5 Things My Eating Disorder Really Wanted (Instead of Thinness)
1. Concern
I started feeling very depressed around the age of twelve/thirteen. My feelings of worthlessness and extreme sadness eventually led me to self-harm, which my father and mother discovered when I was about fifteen years old. What I initially perceived as a lack of concern for my well-being, I now know was actually my parents's lack of knowledge about what it meant to do such a thing to oneself. They did not make me see a psychiatrist, nor a therapist- they kind of just told me to stop doing what I was doing. At the time, this "under-reaction" made me think they didn't really care about me, which led to further feelings of worthlessness, and even to the thought that I deserved to being doing what I was doing to myself.
Fast forward five years to the development of my eating disorder. I wished with all my might that my parents would express the concern for my well-being that I never got from their discovery of my self harm. Alas, not only did I not receive concern, instead, my newly achieved thinness actually garnered praise and compliments from my family. This was pretty much the exact opposite of what I wanted from them. So I made myself sicker and sicker, hoping that one day I would pass out and that my parents would actually take my health seriously. I know now that it is selfish of me to want my family to feel concerned about me, and I am working on no longer equating love with worry and concern.
2. Acceptance
I've never been a popular girl. I was kind of a loser in middle/high school and, honestly, I assumed that it was because of my weight. I was bigger than the other girls, and it felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I always happened to make friends with girls who were known for being super skinny, which only made me feel like even more of an outcast. I simply did not fit their image and, when they were mean to me and left me out of group events, I just figured it was because I was the odd one out. Maybe if I fit the mold a little more, they would pick me first instead of choosing me last.
The same thing happened in college when I started going out to bars and parties with my thin friends. They would end up getting hit on every single time we went out. Two boys would approach our group of three and end up luring my friends away for a make out session, leaving me all by myself. Again, I assumed that I wasn't getting attention because of my weight, and honestly I think I was right. Once I lost the weight, boys starting hitting on me more and more, and that's when I knew that being skinny equals acceptance in our society.
3. Purpose
Everyone wants a sense of purpose in life. Without it, we just float from day to day with nothing to do. I felt lost for a very long time, not knowing what to do with myself. I didn't feel connected to my schoolwork, and I was having trouble keeping a steady job (I had secured multiple internships/jobs but ended up quitting all of them). When I started to diet, however, I finally had something to do and to work towards. I had goals; I had something to look forward to. Dieting gave me principles to live by and a sense that I was here on this Earth to do more than just exist. I was meant to have an inspiring weightless story that I could share with the world. For the first time in my life, I had a purpose.
4. Achievement
I don't often feel like I've achieved much in my life. Sure I did well in school, but I just assumed everyone had excelled and that my grades were nothing to be especially proud of. Yeah, I got a full scholarship to college, but so did one of of my friends. They even received free housing!
Then I started losing weight and, I kid you not, stepping on the scale every morning and seeing the number go down gave me a kind of a high. After I stepped off the scale, I could not wait to get through the day, go to sleep, and wake up so that I could step on the scale yet again. It not only fueled my weight-loss; it fueled my life. I felt proud for once. I felt worthy of the praise I received, which was not something I felt when receiving compliments on my grades or personality. I remember feeling like I was somehow special because I was able to sustain my diet while my grandma was not.
One step toward recovery has been learning to acknowledge my non weight-loss related achievements for what they are: something to be truly proud of.
5. Self-harm
As I mentioned earlier, I have a history of self-harming. It started to become very noticeable the harder I went with it, and I no longer felt safe to do what I was doing. I didn't want anyone to notice and force me to stop using the coping mechanism that I had become best friends with. So, instead, I found another way to punish myself: starvation. Purging. Binging. You name it. I remember therapists and psychiatrists telling me that what I was doing to my body was so incredibly dangerous that I could actually have a heart attack and die as a result. Looking back on this time of my life, I am saddened by the fact that I did not care about these deadly consequences. I actually wished that they would happen to me. My eating disorder was a way for me to slowly kill myself, in one of the most painful ways possible. It was slow and torturous, and I felt like I deserved every second of it. I now value myself enough to acknowledge that no, I did not deserve what I was doing to myself. I deserved to take care of my mind and my body, and to this day it is something that I am working on.