Writing this out because I feel that it could be useful for me to talk about my eating issues in a setting that isn’t therapy or screaming crying to a friend on the phone. Also need to stretch this part of my brain out while I procrastinate on my next essay for my creative trauma writing workshop. Was inspired by Kirsten Titus’s video on her eating disorder, which I found extremely comforting and affirming.
When my therapist first told me that I should enroll in the disordered eating group, I was confused to say the least. How could she have possibly known that I used to struggle with restrictive eating when I didn’t say anything about food the whole session? I guess I should’ve considered that exclaiming that I don’t know what I look like anymore while crying my eyes out over comments my family made about my hair was probably a bad sign. To be fair, that session was never meant to be about my body.
My immediate reaction was confusion and resistance, thinking to myself, “I do not have a problem. It’s under control. I am not depressed anymore.” I am not skinny enough to have a real problem. But I think that a little part of me was so grateful that she just came out and clocked me like that because like I said- I was never skinny enough for anyone around me to truly acknowledge that I have a problem. 30 pounds ago no one noticed when I was surviving and suffering off a bowl of seedless red grapes a day, rotting my life away and letting my relationships and psyche collapse. I would get nasty comments if I ever wanted another serving at dinner or if I grabbed a snack past 8pm. It was like finally, after years and years of so many pleads for help, somebody heard me.
I often feel like I never stood a chance at having good self-esteem. I was a larger child and everyone let me know. The first time I hid my food from my parents I was 5 or 6. The first time I cried over my appearance from being teased I was 7. I could add another grievance for every year of existing. My terrible self-image eventually led to a world of restricting (?) and binging (?) (everything in my head is blurry) (insert twitter meme about how no one ever talks about how depression impacts your memory). My weight never dropped except for my freshman year of high school when I was swimming a mile a day. My image was at its lowest at that time and I let a boy in my class sexually terrorize me over snapchat because I wanted validation. Long story short, hating my body has made my life a living hell.
On the first day of group therapy, we had to check off boxes in different categories of eating disorder symptoms: physical, psychological, social, and behavioral. I checked off every single box in the psychological and social categories. I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t had any physical symptoms besides weight loss but the fact that I checked off so many boxes was harrowing- I didn’t think my problem was that bad anymore. I eat now! I promise. That’s why this whole thing feels especially ridiculous. I’m not even doing anything bad enough to have real physical symptoms. I don’t have it as bad as the other people here!!! I outgrew all my new jeans in a matter of a couple months when I was dealing with severe grief my sophomore year of college. This feels like a crazy way of thinking because every bitch with an eating disorder is thinking the exact same things that I am. I think the reason why I was in such a state of denial as a teenager was because so many of my friends also had eating disorders, and were even in therapy for said eating disorders. Surrounded by a bunch of women who I knew weren’t eating, and so I would try to force myself to also not eat, and cry in the bathroom if my lack of eating wasn’t getting me the same results as theirs. I eventually started eating again because I have friends who love me (even if I don’t believe them).
But it’s evident the social symptoms are bad. In high school, I would get food with my friends and cry in the car on the drive home if I finished the food, absolutely inconsolable, overwhelmed with guilt and shame. One of my friends would have to remind me to eat some days. As I eat with my friends, even now, I watch how they eat to make sure that I’m not eating faster than them or more than them. I feel more comfortable eating around men because I’m confident I could never out eat them in the way that I do with my female friends. It feels exhausting and it’s embarrassing some days to have the issues that I do.
Life with eating and food issues is a life of internally begging on my knees every day for the people in my life to love me despite my ugliness, and the people in question tell me they love me more days than not and have never called me ugly. My beautiful friends think I’m beautiful. This is a life of the worst type of narcissism.
Anyways, I want to get better. I have a super legit problem. I don’t want to hate myself anymore. I don’t want to look at pictures of the worst version of myself and wish I still looked like her. I don’t want my poor self image to continue to impact my relationships. I do not like that the toxic and horribly fatphobic way I was raised bleeds into every facet of my brain. How is the plus sized girl in the friend group fatphobic???? I don’t even know. I knew someone in high school who used to explicitly talk about how much they hated fat people while starving themselves so at least I’m not them. Comparing myself- body AND personality- to the other afab people in my life because my mother would compare me to my friends nearly every damn day of my life feels impossible to quit (even though it’s the thief of joy). I just want to free myself from all of this.
I won’t go deep into it for the sake of confidentiality- but there is something deeply sinister about how every girl in my eating disorder group is a WOC. Like oh… I see how it is. This world is so cruel. At the same time, it makes me feel so much less alone. Getting immediate head nods from the other girls after I talk about not being able to fit tiny Asian girl beauty standards, or beautiful blonde white goddess beauty standards, or any beauty standards period feels affirming.
I feel lucky to have friends who care for me so much that I finally decided to start therapy this year. I hope it works.
Here is that kirsten titus video I mentioned:
Here are some songs that know how it feels: