hard work away just because of you.

I hated you so much in that moment, but I hated you more when you betrayed me in those years that followed.

The betrayal—that’s all I know to call it. If I called it anything else, it would be on me. I have too much pride for that. You gave me an ultimatum, life or death, and I chose life. That life wasn’t what I thought it should have been, and that’s why I can’t love you right now.

The life I thought I chose isn’t the one I’m living; you transformed without my permission and became my greatest fear.

I used to climb out of bed and into the closet, stepping on a scale that showed me a number I wasn’t ashamed of. As you made that number grow higher, I began waking up earlier. I rose before the world was awake, groggy and exhausted, and walked into that same closet. I didn’t want the world to know what you had become.

It feels wrong, you know. It feels wrong saying I’m ashamed of something that is, inherently, me. You and I are one, but I forget that. I separate myself from you sometimes, believing you might be the only one with anything to offer this world; I am merely your guest, living within the walls of your house until I can find a way out. Sometimes I start thinking about the way I treat you and how I wish I could treat you, and the disparity between those two things. If they could just coincide in your favor, body; if I could only love you the way I want to, with love and appreciation through lenses of adoration, things would be different.

We could do so much if we were only on the same team.

What's for dinner?

What’s for dinner?

A question that most people get excited to think about; that most people can decide on in a matter of minutes with their mouths watering, giving them something to look forward to at the end of their long work day.

A question that one person out of every ten people dreads.

One person out of every ten people feels their stomach cramp up into knots at the mere thought of having to entertain this question. One person out of every ten people feels so much pressure to make “healthy” eating choices and have the “perfect” body, and so much guilt for enjoying things like fried foods and carbohydrates that sometimes, they choose nothing as their answer to that question. Or they choose a glass of water. Or maybe a small piece of fruit.

That’s one friend out of every ten friends that you have. And you’ll never know it, because that friend will be able to hide it so easily by eating all of the same things you do when you’re together. She’s thin, but she’s not TOO thin. She’ll have pizza with you, and she’ll have chicken wings. She’ll drink beers and split your chocolate lava cake. But the whole time, she’s torturing herself in her head.

“All of this is going right to your gut. Can’t you feel those stomach rolls already?”

“You’re disgusting! Everyone can see your rolls.”

“It’s gonna take you weeks of cutting calories and exercising to make up for this!”

But people with eating disorders never eat. They’re always so thin that you can see their bones and their hair is even thinning…. Right?

No.

She’ll be plotting when she can overexercise throughout the following week to rid herself of the calories in which she just indulged. She will push herself, day after day, until she’s so close to fainting that her nose and her lips are tingling. But at least she worked off those calories. She might even go home that night and use her toothbrush to induce vomiting. Anything to lessen the feelings of guilt and diminished self-worth. Even if just a little.

Then in the days following, she might eat hardly anything at all. Just a little something here and there to keep her from feeling lightheaded. Now, after all of that, she’s confident enough to accept your invitation to hang out at the beach! Sort of.

You’ll go to the beach with her. She’ll lay there next to you, in her bikini. At first glance of her, you joke with her and tell her she’s a “skinny bitch” and that you’re “so jealous.” She laughs with you, but inside she cries. She knows that you shouldn’t be “so jealous.” You see a “skinny bitch,” but when she looks in the mirror she still sees someone who is ugly and overweight, and she can’t understand why anyone would be attracted to her. She undermines all of her internal qualities and can’t help but weigh her physical qualities and perceived flaws so much heavier. She feels pain. Deep, intense, heart wrenching pain and hopelessness, everywhere she goes, every day.

You’ll pack a full lunch, including a sandwich, maybe some potato chips on the side. She packed a couple sticks of celery and some water bottles. You make a snarky comment about what a “HUGE lunch” she has. She laughs with you again. This time she’s berating herself for even eating those celery sticks. It feels like her stomach is getting bigger and everyone on the beach can see it. Now she’s looking at all the other women around you in bikinis, and they all look so much more attractive. There aren’t enough towels on the whole beach that she could wrap herself in to make herself feel comfortable. If she could crawl out of her own skin and wash away in the ocean, she would. Why can’t she be like them? Why can’t she have that flat stomach and those muscular arms? She still has a little pouch on her belly and her arms still jiggle when she moves them, despite all of her efforts to restrict her calorie intake and exercise until she can’t anymore. Why can’t she be perfect, no matter how hard she tries?

Then she goes home after the beach, and she lays down in her bed and she cries. She cannot escape what’s in her head. She’s her own harshest judge, and she is ruthless. It has become so difficult for her to socialize with anyone, for fear that they’re also judging her body size and shape. Or for fear that they’ll continue commenting on what she eats, or call her a “skinny bitch.” Or for fear of her own thoughts that beat her down on a daily basis regarding the things that she puts on her plate and the image she sees in the mirror as a result. So she rejects invitations to social outings, anticipating the calories and the fat rolls that will come from it – because when do people socialize without food or drinks? Sometimes, it just isn’t worth the shame, the guilt that lingers afterward. She stays home, sad, lonely and angry at herself for letting her thoughts and obsessions with food and exercise consume her life. And she cries, because it feels so vain and superficial to have these thoughts. What would people think of her if they knew she obsessed over her own body like this? That these thoughts of herself occupied her mind so frequently? It’s her mind, and her choices of foods, so she should be able to control it. Right?

It’s so much deeper than that, but you won’t understand, and so she never tells you. In the upcoming months, she is diagnosed with ovarian cysts and needs to be put on birth control pills. Her back stiffens and her chest feels tight when the doctor tells her that a possible side effect is weight gain. She fights back tears as she gets the prescription filled at her local pharmacy, and she can’t help but feel like a total jerk for feeling this way. It’s such a minor side effect, and yet it had her anxiety levels at an all-time high. She almost wished she was diagnosed with a fatal illness, just so she could feel justified in being so broken and scared over it.

But eventually she gets help. It takes her years of therapy to recover, and I use the term “recover” very loosely. This type of illness is a battle she will always be fighting. She’ll be in constant recovery, even when she has learned healthy eating habits again and can (mostly) set aside her social anxieties that revolve around eating. It’s a journey of learning self-love and compassion, rationalizing perfectionist tendencies and unrealistic ideologies, and listening to what her body is telling her, which will last throughout the rest of her life. Some days will be great, and other days she might backslide a little bit. This is her struggle, and the struggle of one person out of every ten people.

