Under The Weight Of Living
*TRIGGER WARNING:
Eating disorder (anorexia nervosa), relapsing, restrictive eating habits*
Two years ago, I
published Revealing Who A Is in which I opened my heart
to the world, and let everyone in to the horrors of my eating disorder. It
saddens my heart and soul to know that it is 2017, and the illness that plagued
my life is still finding ways to ruin my family, my friends, and my body. To
know that I am relapsing, losing weight, struggling with self-love and body
image even after all of the therapy and growth I have been through makes me
want to give up altogether. I am so tired of this battle, this war in my head between wanting to revive the old me and submitting to Ana.
Recovering from an
illness into which you have relapsed requires a degree of honesty with
yourself. Honesty about your habits, thoughts, emotions, and self-depricating
behaviour. Last night it hit me that I have not been truly honest with myself.
Yes, I want to recover, and yes, I want my life to be free from inhibitions,
illness, and Ana's voice. But I haven't always been behaving in ways that
support this.
I have been hiding
food, starving myself, refusing meals, lying about my mental state, hiding from
my friends, compulsively weighing myself, going to bed hungry, and waking up
dizzy. My ED voice has relished and thrived in these habits. Every time I take
a bite of food, I feel myself swelling with all of the weight I'm gaining. I
feel like the body I wake up with in the morning looks different to the one I
fall asleep with at night. The way I see myself is so distorted that I actually have no idea what I look like. I don't see how much weight I've lost. I have been experiencing symptoms such as dizziness,
exhaustion, shaking, aching muscles, dehydration, breathlessness, heart
palpitations, and concentration difficulties. In those moments, it feels like
Ana is saying to me, "Yes baby! Come to mama!"
But the real me knows that this isn't normal.
I know that these symptoms are exactly the same to the ones I
experienced when I was first diagnosed. And that is terrifying. I know that my
body is acting out against me starving it of its life sustaining food. But my
eating disorder voice convinces me that these are good things: It means that I
am gaining control over my body, and learning to manipulate it to survive in the most
extreme conditions. In a way, it makes me feel invincible, untouchable. That is
so messed up. How can starving my mind and body, and making myself sick
to the point of hospitalization make me feel more powerful than when I am
eating, healthy, and working towards my future? That is the ultimate power and
terror of this disorder. It feeds you the cruelest of lies, and twists your
mind into a filter through which it can strain out the truth, and morph your
body into its own creation.
There is so much I
want to do in this life, and so much I want to be. I want to walk down the
aisle towards the man I love. I want to be a mommy. I want to bake brownies and
order pizza with my children, and actually eat it with them. And then I want to
lay on the couch in the sun with our full bellies until we fall asleep. I don't
want to have to eat a separate, lighter, greener meal to them, or be
hospitalized, because "mommy has trouble eating." I want to run with
my puppies in my garden. I want to design my future house. I want to open my
own practice as a clinical psychologist. I want to travel to exotic locations.
I want to learn how to surf, how to skate, how to speak a new language, I want
to explore art museums and galleries, I want to row down rivers, I want to fall
asleep under a meteor shower, I want to swim under waterfalls, I want to camp
in the desert, I want to sail across oceans, I want to hike all the mountains,
I want to meet so many more people, I want to act, I want to go to a music
festival, I want to work for Habitat For Humanity, I want to build a school, I
want to work with children in underprivileged communities, I want to drive
across Africa, I want to fly in a helicopter, I want to experience everything
all at once, I want love that knocks me flying off my feet, I want to live
until my heart cannot take it anymore.
But, there is one
thing in my life that is stuck with me, but has no place in any of my future
hopes and dreams:
My eating disorder.
It is the one thing,
the one anxiety, the one monster, preventing me from living my fullest life. It
is inhibiting me from soaring, kicking off my shoes, and from being the
Sarah-Kate that the world needs, and that I was born to be. It says to me,
"This world is so dangerous. Why put yourself in situations that are so
out of your control when you can stay here, small, silent, and be totally in
control of everything?" It soothes my anxiety by letting me obsess and
nitpick over my body, my food intake, and my thoughts.
That is why I need to
take that control, and use my skills of organization, determination, and
dedication to control my eating disorder instead of letting it control me. I am
setting up goals so that I can live the life I know I have the potential to
live. I am creating an eating plan that will gradually increase so that I can
build my relationship with food, have regular meals, and gain weight to become
healthier and stronger. I am going to see my psychologist regularly, and
journal more often, in order to empty my mind and heart from all of the
feelings I usually keep compressed in the corners of my mind. I am going to eat
in front of people more, even on campus, in order to prove to myself that no
one is actually gawking at me when I eat. People, in fact, actually look at me
more when I don't eat, because it's more noticeable and odd when everyone
around me is eating, and I haven't eaten in front of them for a week. That is
when they truly look at me. If I start eating more in front of people, not only
will my mind and body grow stronger, but my relationship with my family and
friends will strengthen too because we can bond, laugh, and chat over food, and
they will be less worried about my mental health.
