My unique eating disorder - the sad and confusing parts

One of the most important things I learned in my journey of recovery is that my eating disorder was my own. It didn't have to fit any mold, it didn't have to be like someone else's. It was unique. I had read a lot of other stories of people who had eating disorders, and they were sometimes similar to mine and sometimes not. Sometimes I felt that where our stories didn't meet up, I must be somehow lacking, and it could trigger me into something worse. If you think reading my story might trigger you in a similar way, please stop reading skip this post. Read any other post.

So here's my story...sort of. I'm going to do my recovery as a separate post.

As a young girl, I never worried about my weight or my body image. I had a lot of things that crept in and filtered my view of the world, but I've already written about that. Unlike most people who develop eating disorders, I can pinpoint the day the eating disorder began. 

I was 14 and working full time at McDonald's for the summer. Most people don't know you can even work full time that young, but you can in the summer. One night, I was lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, when I realized I hadn't eaten dinner. All of a sudden, a new thought crept in to my head, completely unfamiliar to me but very entrancing. It went something like this: I could just not eat it. I could just never eat dinner again. I could become so thin. I could be thinner than anyone I know. And I went to bed, feeling powerful and elated, in a sick way.

The next morning, everything felt different. I thought about skipping breakfast, but decided against it since I'd be on my feet working all day. The ride to work was interesting. I was inwardly focused and noticed things like the color of the sky. I didn't speak. Work carried on pretty much as normal, except lunch was strange for me. I got my usual lunch, a chicken sandwich, but I was thinking about how it would be the last thing I ate that day. 

When I got home, I began chatting with some of my friends online. I felt so different, so powerful, having decided never to eat dinner again. But I also felt some discomfort, like I was doing something wrong and owed it to my friends to be honest. I told one friend about my plans, and she pleaded with me to change my mind. Around 11 pm, I caved and had a bowl of cereal - not because I was hungry, but because I felt I owed it to my friend to comply with her pleadings. I was pretty sure that would be the end of it, but it was just the beginning. 

As time went by, there were more times when thoughts like the ones I had that first night became overwhelmingly powerful. I learned, eventually, to call that the negative mind, but I had no word for it at this stage. Truthfully, I don't remember how many times I went in and out of my eating disorder. I remember some specific moments. I remember being at a dance sleepover and stressing about having eaten pizza, and doing sit-ups and push-ups and feeling like I had to, and couldn't stop, and the other girls thinking I was crazy. I remember one day at dance there were doughnuts left over for something, and we were allowed to eat as many as we wanted, and I think I had about six, and then I wanted to make myself throw them all up, but I was too scared I'd be caught. I remember when I was 15, I called one of my best friends to tell him something had "clicked" and I felt I'd be able to give up my eating disorder...but I called him too late at night, and he was really upset with me, and didn't want to be my friend anymore, which hurt terrifically. And then it wasn't even the end of my eating disorder after all, because I slipped back into it a few months later. 

My eating disorder was taking over my life. I spent hours reading about eating disorders online. I read a lot about what supposedly caused them, what the symptoms were, all the different types, stories from individuals, books about recovery, even a book detailing the lives of fours teens struggling with eating disorders - which was very triggering and damaging to me. I learned that there are online communities of people who feel that living with an eating disorder is a lifestyle choice, not an illness. There are people who devote their time and talents to finding and/or creating "thinspiration," which is media, typically photos or photo-shopped photos, aimed at inspiring those suffering with an eating disorder to keep making themselves sicker. I read about awful diets and tricks to keep losing weight even after your body was in starvation mode. I watched a video documentary about girls with eating disorders entering rehab facilities. I tracked celebrities noted to have eating disorders, obsessively following their stories. I counted calories. I ate ridiculously sized portions sometimes, like a half of a piece of bread. I loathed myself for bouncing back and forth between my eating disorder and a healthier lifestyle. I wanted to choose one or the other, but I couldn't seem to stick with either. One of the most harmful things I read, and kept reading, was that there was no such thing as true recovery from an eating disorder - that it would be something I'd struggle with my entire life. I later found that to be a harmful lie, but at the time, it made the struggle to choose a healthy lifestyle seem even less appealing, since it seemed like a sham, something I could never really have.

At some point, I intentionally caused myself to vomit. I was successful the first time I tried it, and I was proud of that, because I'd read most people couldn't do it the first time. My throat was so sore the next day. I didn't make myself vomit often, but as the months and years went by, it got easier and easier, to where I could often do it without much more than a decision to throw up. I started worrying that I wouldn't be able to control it anymore. I was also terrified every time I excused myself to the bathroom that someone would discover me. I lived in constant fear of being found out, especially by adults who could enforce something. I was scared my parents would feel compelled to admit me to a rehab facility, and I knew we couldn't afford it.

It turned out I needn't have worried about that - I finally told them I had an eating disorder when I was 16, and they didn't even really believe me. I asked to be put in counseling and I went for a few months. I don't remember why I stopped going. I don't remember it being all that helpful. I was terrified to tell the counselor anything because I was a minor, and she was legally obligated to tell my mother anything I said of a serious nature, which was pretty much anything I wanted to say. Besides the eating disorder, I was cutting myself occasionally and I was depressed, sometimes suicidal. And my parents were completely lost and had no idea how to cope with me being so messed up, so I didn't get any help for fear it would hurt them more if I told the counselor, who would then tell them.

When I was 17, it was more of the same. Hiding everything because I was a minor, bouncing back and forth between eating disorder and healthier lifestyle, sometimes being honest, sometimes lying to protect those I cared about, maybe to protect myself. When I turned 18, I was finally an adult. I think I went back to counseling, and had a little bit more freedom, but I still had to be careful how honest I was because I didn't want to end up in the psych ward for admitting I wanted to kill myself at times. I had adult friends, too, and some of them had a lot more life experience than me. They were pretty kind to me. I'm thankful for them. And then I was 19, and it was more of the same, and then when I was nearly 20 I graduated from community college (I started attending at age 16). 

When I was 20, I moved across the country to attend a university. I lived with roommates and felt ultimate freedom to finally choose to embrace my eating disorder fully, not that I would be away from my family. And I did. I went drastically, crazily into my eating disorder. I still danced every day. I cut my calories to 300 per day. I threw up if I wanted to. I could feel the effects on my body. I was cold all the time and practically lived in front of a space heater. My heart pounded at everything I did. I got shaky. I stopped being able to walk up stairs. I was pretty much killing myself and I was freaked out, but also elated that I was finally doing it 'right.'

I did that for a whole semester. I admitted to my bishop (ecclesiastical leader) that I was starving myself and it was probably killing me, and did that make me a sinner for intentionally harming myself? And he kind of chastised me and told me to STOP IT, and I went away sorrowing because I didn't feel that was within my power. I don't really blame him for not knowing what to say. Sometimes I don't even know what to say to people with eating disorders, and I lived through one. 

So really, it might have gone on indefinitely, or until I died, except that I had roommates, and they couldn't stay quiet about it anymore. Two of them banded together to get me to seek help. I was pretty firmly planted in the idea that I could not be helped by that point, but I agreed to seek help. In my mind, I know I had two thoughts. The most obvious, powerful one came from the negative mind, which had almost completely taken over my actual mind by that point. It was that if I was "seeking help," surely my roommates would leave me to my own devices and stop worrying about me and threatening to call my parents. By agreeing to see a counselor and attend a group, I was giving myself ultimate freedom to starve myself to death. But the second, very, very small thought wondered if I could possibly not be a lost cause, if maybe there really was someone who could help me...