So…. what’s for dinner?

Awareness.

The next time you hang out with that “skinny bitch” think twice before you make backhanded comments regarding their eating habits or the shape of their body. It’s not okay.

Why do I hate my body?

I don’t get it. I don’t understand why I hate my reflection. I don’t understand how I can be so many things, so many brilliant things, but that sometimes it feels like the only thing that matters about me is how I look in a fucking crop top. I don’t get it.

I guess, intellectually, I understand it. Media. Beauty standards. Magazines. Advertising. Greed. Hollywood. Photoshop. It all makes sense in my head. I see it. I get it. I understand how that kind of shit can just sneak its way into my brain and start camping out in there, dictating my thoughts and behavior like it owns the place. I see that.

Like, intellectually and logically and rationally, I understand how I can get to the place of viewing my body in a very negative light, considering the kind of nonsense I am unaware of digesting on a daily basis. That being said, I’m conscious. I don’t just consume without thinking. I don’t buy magazines. I watch the shows I like on Netflix and that’s it. I’m not bombarding myself with all these unrealistic images of women.

And yet...

Even with that, even with a conscious effort to not be exposed to the kinds of shit which sneaks its way into my brain, I still hate my body. I still go to sleep with exercise plans in my head. I still see eating bread as the ultimate sin. I still avoid my own reflection. I still hide away parts of me I don’t deem as acceptable. I still flip past pictures of beautiful women on Instagram and automatically assume their lives are better, that they are better. I still look at myself through a critical, harsh lens. I still have this tiny lingering belief that my shinier, happier life happens the moment I fit into a size 0.

I’m accomplished. I’m successful in many ways. I’m intelligent. I’m ambitious. I’m kind and compassionate and thoughtful and witty and funny and passionate. I care vdeeply about helping when I can for who I can. I try to be genuine. I’m trustworthy and I think most people would have a pretty high opinion of me (humble brag!). I’m a self-taught graphic designer. I'm a published writer.

But...

I am not skinny.

I am not hot.

How the latter two characterizations completely overshadow my many former achievements and virtues, I will never know. I will never quite understand why being a woman and being beautiful and thin deserves more recognition than anything else that I could possibly do in my life. I will never understand female admiration that is doled out simply because of the way a woman looks. I will never understand why talent, fortitude, perseverance, intellect, compassion are less virtuous than being hot.

To be hot is to be everything. To be hot is to be afforded the luxury of having not be anything else. Female hotness is the ultimate aspiration. And. I. HATE. it. Maybe I would hate it less if I were hot, if I was profiting off the system, the game. But, you know, I think I could be hot. I could devote my life to being hot. There are means. There are ways.

Maybe this is a rebellious stance to take, but fuck off. I don’t want to spend my life trying to be acceptable enough. To try and pass as "good enough." Good enough is the prison women are kept in. I think, if I can be good enough, passable, enough of something, then I will be fine. I will be okay. I don’t consistently aspire to be brilliant or great or accomplished. I aspire to good enough, as if being good enough affords me much of anything. If I can just look like how I’m supposed to look, then I will be fine. If I color in the lines, follow all the rules, be a good woman, I will be fine.

Good enough is a trap. Being good enough is NOT good enough. It’s not enough of me! It’s a passing grade, a consolation prize, a participation trophy. And I want none of those things. I’m not trying to hit the limit of who I am by being good enough. Fuck good enough. I want to go straight past good enough and right into being brilliant. Straight to genius. Straight to change, growth, potential, passion. Good enough is the "meh" of life. And I want none of it.

I don’t want to cave or cower to a pervasive belief that says a woman’s ability to be hot is more valuable than her ability to be literally anything else. What kind of world is this? What kind of disempowering bullshit is this? And, why do I stand for it?

Why do I hate my body? Because I think I should. Because I’m punishing myself for not being good enough, for not being hot, for not being thin. I hate my body because I have nothing or no one else to hate. I hate my body because I am angry and it is an easy thing to focus that anger on. I hate my body because it has defied me, because it isn’t naturally thin, naturally hot. I hate my body because it seems like the thing I should do. It is what I’ve been taught. It is what I know and it is what everyone around me does. I hate my body because I choose to hate it. Because I think hating it will inspire me to change it, which will give me the acceptance—the good enoughness—I think I want. I hate my body because I haven’t decided to feel otherwise. I haven’t decided yet that my body is worth loving, that I don’t need to earn its favor, that it can be anything it wants to be and I will continue to love it. I haven’t yet chosen this.

Hugs for the holidays

The seasons are changing, and it’s that time of year when we have to start being extra-careful about our immunity.

And I’m not just talking about the flu–I’m talking about body image issues.

In case you weren’t aware, disordered eating is a communicable disease–or, perhaps I should say it’s a communicatable disease. It’s not the kind of disease that’s spread by hugging–on the contrary, hugs are an essential daily vitamin that can help you build your immunity. It’s the kind of disease that spreads from person to person through negative self-talk, marketing ploys, and cultural habits.

Every year during this time our attention turns to America’s favorite past time: coming up with an excuse for eating and then coming up with an excuse for punishing ourselves for eating.

And every year during this time, our TVs, radios, blog feeds, and social media networks turn into a giant discussion about how to binge, how to stop bingeing, and how to make up for bingeing once the season is over. This is the time of year when it seems like you can’t have a conversation about anything without bringing up who’s eating what, where, and when, and how you’ll be doing penance for it.

It’s in the national media, and it’s also close to home. For example, just two days ago, during the closing minutes at my dance studio, one of the newer teachers said in her soothing voice (and I’m loosely quoting, because I wasn’t taking notes while stretching), “The holidays are coming. And you’re going to eat a lot. But you will come back, and you will get back in shape.”

[Insert sound of a record scratching here.]

Um, what?

How about, “The holidays are coming, and you’re going to spend lots of quality time with people you love. Food and exercise may be involved, but they’re not all that important in the grand scheme of things?”

Or, “The holidays are coming, and if you do choose to fixate on food, know that you’re not alone, and that you don’t have to punish yourself with exercise to make up for it. Throw away your scale and do yoga because it feels good?”

Or even, “The holidays are coming, and it can be difficult to be around food and family members and stressful situations. Keep coming back to ballet because it will give you the tools you need to stay mind-full and avoid stuffing yourself belly-full out of frustration or stress?”

Look, I know that there’s little I can say in this one blog that’s going to get the Today Show to stop showing you segments about how to cook a 5000 calorie Thanksgiving and then burn off a 5000 calorie Thanksgiving, or TV commercials to stop glorifying disordered eating behaviors (like fixating on or sneaking food), or the inevitable “January 1 is coming so eat while you can but save your money for a gym membership” magazine ads.

That said, change has to start somewhere–and it can start with YOU.

If you want to have a happy and healthy holiday season, then it’s up to YOU to start changing the way YOU talk about food with family and friends.

When the ladies in the locker room are talking about how fat they already feel because they’re anticipating the holiday binge, you can choose not to participate–and, even better, change the subject by asking them who they’ll be celebrating with or where they’ll be traveling.

As soon as food or exercise comes up as the topic of conversation, YOU have a choice to change the channel, leave the room, or redirect the conversation. And if you’re stuck on your yoga mat, you can choose not to listen–or, do what I did, and focus instead on the upcoming port de bras (or yoga poses), which you want to try to work on.

Whatever you do: Don’t feed the negativity about feeding!

Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, if you’re a member of the western culture and even marginally exposed to our cultural practices around the fall/winter holiday season, then you have plenty of opportunities to be exposed to the communicatable disease that is disordered eating.

Just as you can spread a cold when you forget to cover your mouth when you cough, so can you spread disordered eating and exercise behaviors when you choose to indulge in the negative body talk about indulging during the holidays.

Build up your immunity now by practicing the following:

Worried about bingeing on once-a-year foods? Cook a dish or two now, and enjoy it on a random week night so you can remember that Thanksgiving or Christmas (or whatever holiday you’re celebrating) is not the only time you’ll have access to that food.

Make a list of non-food or gym-based activities that you’re looking forward to participating in from now through January. Use that list to redirect the conversation when friends or family (or you!) start fixating on food.

Get a notebook or a piece of paper, and put a check mark every time you catch yourself saying something negative about your body in anticipation of the holiday season. About the chime in on that “I can eat less and exercise more” conversation with your girlfriends? Check it off. Mind racing with anxiety when a stuffing commercial comes on? Check it off. The benefits are two fold: over time, you’ll be able to start unconsciously making the catches, AND you’ll be able to mindfully redirect your thought process with positive self-talk.

Be honest with friends and family: ask them not to make a big deal about food and exercise in conversation. You’re allowed to set healthy boundaries, and as long as you’re being respectful in how you ask (i.e. don’t attack them for bringing up the leftover situation), you can help condition those with whom you spend your time to notice when they’re engaging in triggering conversation as well.
Remind yourself that a holiday feast is just another meal. Allow yourself to savor the foods you don’t normally eat, but remember to spend time savoring the company you’re in as well. You’ll spend less time gorging (or restricting but fixating) on the sweet potatoes if you’re having a great conversation with your family and friends.

You don’t have to worry yourself sick over your food and exercise situation this holiday season. Change the way you communicate, and in turn, those around you might follow suit.
And, just in case, make sure you’re getting plenty of vitamin H* in the meantime.

*Hugs, obviously.

The silent struggle

Perhaps it’s easier to look away from eating disorders because they are quiet. They are solitary, shameful struggles, raging internal wars that don’t necessarily radiate outwards. And we anorexics, bulimics, over-exercisers and bingers have perfected the art of pretending like everything is fine, just fine. We make it easy to turn the other cheek to our sickness. In fact, we want you to. We assure our friends and family with a smile; “Don’t worry, I already ate dinner earlier.” “Oh no, I’m just feeling kind of sick today. No appetite.” “I’ve only been on the elliptical for 20 minutes, not 3 hours, this timer must be wrong.”

More often than not, the concerned party leave us alone. It would be intrusive to keep pestering, and if someone says they’re fine, you should take their word for it. Right?

Mental health and well-being in general are uncomfortable topics of discussion. When we say someone is mentally ill or has a mental illness, our minds go to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, strait jackets and lobotomies, even though that’s no longer our reality. No one wants to talk about mental illness because it’s terrifying to us. Sadness, depression, weakness, vulnerability; it’s all too much.

Yet, our silence and inability to talk about suffering and the dark parts of the human condition only makes us sicker.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, in fact. They are not a choice, they are not a lifestyle. They don’t only affect vain white girls who want to fit into skinny jeans. They don’t have to look a certain way. They’re not always about control. And men have eating disorders too.

I’m not sure what it is about eating disorders that makes them so taboo. Perhaps it’s the stigma surrounding them. Perhaps it’s the lack of education about them. Perhaps it’s the feeling of helplessness from the confidante when a victim seeks their help. Either way, the stigma is there and it’s incredibly tangible.

I have struggled with anorexia for many years now. When I first developed my eating disorder, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I knew something was very wrong, but I couldn’t vocalize it. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t feed myself, that I was constantly obsessing about the size of my thighs and about the calories I had or hadn’t consumed that day. I was so ashamed to admit that I felt an incomparable rush from losing weight and that it was the first time in my life I felt powerful and confident. I was even more ashamed to admit that this was no longer something I could control and that it had consumed me.

My anorexia spiraled so quickly that only now, almost ten years later, am I starting to chip away at it - exploring the reasons behind it, and wondering if I can truly live without it. Only now am I really starting to heal, because only now am I talking.

So please, if you are worried about someone, tell them. If you are worried about yourself, tell someone. When you ask someone how they are, really listen. When asked how you are, try to respond authentically. Let’s make eye contact and try to keep it. Let’s do the harder, more uncomfortable, beautifully vulnerable thing.

Let’s start the conversation.

The Invisibility of an Eating Disorder

Each day is a new day. I wake up with the intention of having nothing more than a coffee for the foreseeable future. I quietly applaud myself if I persist. Each bite of food I take leads to an inner struggle as I question whether I will stay the course and get a light salad thereby cementing my extremely limited caloric intake for the day or do I dare have a sandwich thereby necessitating a insatiable consumption of junk food.

