NEDAW - Stuck out in the Same Old Storm
I think I'd like to start this off by acknowledging National Eating Disorder Awareness Week coming and going. As an illness that has brought me much turmoil and nearly death, I'd say it's important to bring awareness to it.
While I've had one of the most peaceful weeks I've experienced, maybe in my entire life, this past week - it's funny how your problems follow you EVERYWHERE you go. Not cool! I'm going to talk about that. But first, I have a significant amount of friends who have been impacted by disordered eating, who don't even know or recognize it, because of how the illness sneaks around in subtle ways. It'll tell someone they have to stop eating at a certain hour of the day, and cause them to just think about food all of the time. It'll tell people to cut out certain foods to lose weight, and screw over someone's relationship with food. It'll mess up our body image and not let us eat certain types of food and no matter how intense or subtle the disorder is, it controls our lives. As women, we are designed to base most of our thinking and decisions on how we will look or present ourselves both physically and vocally. Men battle eating disorders too, right now I'm just talking about how we might think we are making decisions for own health, when really, we say "no" to the snack we are hungry for because we think our body won't be able to handle a random extra snack (as if it hasn't every other night we've had it???).
One of my professors was talking to us about milk once - how his sons prefer whole milk, because they like the taste better, and how his daughters prefer skim milk, purely because of the taste. How it was that his kids just happened to like the taste of milk better based on their gender.
If I could turn back time, I would stand up and say "I THINK YOUR GIRLS LIKE SKIM MILK BECAUSE SOCIETY TOLD THEM SKIM MILK WILL MAKE THEM SKINNY AND DECIDED NOT TO MENTION ALL OF THE BENEFITS OF WHOLE MILK WHEN THEY DESIGNED THE PATRIARCHY."
So, I didn't say that. I picked bigger battles with him. Our disordered eating is as deep as the milk we decide to tell people we like better!
Moving back to my peaceful adventure, I just had the trip of my life last week. I went to Colorado for a few days to explore the outdoors, connect with God and nature, and find some peace. I did find peace. To be real, I was happier than I have been in a long time while I was there. And yet, my eating disorder followed me. The AUDACITY!
It STILL follows me everywhere. All of its rules and fears stay with me like it's part of my existence. No matter how much exercise I ended up doing while I was there, I still freaked out about the volume of food I would eat at a given time. I could not shut the eating disorder off when it told me I still couldn't let go of the rules I have, even when I NEED the extra energy to literally fuel what I was doing. Which I need regardless of exercise.
Sometimes I believe the ED will just go away when I need it to. Sometimes it does. When I'm training for a big race, oftentimes I can set aside the loudness of the ED in order to succeed and perform, because the race overpowers my eating disorder. And then, once the race is over, I immediately relapse. While this method was never sustainable, it doesn't even always work. More and more, the ED will sneak in and tell me that no matter how much I'm doing, I can find a way to eat less while doing it. Athletes, can you relate to this? Same with academics. I try and "set aside" the ED to get a good grade on an exam, and then start to test my limits. How well can I do on how little? Until I just become completely obsessive again, and forget how to eat altogether. And then normal life as I know it slips through my hands, the sneaky son of a gun.
When I used to purge when I was in high school, I didn't realize how dangerous it was. No one talks about how dangerous it is to do any of these things, because so many of these behaviors are encouraged. Eating disorders are PRESCRIBED in the form of diets by well-meaning healthcare providers. We tell people to stop trusting that they know how to eat and feed themselves and to trust a strange food pattern designed to do something unnatural to you. Am I going on a rant about diets again? Dang it I told myself I wouldn't do that.
Moving forward, some of you may remember I broke my foot last year. Update: It's not better yet. Although, the more my foot injury heals, the more I fear that my eating disorder won't. This is where I am in my life and recovery at this moment. When I originally broke my foot in June of last year, I was devastated. Hardly because I couldn't exercise, but because of the state of the pandemic. I was afraid of what the voices in my head were going to do to me if I couldn't exercise, and then how I was going to react to the people in my world. I was in a very dark spot this time last year, and I didn't know what my breaking point might be. I came close to it.
When I got injured I was honestly, somewhere inside of me, slightly grateful for the break from running. I was exhausted, and truthfully… grateful for an opportunity to prove that I can eat and fuel myself properly without exercise. So I could have a FUTURE. My foot has taken 8ish months to heal a minor stress injury, and I can't pretend that it's not because I have been giving into my ED and been afraid to fuel myself.
Sometimes I don't even know what it is anymore. There's that song by Kasey Musgraves "Rainbow."
" When it rains, it pours
But you didn't even notice
it ain't rainin' anymore, It's hard to breathe when all you know is
The struggle of stayin' above the risin' water line
Well the sky has finally opened, The rain and wind stopped blowin',
But you're stuck out in the same ol' storm again.
You hold tight to your umbrella
Well, darlin', I'm just tryin' to tell ya;
That there's always been a rainbow hangin' over your head."
