Disproving The Gospel: My Eating Disorder That Nobody Knows About

Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as eating disorders.

“I remember when I saw you in chorus a few years ago,” he said to me one night through AIM.

I smiled at my computer screen, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. It was 2007, and every single word he said was like gospel to me. I waited with bated breath to see the romantic follow-up that would surely sweep me off my feet. Maybe, this time, it would be sweet.

Maybe, this time.

He sent his next message. “I thought, ‘That girl either has awful posture or a really huge gut,’” it read.

I wonder what I’d do if that happened to me now. Yell, probably. Scream that I deserve more than this. More than him.

But that was eight years ago. I was only 15, and it was one of many cruel “truths” he had told me about myself. And I didn’t yell. I didn’t fight. I didn’t even get angry. I just took what he said as absolute truth. I let it sink in, through that slight-yet-soft outer layer that had been a part of me since puberty. I let the gospel seep into my bones, and I willed those bones to protrude. I begged my hip bones to come forward, my ribs to put themselves on display.

I didn’t defend myself that night. I just sat there in front of the glowing computer screen, reading his words over and over until it felt like they were etched into my skin. I hoped that the salt of my tears would burn the fat away, cleanse me, purify me into perfection.

And when that didn’t work, I decided that I would make the fat go away on my own.

I started counting calories. I skipped breakfast altogether, so that wasn’t a problem. I didn’t have a lunch period because of how many classes I was taking, so I would just buy a package of pretzels and a small container of frozen yogurt — 200 calories total. I would eat small portions of dinner, then work it off on the treadmill.

I had been writing down my calories, but I decided, why not keep a blog of my efforts instead? And somehow, girls I had never met started commenting, saying, “You got this, girl! Get that number down! You can get skinny once and for all!”

Their profile pictures portrayed those gorgeous hip bones and ribs that I coveted so much. I wanted that protrusion, that delicate fragility. I was touched that they wanted to help me achieve what they had achieved. They became my online allies for a thinner me.

So I listened to them. I stopped getting the frozen yogurt. I only ate pretzels. When I started to get really hungry, I would eat carrots or celery. I had to eat in front of my friends and family, so I would — and then I’d run extra to make up for it.

My real-life friends commented on my weight loss. “You look great — good for you!” they would say.

But it wasn’t good enough. “Get those calories down to zero!” my online friends cheered.

Sometimes, I would give in — like when I was the photographer at my mom’s work Christmas party, and I ate too many Christmas cookies. So I tried to throw them up in the toilet, but my body refused, clinging to them no matter how many times I shoved my fingers down my throat. I fell to the grimy bathroom floor, sobbing that I had let myself down, let those thin, beautiful girls down.

I will never be thin. I will never be thin.

Or when my aunt made a gorgeous cheesecake covered in raspberries and blueberries specially for me, and I tried to convince myself it wasn’t my favorite, that it was repulsive, something the “new me” wouldn’t want. But I gave in, hating myself more with every bite, and I’d run to the bathroom try again to heave it back out.

It rarely worked. My body rejected my efforts to purge, rebelling at every turn — my eyes watering profusely, my stomach aching for days afterwards. But every now and then, I’d manage to do it, and I would feel disturbingly victorious.

I never became scarily thin. In fact, I don’t think anyone knew — or even knows now, other than the one or two people who I confided to years later — that I had an eating disorder. This is the first time I’m openly admitting it, and it will probably shock my family and friends.

Anyone who would look at pictures of me from my high school years wouldn’t be able to see that I was trying to starve myself to perfection.

But one day, it hit me that I had only eaten 200 calories total the entire week.

I deleted my blog, and immediately forced myself to eat some fruits and veggies. I didn’t even let myself think about it too much, because I was ashamed that I had done this to myself. But every time I ate, I still felt the intense guilt. I still needed to work out every day, or the fat would creep back.

I worked out constantly all throughout college, telling myself that I was addicted to the endorphins. And I would be lying if I said I never purged again, after eating too much with my roommates or drunkenly binging on fried food.

I don’t blame him for my eating disorder. He had a hard life and didn’t know what he was doing. I fault him for years of manipulation and subtle cruelty, but the eating disorder was a sickness of my mind, something that a teenaged boy can’t be blamed for. And it’s something that I battled for a long time, though I never acknowledged it to be a serious issue, even to myself.

It’s only now, at age 23, that I feel I’ve truly bounced back. Today, I weighed myself. And though I’m still “thin” by normal standards, I’m the heaviest I’ve been since that day.

I’m still soft and curvy. I have cellulite on my thighs. I catch myself noticing it and willing it away, wishing that my body would stretch and smooth itself out to perfection.

But then I remind myself: I am strong. I am beautiful. And I am better than that gospel.