The days alone are easier, there is nothing to hide. I can eat anything that I please with a ravenous gluttony or deny myself necessary sustenance with an unabashed sense of pride. There is rarely an in between.

I cant seem to remember a time where this wasn’t the case. Many have commented on my aptly labeled “weird” eating habits but few have inquired further. Those closer to me have noted that I have a “problem with eating” with little more than exuberant frustration at my decision. As if I have a choice.

Here’s the thing about eating disorders, there is no choice.

In my attempt to manipulate a sense of control over my life and my decisions, I am rendered powerless by food.

I starve myself because I can, because I can control that. Even then though, I cannot, I lose control and I eat. And boy do I eat. A box of cookies, a bag of chips, a cake, because why not? I have already succumbed, what more can I lose? Once the taste of that one cookie has touched my lips, I have already lost, so what difference does a dozen more make? Today is a lost day, I think as I devour the first cookie which will inevitably lead to finishing off the box and looking through menus of food to order.

I am an otherwise intelligent person, and I realize this thought process is neither healthy nor rational, yet here I am still ascribing to it after all these years. And this is where the true invisibility lies.

People can observe the quirky behavior that I take on with food, but in a society where being thin is revered as one of the ultimate bastions of success, the struggle hidden beyond that is rarely ever addressed. The weight loss is applauded with envious compliments. The gluttony is reviled with promises of extended gym trips and future limitations. All of this done with light hearted comments intended to leave little more than superficial commentary but it fuels this invisible battle that I am fighting. 

What is it like to live with an eating disorder?

Starving yourself is a lot easier than you might think. You start out with an itch, but one that comes from the inside, a feeling that fingers can’t reach. That feeling turns to pain, but not the pangs you’ve been promised. It’s a more hollow pain, like that ringing after you hit your head on something, the moment where everything hurts but is strangely clear at the same time.

In time, though, you just get tired. You find yourself wanting to go to sleep, even though it’s only 6:00 P.M., and you wonder why you feel this way. You had a full night’s sleep last night - actually, you overslept. You overslept the night before, too. In fact, you’ve been sleeping a lot lately. You stop to consider this fact and then you realize can’t remember the last time you ate. You know that you had to eat at some point. You just don’t remember.

When you’ve gotten over the pain, staying in this third stage - the place where you don’t feel hungry, just empty and tired - becomes like a habit, the thing you use to feel death inside you. Some people smoke. Some people drink. Some people do drugs. You just don’t eat.

You used to pride yourself on this fact, your ability to go long stretches with almost no food. Growing up without much money to go around, you know that food isn’t cheap, and you think of all the money you must be saving. You look in the mirror and feel an unexpected sense of pride when you see how white your skin is and counting your ribs is like counting the dollars in your bank account. Some people put money into savings. You get skinny.

You tell yourself that you’ll eat later, when you can afford it and when you’ve worked for it. Besides, not eating is a lot better than eating Ramen, but almost everything is better than eating Ramen.

You use this promise of food as an incentive to push yourself harder and to be more beautiful, being the kind of person who has earned a hearty meal. When you’re cramming for an exam or you are on deadline, you feel your eyes closing - well into stage three, for a length of time you don’t know how to count anymore - and you have another sip of coffee. You’ll eat when you get done. If you just power through and get this done quickly, you can eat.

When you don’t think you deserve food, you’ll find any reason you can to not eat. You’ll tell yourself that you’ve spent too much today or that you ate so much for breakfast that you need to skip a meal - or a couple meals - to balance it out. When you eat again, you will attack your food like a lion feasting on prey in the jungle, and friends will say that they don’t know how you eat so much and stay so skinny. Your metabolism is sick. You’ll smile and keep eating because right now, food is the only thing that matters.

You’ll avoid putting a label on it or talking about it and it might not ever occur to you that you have a problem - until a friend confesses to you that she’s bulimic. You’ll say that you have something to tell her, too. You pause, because you know you should tell her something, but you don’t know what to say. You don’t know where to start. You’re silent. Everything hurts but is strangely clear at the same time.

Telling someone will make it easier. Then it won’t. You will go through periods where you eat more and then you eat less again, replacing supplements and diet pills with food. You look at the people on the label of the bottle, one that promises to turn fat directly into muscle, and you wonder if a six-pack is hiding under your abs, just waiting. You are certain this isn’t how it works, but it doesn’t stop you from trying. When you’ve barely eaten in days, anything seems possible.

It even seems possible that you might get better and that one day, you’ll be the person you wanted to be, and you don’t need to starve yourself to get there. You are certain this isn’t how it works, but it doesn’t stop you from trying.

You might not ever get better and you might get a little better. Better might not have a meaning anymore. Better just means different. You might become better at forcing yourself to eat, even when you don’t want to. You keep attacking your food, and you look in the mirror, expecting to look better to yourself. You want your body to reflect the progress you’ve made. But you look the same. You will look different — but always the same somehow — and when someone tells you how good or how healthy you look, the compliment will startle you, as if they are jumping out from behind a bush.

You will thank them, because you don’t know what else to say. You itch, but it’s a different itch this time. One day, you hope to know what to say. When you finally eat, almost anything seems possible. 

Owning my own recovery

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Despite the fact that the question was never the same, my answer was truly always the same.

It wasn’t until an icy Thursday afternoon on my therapist’s couch that I had the troubling realization that this was something I had always wanted to be more than anything else: Thin. Truthfully, I had never wanted to be anything as badly as I wanted to be thin and tiny – more than I ever wanted to be smart or funny or popular or in love. Definitely more than I ever wanted to be a doctor or the President.

The endless pursuit of being thin has been the ghost in my closet, the one that got away, the white noise, the only passion I cling to. At 21, I grew so impatient and exhausted by this goal that I revolted against my body and nearly destroyed it in the process – a process that left my throat sore and my back achy, slumped over on my therapist’s couch on an icy Thursday afternoon, succumbing to the crushing realization that the most constant goal in my life had always been a dress size.

