Someone once asked me, “Does anything taste as good as skinny feels?” That’s all it took – well that and a picture of Kate Moss, her petite frame with no fat, sharp jaw line, and ribs visibly standing out beneath her crop top. Moments later I made her the background on my phone. I looked at that picture almost every moment of every day, obsessing over how badly I wanted to look like that. And just like that, it started.
I started taking things out of my lunch after my mom left for work in the morning. When she put toast with peanut butter on my dresser for breakfast, I would let my sister have all of it – I would eat a protein bar or something (if I did eat). Not eating was only getting me closer to looking like that picture, right? And if I looked like that picture then everything else in my life would be better, wouldn't it?
In the beginning, I did eat. However, it was in a very short time that I started eating smaller and smaller portions until eventually, I was hardly eating anything at all. Skipped breakfasts turned into skipped lunches that turned into skipped dinners. I would go as long as I possibly could without eating, making it a challenge for myself. The messed up part – it gave me a rush. You know, the kind of rush that makes you feel alive and free. Little did I know, I was the exact opposite of those things.
The thing about eating disorders is that they start and never really finish, at least in my experience. What started as what one would call anorexia turned into bulimia which turned into binge eating disorder which started the whole process over again. Not to mention, the whole thing gave me anxiety, depression, and a decent amount of OCD, that I still struggle with almost 5 years later.
It’s not like I was ever big to begin with (not in a bragging way). I was a 5’2” cheerleader who could do a standing back tuck (a fancy word for a flip), I couldn’t be in that bad of shape, could I? That’s the thing though, I became obsessed with what I thought I should look like. I was obsessed with anything and everything I did that involved food, exercise, and everything in between. Soon I became so uptight that I planned out every aspect of every day.
Before I knew it, I had lost 25 lbs, in what seemed like no time. Yet for some reason, that wasn’t enough – like I said, I was obsessed. People asked me how I did it and I lied, I lied all of the time. When my mom told me I needed to go to the hospital because I was making myself throw up, I told her I wasn’t making myself, I just ate too much. She cried. She cried a lot when she realized how small I was. That’s another thing about eating disorders: you get really good at lying. You lie to yourself, you lie to the ones you love, and it only ends up hurting them and yourself more than you could possibly know.
If I were to have the choice of not hearing those words, “Does anything taste better than skinny feels?” or seeing that picture of Kate Moss, I would take it all back in an instant. In fact, I would do anything to not have to think about what I eat, drink, how often and how hard I’m exercising, whether I made my bed neatly enough, or whether I had a planned enough in my planner for the day.
After nearly 5 years, lots of time with a therapist, and a little bit of self-acceptance, I still struggle. I struggle with whether eating ice cream will trigger me to binge and purge. I struggle with what I want to look like and how I want to do it, almost every single day.
What people who don’t have eating disorders understand is that it’s not a choice and it’s not something we want – at least it’s not something I want. We don’t want you to personally understand our struggle, we only want you to understand that we are struggling. We want you to understand that we would do anything to be like you and not have an eating disorder.
