A Well Kept Secret: A Real Life Experience With an Eating Disorder

In my mind, secrets were never kept. Everyone all around me knew every aspect of my life, everything that upset me or every mistake that I made. However, I kept one secret from the rest of the world: my declining relationship with food.

I was eight years old, sitting on my teal bed comforter and genuinely wondering if I could cut the fat off of my stomach. I wanted to "diet" throughout my elementary school years, a word I heard often in my household. My mother pointed out the things on her own body that made her hate herself, and it made me hate myself even more. She would try every diet in the book, but it never really stood out to me until I was older and more aware of my insecurities.

Me at age 5, no worries about calories or sugar intake. Just enjoying my ice cream.

It felt like the whole world was against me once I started middle school. My body matured faster than most girls my age. I had breasts at the age of 11 while no one else around me did. The mere fact that I was bigger and more developed compared to the girls around me made me feel gross and unattractive. It was hard showing up to school some days because of the beauty of the girls around me. This made me selfish, and sometimes even mean, because all I wanted was to look like them. My worth was surrounded by the way I looked, rather than my morals. This was a false belief that I kept in my head for so long, thinking it was true and a normal mindset. Though I eventually was able to see past it, my way of thinking back then is unfortunately the normality for a lot of growing girls around the world.

Middle school for me ended with increased insecurity and body dysmorphia, my body being the main focus in my life. I ended up going to a new school in eighth grade with more people and more opportunities. I made a couple of friends and found my spot in band, playing the clarinet. While I got to experience new things, my perfectionism — specifically surrounding my body — stayed. My first attempt at "fixing" myself was after New Year's, making "having a better body" a resolution. It started out as nothing too crazy, just one less meal and no snacking. I also wanted to increase my exercising. So I did, until it got difficult.

The limitation of food was not the only thing that I dealt with. Instead, it also made me want to eat in excess because I was deprived. I would experience binge episodes, which made me feel out of control — a part of having an eating disorder that isn't talked about enough. That validating feeling of control when you maintain your eating disorder makes you feel as if you're doing everything right. But, once you fall out of that restrictive cycle and end up indulging, that validation goes away completely. After having a binge episode, I craved that sense of satisfaction again. That is where the cycle started for me, and it didn't end for a long time, even after trying to recover. The summer before ninth grade was the first time I made myself throw up, something I never thought I would do, but I carried it out after the immense guilt I felt after another bingeing episode. How could something so gross make me feel so rejuvenated?

Recovery is not easy at all. You can say you want to recover, but deep down, it can feel impossible to beat your craving of the affirmation from not eating enough. It's not an immediate change. It takes years. But to make it happen, I realized I needed to speak up.

The first couple months of freshman year, I kept up my restrict-binge-purge cycle even though I was trying to recover. I knew I was still sick, but I liked it. That part of me loved being sick, but the other part of me was screaming for help, desperation growing with my age. So, I told my parents.

My parents were the ones that kept me in check. They were willing to risk anything in order to get me healthy. This was when my real recovery started, because I finally acknowledged the fact that I had an eating disorder. I went to a specialist who diagnosed me, verifying that I was ill and "abnormal". All the things that were feeding into my eating disorder suddenly had to end. I wasn't supposed to exercise, and my eating habits needed to drastically change in order to become healthy again.

Despite everything doctors and family and even my own conscience were saying, I would sneak around and weigh myself constantly. I constantly lied, even though I was never that type of person. Sneaky and a liar. My disorder brought out bad habits I had always been against and I changed into a completely different person, someone I didn't recognize. I was completely feeding into what people meant when they said that eating disorders aren't a physical disorder but a mental one. I didn't understand that the recovery process may include your physical health, but it is your mental health that is the most important. It doesn't matter if you get back to a healthy weight while in active recovery but your mind is still screwed up. You will just jump back into bad habits if your mind isn't recovered. That was exactly what was happening to me.

I was lucky enough to recover in the amount of time that I did. I wouldn't consider myself completely recovered, but food isn't something that lingers on my mind anymore. I had to go through tough phases where my eating disorder wanted to jump in again. Recovery is never linear. Over the past year and a half of recovery, there were times where I wanted to be sick and times where I wanted to be healthy. There were times where I made bad food decisions and times where I made healthy food decisions. None of those things invalidate my recovery, and not a single experience invalidates my eating disorder.

If you have experienced or are experiencing anything like I did, I'm speaking up to let you know that you are not alone by any means. My story is not meant to magically cure anyone, but I hope it sticks with you when you feel lost. This is not forever. I hope to see you on the other side.