I cried, longer and more violently than I had ever done on the bathroom floor, in regret, in frustration, in disgust with myself. I pictured myself as an 80-year-old woman reflecting on her youth only to find that she had been alarmingly foolish and utterly lost about what actually matters in this life. For as long as I could remember, my deepest fears had been that my worth on this earth would be measured by the amount of space I took up, rather than the light I spread around me. Though I had wanted to grow up and help others, the most persistent cause that had planted roots in my soul was about the flat plane of my stomach, the protrusion of my hip bones, and the elusive, mythical thigh gap. Oh and how 80-year-old me would think, how selfish; how silly; but mostly how sad.

I have heard many references to eating disorders as being the “darkest of days” in a person's life. And while my days did feel undoubtedly dark, I remember them now mostly as quiet. Like when you’re about to go under general anesthesia in the operating room, and then, right before you slip into another world, you can hear only the humming of voices around you, and you can’t summon the strength to say a word. It was the deep sleep I tried to fight off, but ultimately welcomed with open arms. It was, after all, my most persistent and unwavering passion. The truth is that even now, in the midst of trying to work my way into recovery, some days the darkness treads lightly behind me while other days the voices scream around me.

Part of my recovery is owning this: if I had been honest, both with myself and with the well-meaning adults who asked, the answer to their question would have been that what I really wanted was to shrink and shrink and shrink until maybe I disappeared – as a third-grader, as a pre-teen, in high school, after college, that icy Thursday afternoon, always. But what I recently learned is recovery is also seeing that even though my priorities have been sadly disoriented, there were some gentle and graceful things I have always wanted to be: a loyal friend, a grateful daughter, a humble leader, a patient sister, an inquisitive learner, a person who truly felt what it meant to be alive. And eventually, this will be enough to make me get up off the bathroom floor; enough to make me stop trying to disappear.

This is the pursuit of being thin is the ex-lover who never stops calling. It is the one who creeps back like a bad habit without me realizing it. It is, at times, the “can’t eat, can’t sleep” infatuation I fear I’ll never truly get over. But then, on good days, it is the grudge I forget to hold; it is the old, manipulative friend that I no longer need in my life.

Just one day at a time

Some people have this "all or nothing" mentality when it comes to healthy living. We need to realize that this whole all or nothing mentality is toxic. People feel like if they 're not doing it all, then their progress is nothing. And that is not true.

You either run every day or you're not a runner. You never have unhealthy thoughts at all or you're not recovering. You have to never eat fast food or you're not a healthy eater. You love yourself everyday and never have bad days or you're not positive body. You go out every weekend or you're not a social person.

It does not have to be all or nothing.

Every little bit is a step to a better life.

So if you ran yesterday and today you're not able to - you're still a runner and I'm proud of you. If yesterday you were okay but today you've fought the urge to restrict or purge since you woke up - you're still recovering and I'm proud of you.

If today, for the first time in weeks, you eat burgers and fries with friends or have pizza while on your lunch break - you are still a healthy eater. And I'm proud of you. Sometimes you fall off the wagon for months. Sometimes you tell yourself you’re gonna start fresh on Monday and by Wednesday you’ve already fallen back off. Sometimes you have to restart a 100 times and it’s frustrating. But it will be okay.

If you woke up this morning and immediately did not like yourself this morning, it's okay - You're still a body positive person and I'm proud of you. If you had to cancel your plans for the night because you couldn't deal with the anxiety, remember your friends still love you and they understand.

Just take each day step by step. Every run. Every urge. Every dining experience. Every negative thought. Because it's not all or nothing.

It's a little of this and a little of that and each piece turns progress.

You can do this. One day at a time

The road to recovery

Some days, you’ll wake up feeling thinner and it will be thrilling. You might barely eat and feel like you’ve finally had a Perfect day and go to bed with a slight sense of hunger and a strong sense of satisfaction. Or you might eat a lot or something bad because you finally felt like one of those shiny-haired girls with Bambi legs who just have “a crazy metabolism” and have a zillion Instagram photos of them holding pizza and baking Nutella brownies and eating Ben and Jerry’s out of the tub with a massive spoon. Then later, you’ll panic and feel like you’ve eaten too much and you’ll kick yourself for having screwed up. You’ll just have to remind yourself that you’ve only screwed up if you allow yourself to think that eating more than usual, or eating with enthusiasm, is screwing up. A meal isn’t a binge. Dessert isn’t a sin.

Some days, you’ll wake up feeling bloated and you’ll want to skip breakfast or breakfast and lunch or only have liquids that day. Then you’ll get hungry around lunchtime and you’ll have to remember that you promised yourself you were through with this bullshit. You'll have to remember you won't do this to yourself anymore.

Sometimes you’ll be faced with decisions such as, "Should I get regular or skim, normal coke or diet, buttered toast or plain, anything I want for lunch or just salad, and with the light dressing?" And you’ll have to remember that it honestly doesn’t matter. Recovery doesn’t mean choosing the full-fat, full-sugar option. It means understanding that there is no ‘good’ option, and that whichever option you choose does not define you as a person – no food allegiance will make you daintier or more endearing.

Sometimes you’ll see girls who remind you of the girl you were when you were sick. They’ll have thick black tights over their thin legs and big sweaters over their small frames. They’ll be pushing their food around on their plate and gulping water. They’ll be brushing their brittle hair out of their eyes with bony fingers. They’ll look wistful and delicate and you’ll have to try extra hard to remember how miserable you felt when you were just like them. You’ll have to try extra hard to remember that you were always cold and that your insides were constantly gnawing at each other and that you weren’t able to sleep or go to the bathroom properly and that you lived in constant of fear of an inanimate fucking object.

Sometimes people will mention that you look “so much better” and “so much healthier” than before. Which just means you will have to fight back tears and say “Thank you” with a brave smile because to you, those words will always feel like “You’ve gained weight” and sometimes "You've failed." Try to remember that your eating disorder was not keeping you strong. It was making you weak and choosing to get over it was choosing to live.

Sometimes you’ll binge; it will feel horrible. And not only physically. Accept it. Try to understand why it happened. Then find something comforting to do, like taking a bath, talking with a close friend or watching a movie. Maybe drink some tea. Don’t purge – as unpleasant as waking up bloated and heavier the next day will be, you can’t let yourself fall back into old habits. Because you’ll do it “just this once,” and then the next time will be “one last time” and before you know it, everything will be back out of control.

