My Eating Disorder Still Haunts Me
I sorted through old clothes — and it was difficult for me
Me and my partner moved house recently, and when we were packing up our belongings I knew I needed to sort through all of my old clothes.
I knew I had clothes in a few abandoned bags and suitcases in our spare room at our old place, but I had no idea which items were inside them. I was sure that I would sort through them and end up with just two piles of clothes: one pile to take to the charity shop, and one pile to chuck in the bin. But when I looked through the bags, I realised that the biggest pile would consist of the clothes that I wanted to keep. I found myself feeling attached to these old clothes that, realistically, I will probably never fit into again.
I’ve always been bigger than the average person my age. At school, when I was 7 years old, the girls in my class joked that one of the boys in my class was my ‘boyfriend’. In front of the whole class, he said: “Eurgh, I would never be her boyfriend — she’s too fat”. I went to the girl’s bathroom and cried. In the same year at school, two friends casually mentioned their weight in the playground. I knew that I was 1.5 stones (9.5kg) heavier, and I felt horrified. I was only 7, yet I started to hate my tummy and my thighs.
