My Eating Disorder Lied to Me: Part II of my Story
The room was still dark, even though it was 10 o’clock in the morning. I lay in bed, too tired to move, much less lift my arms to open the blackout shade on my dorm’s single window. I was living alone in Canterbury, England, studying abroad. Three months had gone by already. Three months of focusing entirely on my studies and on losing weight.
Every morning — even in the worst snowstorm the county of Kent had experienced in years (true story, see the pic below) — I walked fifteen minutes to the gym and did an hour+ of cardio and strength training, then it was studying and classes all day to come home to my dorm, climb five flights of stairs (sometimes I could barely make it up the last few flights), and do pilates and high intensity (HIIT) workouts in the evenings before going to bed…hungry. On top of my exercise regime, I walked miles every day (because it’s a small city in the UK and everyone walks).
I was exhausted.
I could eat — more like not eat — whatever and however much I wanted since there were no parents, boyfriend, or anyone else I had to answer or explain to. So I ate irregularly, living off of veggies, small amounts of fruit, and canned fish.
I said ‘no’ to the meals and parties my classmates invited me to because eating was terrifying and complicated (I claimed multiple allergies like dairy, eggs, and red meat), and having to eat in front of other people was a nightmare. Also, I was too self-conscious of my still-not-good-enough body to enjoy social gatherings, everyone else looked so happy and their bodies were 1,000x better than mine.
Isolation is a trademark of eating disorders.
But then one day when I was in the height of my eating disorder — watching everything I ate, walking miles every day in addition to my 2x a day workouts, skinny enough that I had abs and was wearing size double zero pants, and miserable — I went with my class to visit Stonehenge. It was a 5-hour bus ride to get there and we had to leave Canterbury at 6 am. I pulled myself out of bed before 5 to get a HIIT workout in.
When we finally arrived at Stonehenge, one of my classmates offered to take a picture of me in front of the rocks (that’s basically all Stonehenge is, if you’ve ever longed to go there…just a ring of not-so-giant-looking rocks that you can’t touch because there’s a wide circle of rope protecting them from visitors’ hands). Anyway, I stood there squinting in the sun with the rock pillars behind me, while she snapped the photos. Back on the bus, I scrolled through the few she’d taken.
Second time a picture changed my life…
I wanted to scream. How was I still so fat and ugly?! If you’ll remember back to Part I of my eating disorder story, a picture of myself is what first triggered the body shame and self-hatred that led me towards an eating disorder. I’d spent years trying to erase that “awkward”, “ugly” image of myself, trying to create a different one that conformed to the cultural idea of beauty (supplied by magazines, social media, etc.). And here I was again, staring at a picture of myself and hating everything about it. Hating how I didn’t measure up.
In that Stonehenge picture, I saw the same girl I’d spent the last four years trying to erase and reshape. It was still me, with the same cheeky smile and squinty eyes, the slouched shoulders, and awkwardness. (Of course, those are all the things I saw at the time and was obsessing over, not reality).
I realized then that no amount of starving myself or exercise could change who I am or how I see myself.
All my years of effort and pain had been for nothing.
I remember watching the sunshine yellow of the blooming rapeseed fields blur by the window on our way back to Canterbury.
The next morning all of it — four years of strict food rules, of constant low blood sugar and fatigue, of strenuous workouts seven days a week, of running hundreds of miles with injuries and pain, of hating myself, of going to bed hungry every night, tummy growling painfully, of stressing and obsessing over the way I looked or didn’t look — crashed down on top of me, heavy and paralyzing. I knew I couldn’t carry this pressure and lifestyle around with me any longer, couldn’t take another step with the weight of it all. It hadn’t changed anything, anyway.
I had tried everything, abusing my body and missing out on life, to achieve happiness and confidence. But here I was, still hating myself. Still despising the girl who stood there nervously smiling at me in the photos.
So if it wasn’t the weight or about getting skinny, then what was it..?
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If you’d like to hear the rest of my story + what I did to find freedom from an eating disorder, please let me know in the comments below!