Sometimes you’ll get nostalgic and look back at the neatness and simplicity of those days. Days when it was a good day if you were “x pounds less than you were the day before,” if you’d eaten “x amount of calories less than the amount you’d allotted yourself,” if you’d burned “x amount of calories doing y minutes of exercise.” Whatever the mode of persecution, it felt structured and familiar and almost soothing. It was safe. It was routine. It was predictable. Now try to remember what most days were like – the hollow feeling in your stomach, the dull aches, the drowsiness, the insomnia, the frustration, the cavities, the loneliness. And then the bad days – clawing at your throat after dinner with the water running, crying into your pillow, eating teaspoons of Tabasco, drinking tablespoons of vinegar and slicing up your thighs.

You’ll be awkward and touchy about the subject around other people. You might try to pretend that none of it ever happened because you’re past that now and you don’t want to be treated like a special case. You don’t want to admit that you used to be the person they’re all implicitly judging – the saddo with no friends other than the scale and the toilet bowl. You might also be afraid that they’d look at you condescendingly and tell you that you didn’t have real eating disorder. I mean, after all, it’s not like you were 80 pounds soaking wet and, like, dying. However, every once in a while, you’ll subconsciously draw attention to how long you can go without eating and how little you once used to weigh.

After a while, you will feel inordinately proud of being able to do normal human things. Like not looking at the calorie content on a packet of chips and eating it as you walk down the street. Like going for a run simply to feel your feet on the pavement. Like wearing a bikini and not giving a flying fuck.

You’ll learn that one of your friends went through the same thing you did and it will make your friendship stronger.

You’ll learn that one of your close friends is beginning to struggle with an eating disorder and it will be absolutely devastating. You’ll cry a lot, for her and for your own memories. You’ll be tempted to relapse. You’ll have to try and find the right words to express how well you understand what she’s going through. She’ll need to hear that she looks thinner; you’ll need to tell her she’s wasting away and needs to get help. You’ll have to be there for her without encouraging her. You’ll have to sit with her and listen when she tells you how much weight she’s lost and how little she’s eaten all day and how she puked last night and how she almost fainted on the stairway, because you’re the only one she can tell these things to. You’ll need to just listen, without giving advice, and then hug her and remind her of how much she means to you. 

Don't let the monsters win

This does not begin the way they tell you,
The way they promise you as
you wait in the hospital watching
your friend heaving into a paper bag
There is no way for your body to
make sense of a poison so close to the
heart and so engraved in the mind
They will tell you it is possible to
live a normal life if you remember to
take your pills, and drink your water
and chart your feelings. Like a child
learning the alphabet, I have learned
my way through sad-angry-mad-happy
I have felt my way through the dark room
and slept at the foot of the monsters bed

He smiles at me in the dark, he tells me
He controls the light. You never know
When its going to get better.
The map it leaves is scars running
from your hip bone to your inner thigh
that no man will ever kiss in the moonlight
and you try the new words, tasting them
on your tongue –

“I’m okay.”
“I’m fine”
“How about you?”

Nothing could taste worse than the
uncertainty of being left cold and dead
in the arms of your own self.

My best friend tried to kill herself twice.
I remind myself of her presence, of the way
she is the sun in my sky, the moon in my path.
I cannot feel anything.

My heart stops in the base of my throat.
I remember what it feels like,
lying alone at the bottom of a bathtub,
lungs filled with water.

I have been learning to breathe since
I took my first breath out of that tub.

I have spent too many months,
washing my hands of my own blood,
Tasting the trouble I caused
on the inside of my gums
I am sorry for those I hurt
when I was trying to gauze myself up.

This is remembering that growth
begins with the rough plough
of a man bigger than a seed
But even trees grow larger
than any man.

I wait for the monster to turn on the lights.
Today could be a good day.
If only you take your medicine.
If only you make your train.
This begins with a word
Recovery
and it never truly ends.

This poem is for all my friends.
The ones who gulp for air, and the ones
who are scared to sleep at night.
The ones who became more than statistics,
and subway delays.

I’m happy your monsters didn’t win.

And

This is for every
Personal injury at track level.

I am here in your memory

Anorexia was supposed to make me strong and beautiful

I could have sworn I wasn’t human anymore. I had just finished a high-intensity ballet workout with an empty stomach, but with all this energy running through me, I still felt stronger and more powerful than ever. Perhaps I was developing some kind of superpower.

Whenever I was having a bad day — or a “fat day”, which was the term I used — I only had to close my eyes and slide my hands up and down my torso. I smiled almost every time, because I could feel every single one of my ribs. Mirrors were the enemy, though; my eyes kept telling me that my waist wasn’t small enough and that my thighs were still too big.

Needless to say, I kept going. However, I was scared to death. It might not make much sense — then again, none of these issues really do — but I wanted to go as far as I could, for as long as I could, without dying.

I used to live by this Kate Moss quote, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Well, skinny hurts. A lot. Skinny made my skin pale and dry, it caused my hair to fall incessantly and my cheeks too become hollow. Skinny gave me the body of a 10 year-old, my butt was barely there and my boobs were nowhere to be found — but hey, at least I had a thigh gap, right?

Anorexia — or any sort of eating disorder for that matter — is not glamorous. It is not something anyone should want and it is not a diet we choose to follow, for the desire to be thin is not the disease, but only a symptom of it. An eating disorder is a severe mental illness that should in no way be diminished or taken lightly.

In other words, no, we can’t “just get over it”. Nevertheless, recovery is possible. It’s probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, because the only thing more terrifying than getting rid of my anorexia was the thought of having to live with it for the rest of my life.

I used to think I was so tough, with an outstanding self-discipline that allowed me to starve myself. I was wrong. I had never known real strength until I chose to recover. That same willpower that was killing me was the one that saved me. This might be a life-long battle, and I still struggle with these demons, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, for I am tired of merely existing. I want to live.

And by the way, a lot of things taste better than skinny feels.

The quest for perfection

It consumes me.  This desire to be skinny.

Small.

Too small.