While everyone is
going to be toning, priming, and losing weight for summer, I am going to have
to be gaining weight, eating more, and watching my body get bigger. This
terrifies me, and it breaks my heart. But I have to remind myself that this
isn't an unhealthy process right now. In fact, I need to do this. Because I am
severely underweight, and because my eating disorder has such a terrifyingly
strong hold on my thoughts and behaviour, I need to gain weight in order to
strengthen my mind and body to fight against Ana, and prepare my body for all
of the adventures the future has in store.
I need to gain
weight. I need to want to gain weight. I know that it isn't normal that I feel
uncomfortable eating in front of people, and that it is no longer a conscious
reaction that I don't eat on campus (it just happens). As I said before, when I look at myself, I don't see all the weight I've lost, and how much my body is suffering. All I see is how much weight I can stand to lose. I keep a ledger in my
head of all the food I have eaten during the day, and I repeat it during
lectures, while studying, listening to music, and before I fall asleep. It
soothes me, it forms a coping mechanism for the chaos and disorder in my brain,
and it also helps me determine what I am allowed to eat for my next meal. I no
longer eat based on natural instincts and messages from my body. I only eat
enough to keep me going, and only eat what my eating disorder voice allows me
to.
I can already feel
that this is going to be so painful for me. Having to eat normal portions of
food and eat in front of people is going to be so difficult. I can see the
nights ahead of crying in my sleep, aching for Ana to come back and help me
gain control. Sitting and watching the skin on my tummy, legs, and arms expand
is going to be so horrible. Watching myself move in the shower with a normal
amount of body fat is going to hurt. But I need to remember that the space I am
in right now, if it continues, is going to hurt me even more. In fact, if I do gain weight as I need to, I will actually look more normal, not overweight as I think I will look. Because my body is so deprived, if I gain weight, I will start to look like my normal self. I need to remind
myself that the habits that my eating disorder voice dictates to me are not healthy, and they will not stop until they have taken my life. I need to be constantly aware that
my family is worried about me, and that if this continues into my adulthood, I
will never be trusted enough to be independent and free as I hope to be.
I need to remember
that right now, I am critically underweight, my legs can barely hold me, my
tummy growls with the force of an entire herd of animals, and my arms are
always tired and weak. This is truly what is not normal, and not the process of
gaining weight and regulating my body temperature and fat ratios. My body as it looks right now with my sagging skin and protruding bones is not normal, not what I am going to become if I gain weight. I need to gain weight, and
get over the fears and nightmares I have about growing up, my body changing,
and my proportions getting bigger. Because I have such terrible fears around my
body changing that I would rather see myself get smaller and sicker than bolder
and faster. If I am going to be a mother, clinical psychologist, friend, wife,
and so much more in my future, then I can't continue to entertain my ED voice.
Now is the time. This
space will serve as a space of growth and maturity. I am committing to myself,
in writing. I will work on strengthening my relationship with food. I will not
hide myself from the world. I will not shrink myself anymore. I will talk to my
body, listen to it, and ask it why it is so afraid of gaining weight, getting
bigger, and moving into the future. I will sit with myself while my body
changes, no matter how terrified I may be, and know that every kilogram, every
centimetre, every mouthful, is an act of immense courage. It may not be
skydiving or swimming with sharks, but it is my courage. I earned it. And I
will keep my dreams alive. I will wear that white dress. I will have my baby. I
will roll around like a kid with my puppy. And I will be successful, powerful,
and strong. Unapologetically moving my body into the future in whatever form it
decides to take. I will not manipulate it, push it, or silence it. I will not
allow Ana to crush my dreams. I will be the writer of my own destiny, unafraid
of my demons, and staring challenges down.
Nothing worth fighting for in this life was ever obtained
easily. It is up to me now. I know, I truly truly know, that there is something
wrong with me. I know that I am in trouble. I know that I am relapsing into an
illness that will take my life if I do not fight back. I know that I am
critically underweight. I know that I have such distorted thinking around what
I look like to the point that I am currently relapsing, and still think that I
can stand to lose more weight. I know that the space I am in now will hurt me
more than the space I will be in if I gain weight. I know that my fears around
my body changing, getting bigger, and gaining weight are distorted and
worrying, but the only way I will grow and flourish and become independent is
if I sit down with these feelings, and try and understand what they are trying
to tell me. Once I understand what they are trying to say, then I will be able
to make peace with the fact that my body will change in time, that gaining
weight is a normal process, and that food will never try to ruin me, but rather
push me into the future.
The burning and
hurtful tears that flowed when I started writing this have turned into tears of
hope for my future, although I must admit, there is fear too. But all that fear
means is that I have a lot of work to do, and that I am going to emerge
stronger than I've ever been once I've confronted them.
I will be the hero of
my own story.
I will save myself.
I will conquer this
monster.
I will slay my demons.
I will build my own castle.
I will write my own story.
I will be victorious.
And I will never stop growing.
XO