This song really resonates with me. I don't know half the time what I'm so afraid of anymore. I just ANTICIPATE turmoil. I'm so used to specific outcomes, I haven't realized that old fears have maybe died out at this point. I don't need the same protection that I used to need.
For a long time now, I can honestly say that I don't even believe in these rules in my head anymore, sometimes they just control me (LIKE THE PATRIARCHY. Who believes women are less than men? Like 5 scumbags. How much do equally qualified women make to their male counterparts dollar? 83cents). I have so many rules that my eating disorder sets that I won't share here so I don't trigger anyone else, because in the past, I've taken other people's rules and made them my own. It was that voice that would compare me to other people and how "good they were" at their eating disorder. Why did I want to be good at my eating disorder? Now all I want is for it to go away. My bones don't have much time left to get stronger, and they are at a pretty low density for someone my age. My period is still not regulated, and I'm 23 now. I've been struggling with this since high school, and I don't need it anymore. I don't want it anymore. I have friends who got osteoporosis in their 20's. Is that what I'm shooting for?
I think that's an important question to ask ourselves. What are we really shooting for? Who am I talking like this for? Who am I dressing up for? Who am I not eating this snack for? Who am I living for?
CAN we answer these questions? Do we even know at this point? Because sometimes the answer is literally NO ONE. There is no one pressuring me to do anything but take care of myself right now, and no matter what society is saying, my loved ones and treatment over the years are more internalized in me at this point than what I was taught by the media and toxic messages growing up. While that's real, I can't blame it anymore.
I do have a… different mental health than the majority of those around me. I do, sometimes, go off of my medication. And what am I listening to, ultimately? I guess a pattern that I'm used to. The same old storm. Yes, the voices in my head can be loud. Yet, I know how to get them to quiet down, if I'm not in a crisis (which is pretty rare nowadays). I don't believe they're true anymore. I truly believe they are wrong. Honestly, both logically, and internally, I believe in better. I don't want this storm, because at this point, it's ONLY hurting me. It's not protecting me from anything, and it's not even appeasing anyone. Do you have habits like that in your life? I feel like it's my whole entire eating disorder.
I'm not saying this to invalidate myself, it WILL take a long time to untangle it all, and I know why it all started. And even though my reasons evolved and the ED became my way to cope with difficult things, I have new coping skills. Ones that won't kill me, ultimately. Or eternally mess up my health.
I don't believe in before and after photos because I think they trigger other people, and they trigger me as well. I also only have about 2 photos from that period of time when I was at my sickest because of how disappointed in myself I was for being at that place, and still insecure about my body. In fact, I want to get to a place where I can just delete those photos. What I'm holding onto by keeping those photos is sadness. It's holding onto a time in my life where I thought the only way to be okay was to be an eating disorder. To hide and destroy myself, because that was what I deserved. Is this a memory I want to keep? Yet I cling so tightly to some of these memories. I want to understand why I still feel fondly sometimes thinking back on it. Is it because it was part of my identity, and I need to justify it somehow?
Who knows. If you're a psychoanalytical scholar, feel free to hit me up about that one. It's so hard to just let go. I'm telling you, this work is HARD. And the undoing of your progress in this work is SUBTLE. Like you're doing great for 5 weeks and then suddenly a week later your habits are more than back again and it's like, "I thought I was done with that!!! Now I can't stop!!! Help!!!"
I remember there would be people in treatment you used to kind of compete with, without saying it out loud, who had the "worst eating disorder." I mean, the dumbest personal competition you could be in. Like, "who's gonna have the worst medical outcomes and therefore the most miserable life moving forward" is really what that would turn out to be.
Now there are people I was in treatment with that I feel like I need to pretend I'm doing so much better than I really am when I'm around them. In all honesty, I'm so far behind where I want to be, and where I thought I would be if I made it this far in life. Who knew 8 years would go by and I'm stuck in the same storm?
Well, that sure sucks. I don't need to lie about it, though.
For some reason talking about all of this reminds me of one moment I will never forget. It was the one time in my life I will ever say that I believe I heard the Holy Spirit talk to me, in my head.
It was in 2016 and I was on an inpatient unit. It was a unit where everyone seemed to be walking in dead bodies. Everyone was a shell. Depression and hopelessness was the air we breathed in. I wasn't leaving my bed at that point, and was at one of my lowest points. A thought was put in my head, that didn't come from me, and it was "If I let myself die this way, it's on me. If God hasn't let me die yet, then whether I believe it or not, he needs me here to fulfill a purpose I have no idea about. It's not my right to die right now."
Now, anyone can agree or disagree with this thought, but I believe for me, it was from God. And I fought my butt out of that place (in a halfhearted kind of way).
So what is it now? What's going to keep me from being what I could be now? Just because I'm not in a bed letting myself die, am I living where I am now?
Sometimes, halfhearted is all we can give, and that's enough.
Today, I believe I can give more than that. I'm thinking about my why, so I don't have to stay stuck in that same old storm.
