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Dear 2005 Me,
I have been fighting anorexia for more than 10 years. It was getting to the point where I thought anorexia was going to be present for the rest of my life. If you are where I was, fighting and falling and wanting to give up, have hope. Recovery is possible.
Many individuals will reach a point where they decide that they are “recovered enough” from anorexia and choose to stop there. The following are three lies that your eating disorder may say to convince you to stay in the state of partial-recovery, along with my counter-arguments.
I just attended the National Eating Disorders Association Conference in San Diego, California, and I think I know what a unicorn must feel like. Let me explain.
Believe it or not, the first time I saw this image above was on an episode of Girls on HBO. It’s a great show and, for sure, one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. I can't recall the exact scenario for how it came up but I remember the main character, played by Lena Dunham, sitting in some sort of job interview and seeing a poster with "Where the magic happens" in a big circle with a much smaller circle off to the side which was labeled, "Your comfort zone." I recall from that episode how Dunham's character just sat there and stared at the poster on the wall, contemplating the meaning.
Being the partner of someone in eating disorder recovery (I imagine, as I’m always the person in the latter category) can be rough. There’s a lot to consider — from how to compliment their bodies respectfully to how to avoid triggering them when talking about food. And if there’s one thing that complicates this delicate balance even more, it’s sex.
In Western society, the idea of gaining weight is often viewed as the ultimate sin. We associate weight gain with failure, while we view weight loss as a sign of strength. For me, I wanted to get smaller, because I craved acceptance, even though it was acceptance from a superficial place.
“When it finally hit my how sick our daughter was, I almost collapsed. We had just come home from a doctor’s appointment (the second in eight days) and it was suddenly crystal clear how rapid and uncontrolled her weight loss was… By the time I got home, I was shaking uncontrollably, my lips were numb, I couldn’t feel my fingertips and I wasn’t sure if my legs would carry me up the steps.”
As someone who has struggled with body acceptance for a large portion of my life, self-love is a revolutionary concept. When you are told so often and so frequently that who you are and what you look like is: ugly, less than, or not good enough, then telling yourself that you ARE beautiful, that you ARE worth something, that you ARE good enough, is a rebellious act.
Over the last two years, my work life has consisted of a before-and-afterschool program and an arts program for at-risk youth. My volunteer work at NEDIC, where I facilitate body image and media literacy workshops with students, has truly helped to change my lens. Although it would be fun, I’m not here to share with you cute anecdotes about the behavior of children or the funny things they say. Instead, I’d like to give you a window into the educators and caregivers I work with and some of the unconscious behavior they routinely engage in.
It was 2pm on a Tuesday, and there I was – crying, naked on my bathroom floor. I’d been there for hours, trapped in my own mind. The day had started off simply enough with me getting out of bed and getting ready to work when the inevitable, “Feed me breakfast!” battle cry rumbled loudly from my stomach.
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