Where My Demons Hide

Recently, I've run into a bit of an unfortunate situation. I've been happier than I've been in a long time these past few weeks. I haven't been engaging in disordered thoughts nearly as much, and I've been far more comfortable in my own skin than I ever thought would be possible. And as good as this all is, I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of relapse. Almost like I can't allow myself to be happy. 

So I'm going to counteract that, and write about what a relapse would actually involve. I've been toying with the idea of making this post for a few months. This, coupled with a conversation I had with someone that glorified the "willpower" of people with eating disorders (it was a horrible conversation), now seems like a pretty good time to finally sit down and get it out.

To jump right in without further ado, I'll start with this: eating disorders are scary. Whether you're restricting or purging, they're misconceiving. The first couple of weeks of engaging in behaviors bring easy weight loss. People comment on how great you look. You feel great. You are on top of the world. You are running on adrenaline. You are in control of your body. Your clothes begin to get baggy, and you are thrilled that you are forced to go down a size or two the next time you go shopping.

You cut out foods that are "unhealthy," and go from a balanced diet to one with no fat, then no protein or dairy, and then no carbs. Eventually, all you eat are fruits and vegetables. "You're just being healthy and watching what you eat! You can't stomach anything else, honestly." Your clothes are too big again. You start to shop again, only buying a few things that currently fit you, and the rest are things that are too small. "It's an investment!" you say to yourself, out of pride and the realization that you don't have a limitless amount of money.

This continues. Everything angers you. You lash out at those closest to you. "I'm just tired," you say when you try to apologize. You don't know what is wrong with you. It doesn't occur to you that this thing has started to cement its grip on you. Your mother will ask you not to lose any more weight, and you will scoff, because not only is that something you don't want to do (because you haven't reached your goal weight, whatever that is), but it's something that you actually don't know how to do. It's something that you're not even sure you want to know how to do. The behaviors have become so ingrained, they've become such a regular part of your routine, that you can't imagine a life without them.

Because this thing has become your identity. You have hidden behind your ability to lose weight, to achieve what so many others have failed to do. You are the ultimate winner; why would you, why should you, stop now?

You leave for school and things go downhill. You buy a scale that weighs you to a decimal point. No longer will you be fooled by the inaccuracy of the dial scale. Those decimal points drop every day or so, but it's slow enough the the pounds don't seem to drop fast enough. You trick yourself into believing that you haven't lost that much weight, and for that, you are embarrassed. None of your clothes fit, and the smallest sizes in the department stores are too big. You have won, but you are frustrated. Not at your body, but at the stores for running sizes that run big, bigger than you are. Because you aren't that small. Only people with actual eating disorders are that small.

Because you have convinced yourself that what you do is normal. That everyone only eats a kiwi for breakfast and lunch, and a small serving of squash for dinner. That's normal. It's perfectly normal to stick your fingers down your throat if you've eaten too much. Not a binge, but more than you're allowed. Everyone has rules, rules that cannot be broken. These unspoken rules define who you are, and if you break them, something bad, something really bad will happen. Like weight gain. And everyone will see you as a failure then. So you keep losing weight to prevent yourself from being a failure. But you know that it's normal.

This normalcy creates a disconnect. You live in an icy world; you are barricaded from the rest of the world, hidden behind a slab of ice so cold that sometimes you think it might be better to die if you can't warm up. This disconnect has created a fear of food, a fear that makes consuming over 200 calories in a day so crippling that some days you don't eat at all out of fear that the labels lie, that the diet soda is actually full-sugared soda, that you will over eat. This disconnect allows you to see your bones, feel your bones, but you can only focus on the fat that you see in the mirror, and have no idea how you look compared to others. The disconnect creates an exhaustion so intense that sometimes just walking leaves you out of breath. You see the world through plexiglass that morphs everything into something other than its true self.

You cry on a daily basis. You have completely isolated yourself to avoid people, to avoid food. You cry for home because you miss the comfort that you had there. You cry because you are alone. So you reach out, and you find solace in a kind-hearted woman. But she gets too close, so you push her away out of fear. Fear that she will discover your secret. Fear that she will think poorly of you. And shame. You push her away because you are ashamed. Ashamed that you aren't thin, ashamed that you throw up so much that you have a permanent scar on your hand between your index finger and thumb. Ashamed of your self-hatred and inability to take care of yourself. Ashamed that you cannot return the friendship and affection that she so freely offers, because you only have room for your obsession.

You obsess over 10 raisins that you ate, and wonder if you can still eat dinner. You leave class to throw up and then return as if nothing is wrong. It's completely normal. You worry that not all of them came up. You decide to skip lunch just to be safe. You obsess over these raisins for the rest of the day; they are all you can think of. You do not eat dinner.

By this point, you have lost all your hunger cues. You have lost all your friends. You have lost yourself. You have convinced yourself that you are in control of yourself and your body, but you start to wonder if it's not the other way around.

When you enter treatment, eating is the easy part. You are so starved that you don't even have the energy to attempt starvation on your meal plan. Three weeks later, you laugh at a joke your professor says in class. It hits you that you can't remember the last time you had genuinely laughed, let alone smiled.

So when someone says that they are envious of the "willpower" of those who don't eat, it makes me scoff. Because it's not willpower. It's fear. It doesn't take willpower to starve yourself or purge; it takes self hatred. And extraordinary amount of self hatred that develops into a fear of food that makes living a normal life impossible. An eating disorder is a coping method, a security blanket against that self hatred. It also strips you of your identity and turns you into a monster that specializes in self destruction. Admiring the "willpower" is like admiring a demon. It's foolish and extremely scary, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Because like all the very best of the monsters, it starts out by gaining your trust. And by the time you realize that you don't like it, that you don't want it, it's too late. And that's the truly scary part. In your quest for control, you, yourself, will have lost control.