Even though I see the numbers get lower, I feel like I look the same.  It frustrates me.  How I feel like I’m the one who works so hard so I should have the skinniest legs.  Perhaps the most disturbing part is the competition aspect.  When I look at a girl and see that I’m skinner I feel like I’m winning.  I almost want to giver her a sly smile (and sometimes do) that says, “See what happens when you work hard?”  Conversely, seeing girls smaller than me is the absolute worst.  And whenever I see a girl that is so bony it looks like I could snap her in half, I am completely envious of her and feel a burning hatred inside myself.

Who am I?  What’s wrong with me that I feel this way?  I remember as a child when food didn’t consumer my mind and it wasn’t at all a highlight in my life.  But back then I had an amazing metabolism too.  I could overeat 24/7 and not gain a pound on my extremely small frame.

Now I’m on a quest to be perfect.

Perfect is the unreachable goal that I know I can’t get to but I’ll never stop trying to reach.  So I’ll continue.  I’ll continue counting my calories and not eating more than one thousand a day.  I’ll continue over-exercising. I’ll continue to feel uncomfortable in my own skin and embarrassed by who I’ve become.  Maybe one day I’ll look in the mirror and realize this girl isn’t me, but that day is not today.

My body is not my own

Whenever a photo of a young, teenage me resurfaces, I can’t help but be floored by how… thin I was. That’s what strikes me first. And I believe it’s probably because at that time, I always thought I was 5-10 lbs away from being at an even remotely acceptable weight. I still wonder who made me believe that “fat” is a label that makes you less of a person, that it’s the one adjective you do not want to be. The answer is nobody really, but everybody at the same time.

I realized that whether or not I was “fat” was a predominant concern of mine, because I had nothing else to justify to myself that I was worth anything more. So I looked to other people and their overwhelmingly enthusiastic comments on my appearance and accepted that as validity of my whole being.

Though this was years ago, I still see women who forcefully, sometimes violently and often bitterly carve themselves back into the perfect teenage bodies they did or didn’t have when their womanly shapes are burgeoning through. And while the better part of me wonders why, my good sense understands exactly. And sometimes I still am that woman, or rather, sometimes I still am that 13-year-old girl, and what that girl did in those days was assign ownership of her body to the people who would judge it. The same thing I still see grown women doing now.

I let the compliments and feelings of love and appreciation for my physical appearance compile and create for me a resting ground on which I knew I could always rely. But that wasn’t enough, because it was built from other people. People who could (and would) retract their doting comments of approval just as quickly as they dished them out. This is the core of instability, my friends. It was that part of myself in which I took pride and ownership, but it was not mine at all. I didn’t love myself for who I was, I loved myself for who I was because other people would love it.

I realized that I was in a place where I would spend forever asking the people I was dating “will you love me if I’m 300 lbs?” and I would spend forever at the whim of the dress that didn’t fit and the legislation that didn’t seem fair and the comments that made me feel whole because they made me believe that on the outside, I was worthy of that feeling. I would spend forever believing that my body would never be mine, rather, something to be adjusted for the sake of other people’s opinions. Opinions, I realized, that were rooted in their own sense of self-deprecation. Not because they were that invested in me.

It was only years and flurries of pant size fluctuation, months of self-loathing and days upon days of searching for the cure to my incessant need to be beautiful in other people’s eyes that a very important truth dawned on me. The problem wasn’t what other people would say or do or believe, it was what I interpreted from those words and actions and thoughts. The problem was me all along.

And so now here I am. An adult woman, defiantly redefining herself each day, moving farther and farther away from unhealthy mindsets and toxic opinions, but who still can’t help but wonder how many girls still believe that their bodies won’t ever be theirs. And it’s one of those things in which no words that I can offer can really heal, because it’s the journey that will save you from it.

So wherever you are on that long, twisty road, reader who made it this far down because something in this struck a chord with you, I hope you realize what I realized far too late in the game. That acceptance is usually not something that arrives in bits and pieces. It sweeps through you when it’s present, it creates avenues where there were road blocks and understanding where there was frustration. Find it in you, dig it out from under the shit pile the world threw on it and let it infiltrate everything. That’s where we dawn on a life that doesn’t require other people to approve of it, and where we’ll all meet eventually, the day we realize that it’s in judging other people that we intoxicate ourselves.

We are more than just a number

We are more than numbers formed using calculations and logic. We are not just some tiny dot on a graph or a conclusion to be drawn. We are heartfelt laughter during a Friday night out with best friends. You are the tears streaming down your face, emotionally stripped and raw from a breakup; and just as equally the tears of joy when you are overwhelmed by the presence of God on a Sunday morning.

I am more than the number flashing across the scale or the inch where the measuring tape meets when pulled snugly around my waist. I am my favorite pair of jeans that hug in all of the right places and an old, worn-in t-shirt that is softer than the finest cashmere.

We are more than the countless number of magazines and advertisements screaming "You’re not good enough just the way that you are". Beauty comes from a place inside, so hidden that it could rival the depths of the ocean. It shines through from your soul, radiating from the inside out. It is reflected out into the world through kindness and compassion towards others.

I am more than the number of people that I have dated, loved, or slept with. I will not be labelled as a slut, a prude, or damaged goods — regardless of what people say or how many times my heart has been bruised. You are the equivalent of your personal choices and the freedom to do whatever you please.

You are more than your GPA. Your thoughts, intelligence, and character could never be added up and divided into a precise percentage. You are all of the adventures, mistakes and late nights spent with friends when you should be sitting at home quietly studying.

We are more than amount of debt you owe or the balance in that checking account. I am a part of places traveled and the experiences shared. You could be diving off a cliff, trekking through the rainforest or swimming underneath a waterfall. I am the places I have been. You are the adventures you've had.

You are more than a statistic stating that you are a part of a minority, ignorantly claiming that you will never be equal to the ideal, no matter how hard you work. We are determined, ambitious, and driven by our own hopes and dreams. We are striving to be the best possible version of ourselves because that is what truly matters.

We are not the number of days, hours, and minutes we have on this earth.

You are how you decide to use that time to leave your own legacy behind.

You are all of these little things added up into one infinitesimal sum.

We are alive.

Where do I go from here?

Anyone who has battled an eating disorder will tell you there is a line drawn through life. It’s not huge or obvious or obnoxious. In fact, it’s quite small and almost always invisible to others. Staying on the right side of the line is a war won not through the end result but the daily battles.

