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.

The NHL doesn't care. Especially about women.

The off season started with me thinking that, with the conception of the National Women's Hockey League, that hockey was becoming more women friendly. The hockey culture in this world was progressing towards a place where women can feel safe. The NWHL was finally a turning point in hockey as a whole. 

Don’t fool yourselves. the Hawks DO NOT care about you. They DO NOT care about women. If you were the one in the same situation as Kane’s victim, they would trash YOU just the same. The Hawks aren’t going to hold anyone accountable. They want this to go away. They don’t care about the damage they’ve caused. 

The Hawks had ample time and opportunity to address this. They had the chance to say that, while they would not comment on the current situation, they were against violence against women and wanted to educate their team. The NHL had plenty of opportunities to address the ongoing issue of violence against women in the league and to educate their players, their teams, and their fans. They have chosen to remain silent. The banner raising ceremony only solidified the fact that the NHL and the Blackhawks only care about touting Kane as the face of the franchise.

Now though, I truly believe certain people in the NHL, if not the whole of the NHL, really do not give a shit about women. They do not care about their safety. They do not care about them at all. The NWHL went from being an amazing opportunity to feeling like one of the last safe spaces women have in hockey.

The NHL has let me down.

The Hawks have let me down.

And some of my favorite players let me down.

They.

Don’t.

Care.

A note on Raffi Torres...

People, without fail, will always neglect the role the team plays with players like Raffi Torres. Three years ago, I as much as anyone, wanted the man shot into the sun. But when he first went to the Sharks he did get better and I gave him credit for it. Take note of how this happened immediately after a large shakeup in Sharks management. Take similar note to how Matt Cooke did get better until he went to Minnesota.

If the team is going to play them as goons, they are going to be goons. It’s not that difficult of a concept. If they are going to get better, than the responsibility to make that happen falls on the organization. Take for example Matt Cooke. They worked with him to whatever extent was necessary and it paid off. When he went to the Wild, it fell apart because they decided they wanted from him was his old self.

I am not going to defend Torres, but I am going to point out that every single time this issue comes up no one is willing to speak out about the culture that allows it to happen at both the team and league levels. It’s not going to stop until that culture changes, and example-making suspensions are as effective at doing so as the TSA is to making airplanes safe.

Also, if you’re the type of person who just waits for a certain player to make a mistake so you can be outraged and holier-than-thou, you are part of the problem.

I was born to be a heart breaker

When I was five, romance didn’t exist for boys, it did exist for me. “She’s going to break hearts one day,” people said, speaking about me over my head. I smiled, because that is something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

At eight, I stopped wearing dresses because I couldn’t turn cartwheels in them. “A tomboy,” somebody said about me, over my head, as if I couldn’t hear them. I told them “But I don’t want to be a boy,” and they laughed. “We know, sweetness.” I said, “I’m not sweet. I’m serious,” and they laughed again. “You’re cute,” they said. I smiled at that, because that’s something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

At nine, I had too many friends that were boys. “I don’t like it,” my parents would say, standing in the kitchen. But I didn’t understand it. “Your body is going to start changing soon, and I don’t want those boys looking at you. I don’t like it,” they’d repeat. We moved away that summer. I lost everybody.

At thirteen, my best guy friend wrestled me to the ground and covered me in kisses no matter how much I asked him to stop it. “It’s supposed to be like this,” he kept repeating, “stop struggling.” He told me I was pretty and lovely and that boys and girls can’t be friends. He told me to stop being mad at him, that girls are supposed to be pleased about these things.

The same winter, I was catcalled for the first time in my life. I jumped when the car pulled up by my side. They said “baby” over my head as if I wasn’t who they were discussing. I didn’t smile about it. I had to sit down to stop myself from vomiting and crying.

When I was fifteen, most of my friends were boys. My best friend told me he was in love with me. He told me I was breaking his heart. He said if I didn’t love him back, he’d have nothing to live for anymore. The story with the rest of them is all the same. Either they left me or they thought they fell in love with the idea of somebody I wasn’t.

At nineteen, I had only girl friends. They were gentle, and different, and walked me through things. They held my hand when classes got too loud for me, and it meant friendship. They kissed me on the cheeks when I was crying, and it meant friendship. They slept next to me and it was friendship in the way I wasn’t used to. I was used to “stop being a tease,” to “why are you doing this to me.” This was just friendship, and it was excellent.

At twenty, I had friends who were boys again, because boys are supposed to be old enough to see me as a person. One day while we were drunk, I asked one of them why they wouldn’t just say my name. He laughed. He said, “God, you’re going to hate me when I explain.” He said that they’d all formed an agreement behind my back that none of them would fuck me. If I was going to be one of the bros, I couldn’t be a girl to them. I could only be seen as a boy if I wanted to be their friend. All of this said while staring at a point over my head. He tried to kiss me at the end. When I pushed him away, he said, “Sorry,” took a breath, “but if I start seeing you as a girl, I’m gonna try to kiss you again.”

I said, “I don’t want to be a boy, though,” and he laughed again.

He said, “I know, sweetie.”

The summers when I was sad - and I was sad categorically - I tried reaching out. When I turned to the boys, all I heard was, “don’t cut, you’re beautiful,” “don’t kill yourself, you’re so pretty,” “think of the scars, sweetie,” “when you cut yourself, I’m the one who starts bleeding.” I didn’t smile, although I think girls are supposed to be pleased to hear these things. I didn’t know how to say: "I don’t feel beautiful, and even if i did, what I’m doing to myself has nothing to do with you, or what I look like, or how fuckable I am to you." Instead I told them I was fine, and fixed, and nothing bad was happening.

And so at twenty-five, I am sick of boys who are “nice” or are “not like other boys” or are offended when I don’t immediately trust their intentions. I have been hurt over and over again. I have been judged based not on who I am, but whether or not they can get me to sleep with them. I only talk to small handful of my guy friends and the rest I lost because of whether or not I chose to fuck them.

At the same time, I kept most of my girl friends. Even though I have dated a few of them it never impacted our relationships. Even girls who are gay know that being friends doesn’t mean I owe them. Even if we did date, I can still feel comfortable getting drinks with the girls I love. They still hold my eyes when I talk to them.

I've been called a dyke, a lesbian, a man-hater. I think of the men who hurt me, who have spoken over my head, who have given me their full opinion even though I never asked for it. I was hated by basically everyone. I was sad and lonely so often thought I’d never feel happy again. I have been called a slut by boys that don't understand that who I choose to sleep with is just that: my choice.

I’m not sorry. I love so many people, and many boys are wonderful and charming and excellent. I’m not sorry I flinch away from a friendship. I’m not sorry that I will be cold or unaffectionate or scared of getting too close. I'm not sorry if you imagine I'm something I'm not. I'm not sorry if you ask for something that I won't give you.

It’s just that, since I was five, I was told I was born to break hearts.