You see, this fine, fine line is occasionally overstepped. Maybe a toe sneaks over the line or a whole step is taken but, whatever it is, you’ll always catch yourself at the edge, back up slowly and resume living on the right side.

But sometimes, when fate decides to come and play, you don’t just take a step or two over the line. The control you thought you had begins to slip away. Slowly, at first, and then like a tornado it rips through your reality, destroying everything in its path. And before you know it, you find yourself falling head first into that bottomless pit.

After several years on the road to recovery, I finally felt okay. Okay to eat a slice of pizza now and then. Okay to indulge in a full fat latte once a week. I was okay.

Fast-forward four months and I have begun to cross that tempting line again. At first it was a missed meal, then a harsh thought after looking in the mirror, followed by an extra mile on the treadmill.

But I reassured myself I was fine. Having an eating disorder isn’t a one-time thing. It can be a struggle to stay afloat. So I had picked up some old habits. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before. I was still better. I wasn't that  bad. Right?

This was different. The carefully balanced scale reached the tipping point.

Eating disorders are disorders based in shame, and I felt a whole additional level of shame. Without even realizing it, I had gone five days without eating. I wish I could have stopped myself, but at that point, it was too late. The dark side had consumed me as I gained ultimate control again. Control over my body, what I chose to put in my mouth and what I chose to refuse.

It was exhilarating. Like the feeling of whiskey running through my veins, I felt alive.

If this path of self-destruction and self-deprecation is familiar to you then you also know that the high doesn’t last long. The hunger pains slowly increase. A permanent winter takes refuge in your bones and won’t shake no matter how many blankets you wrap around yourself. And a glance in the mirror reveals that the days of shiny, full hair are long gone.

But I had crossed the line, that fine, fine line running through your life. Oh darling, I had fallen into the deep end and, once you’re in that deep, the swim back to shore seems impossible. You're out there all alone and no one can see you. No one can throw you a life raft.

What do you do when you’ve gone too far? What do you do when you don’t recognize the face staring back at you? Where do you go from here?

When do you really recover?

I know recovery isn't an end place, it is a destination. I just wish I wouldn't have days where I felt like I have fallen so far back into that same place. I hate that these "bad days" are really more like "bad weeks" that I have to struggle through. I hate that I can love my body and love the progress I've made to have it all completely shattered.

I hate that this feeling doesn't just last the day. I hate that I feel like a failure. I hate that I don't even want to look at myself when I feel like this. I can't bring myself to eat anything more than I absolutely have to because I just can't bear the thought of getting fatter than I already feel like I am.

I hate that every time I’m on the treadmill my thoughts are flooded with “5 more minutes and you’ll be skinny; 5 more minutes and maybe boys will look at you at the bar.” I should be running for me. Every time my foot pounds on the seemingly never-ending platform I view it as one step closer for me to achieve beauty. Instead of a step towards health I am working to achieve acceptance.

I hate that I don't enjoy something I love. Walking into my dance studio causes me more stress and anxiety because I know everyone else sees how fat I am in my leotard and tights. I want to feel light and pretty and graceful as I pirouette across the floor but I feel like an elephant in a tutu pretending to dance. I shouldn't leave class at night and want to cry because I was too worried about what other people were thinking about me instead of dancing.

I hate that I’m supposed to be an advocate for positive body image and I can’t look at my naked body in the mirror. I talk up everyone around me: “eat that cupcake, you don’t need outside approval, who you are as a person is important,” yet every time I look down I grab my stomach rolls in disgust. I hate that I'm supposed to be recovered and be able to talk to other people about recovery when I can't look at myself with nothing but disgust.

I hate that I don’t understand how to love myself. I don’t know how to be happy about who I am. I want to look at myself beyond my not-so-flat stomach and thighs that seem closer than I am with my family. Why do I seek so much outside approval?

My body isn’t everything – in fact it isn’t anything. It is a vessel I use to achieve my goals. My love handles do not define me. And as acutely aware as I am of this fact I cannot help but cry when I look down from that hideous angle in the shower. The frustration I feel when getting ready to go out never fails to dampen my mood.

Knowing and feeling are completely unrelated emotions. I know I am more than my body and yet I feel as if a perfecting it is the answer to all of my problems. Rational thought, as prevalent as it may be in my head, cannot hold a candle to the prison of my self-hatred. It does not do much to my self-esteem when I am at a bar surrounded by men who do not give me a second look. It doesn’t do much to see “real” models in a magazine when I can barely button my jeans.

But I will slap on a smile, feed the words I myself cannot absorb to my fragile friends, and continue on in my path to bring light to the darkness of others. I have to smile and pretend like nothing is wrong. Because I'm recovered, I shouldn't have weeks where I am in the same place I claim to be getting away from.

I can only hope that maybe a time will come where I don't have these weeks any more. Maybe one day I will learn to accept myself.

Bell's Lets Talk Day

Today is Bell's Lets Talk Day - a day to support mental health programs in Canada. As someone that has struggled their entire life, this is an amazing campaign that really touches me. Struggling with mental disorders has consumed over twenty years of my life so far. This isn't something I'm proud of, but it is something I'm learning not to be so ashamed of.

I have always been ashamed of my body, developing a severe eating habit (or more correct, a habit of not eating) at a very young age. I struggled with it for so long that I forget that it isn't something that every person has to deal with. I have always struggled in social situations, trying to please everyone and constantly fearing that I would let them down. I have spent many hours trying to recover from panic attacks.

And I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't want people to know how weak and broken I was. When I would work up the courage to tell someone that I thought there was something wrong, I was often told that I needed to "suck it up" and that it was just a mood. When I would receive this response, it made me less inclined to seek out help. It made me less willing to talk to anyone about it. This was just all in my head, I was broken.

It wasn't until a friend of mine actually sat down and talked to me one day a few years ago that I realized I wasn't alone. I spent so many years being ashamed that it was amazing to finally be able to open up and tell someone that I needed help. Having that person reach out was what helped me realize that I could ask for help. I wasn't alone.

Simply talking with someone is one of the best ways to start breaking down the barriers associated with mental illness.

And if you are struggling, remember what you're worth. Remember you are valuable. Remember that you are repairable. Remember that you're worth fighting for. Remember that you are not a punching bag, you are not a doormat.