TW: Discussing anorexia, restrictive behaviour, and thoughts of relapse.

Eating disorders thrive in silence and isolation. It is here that they can manifest without anyone to watch or judge them. More importantly, it is in this isolation and silence that they can wage war on the alone and unarmed individual. Ever since the Coronavirus forced South Africans to go into self-isolation and nation-wide lockdown, I have found myself thinking about food, my body image, and my unhealthy obsession around weight loss more than ever. 

My days are timed around my meals, breaking them into compartments like blocks of chocolate. There is nothing to distract me from my constant fixation: I can’t go out with friends, walk around campus, swim at the beach, or take a relaxing drive. I am forced day in and day out to confront my thoughts that bleat repetitively: “I’m hungry!” but at the same time, “Don’t eat that!” Rather than putting myself out into the world and running away from my problems, I am trapped both internally and externally: Internally in my restrictive thoughts, and externally in my home during lockdown. My internal dialogue bounces off the four walls of my bedroom, rings hollow in the kitchen sink, and spins around and around in the microwave. “Food, food, food” and “move, move, move” scratch like a stuck record. 

This time has conjured a lot of imagery for me around the home. My home has always been a place of love and sanctuary, of comfort and love. When it was announced that the country would be in lockdown for 21 days, I felt a sense of peace. Though this was coming in scary and unprecedented conditions, I felt ready to obey the national call to stay at home to flatten the curve of infection. It eased my anxiety knowing that the best I could do was actually the least I could do: Stay home and watch Netflix! A dream come true for an introvert like me. But I quickly found that everything was not as simple as that when it came to managing my mental illness.

Being home meant a loss of independence for me that I had worked so hard through my anorexia recovery to gain back: Driving, shopping, exploring the city, and being with friends. Now I once again find myself in a state where my growth as a young adult is stunted. This leaves me restless with anticipation and anxiety. Much like the lockdown is forcing me to stay in my bedroom and not engage with the outside world, anorexia (Ana) called me to do the same in the past. “You aren’t ready to grow up and be independent,” it told me. “You need to stay home where you can stay small, hidden, and as child-like as possible.” Ana doesn’t want me to be independent, because being independent means growing up and gaining weight. The lockdown unfortunately triggers the same fears and anxieties around growing up and gaining weight because I am called to stay inside and and be cut off from society.

This retraumatises me, reminding me of when I was 16 years old and taken out of school to heal and recover at home with my mom. My recovery days mimicked the lockdown: Wake up, have breakfast, shower, attempt to concentrate long enough to do school work, read, have lunch, play Sims, watch a movie, nap, have dinner, journal, and then laze around until bedtime. This was as much as I was allowed to do during recovery because my body couldn’t handle much activity due to lack of energy. Similarly, during lockdown I am not allowed to do much more than this because that would involve leaving the house, seeing friends, meeting up with my boyfriend, or being in public spaces. This creates fear in my mind because I relate what I’m going through now to what I went through during my outpatient recovery. I thought of there being life before and after Ana. Life after Ana, in my mind, would see me gaining weight immensely, being uncontrollable around food, eating everything in sight, and being virtually unrecognizable to my friends and family. I’ve been avoiding this scary version of reality for as long as possible, relapsing and recovering in waves. Now again I see there being life before and after lockdown. I think my life after lockdown will be similar to what I thought life after Ana would be like. I am scared, nay terrified, about what being at home 24/7 surrounded by food will do to my body and my mind. And now that the national lockdown has been extended by further two weeks, my fears are amplified.

This is all incredibly selfish of me, I know. How can I think about myself when food scarcity is growing and grocery stores are running out of stock worldwide? What gives me the right to struggle with eating when there are people on the streets, in townships, and in homeless shelters who have no idea when their next meal will be? Believe me, I wish I could turn off my irrational fears, but they are all too real and rational to me. The more I think about how irrational my fears are, the more guilty I feel about food scarcity in the time of this global crisis. For who am I to complain about food and my eating struggles when there is enough in my fridge and cupboards to get me through?

I have also been thinking a lot about what it means to be sick, and the identity you ultimately adopt as a sick person. My illness is almost like a trophy. In the grips of anorexia and relapse, I am in a constant competition with myself to get back to my lowest weight, or even lower than that. I seek after the illness both implicitly and explicitly. My identity becomes redefined so that everything I do aligns with the goal of being as thin as possible. The way I think about my future and my dreams change so that I don’t have to exert myself too much or take in too much change. Any disruptions to the lifestyle I have, and the control I’ve developed around food, are unacceptable. “If you’re dreaming about having children, traveling, or moving out, think again,” Ana says. The control that the anorexia has over my life will always be greater than any of my aspirations. This isn’t an illness I sought after, but is ultimately one that wreaks havoc on my life.

Let’s stop and think about the Coronavirus for a minute. Just like an eating disorder, it can be fatal. COVID-19 is a life-threatening and traumatic virus. But being diagnosed with COVID-19 is a trophy no one wants to win. No one wants to feel it’s harmful effects on the body, and we’re all avoiding contact with the outside world because of it. People all around the world are genuinely afraid of contracting it. It’s caused the world to come to a standstill. No one wants their life to change because of it, and everyone is feeling the weight of the fear that surrounds it. I wonder why I don’t feel the same way about my eating disorder? I don’t fear it. I teeter on the borders of it, almost relishing in pushing my body to the extremes. Sometimes I feel scared of causing irreparable damage to my body, but I still stay and try to win the trophy. I don’t know if it’s because my identity is so deeply tied to my eating disorder, or if I can’t imagine my life without it, but something inside me still desires being sick.

It’s the complete opposite with COVID-19. No one lusts after or desires the virus. This time during lockdown has shown me there truly is no honour, reward, or prize in being sick. All it gives you is a life of restrictions and house arrest. There is no true life and fulfillment in being ill. You cannot travel, move freely in your hometown, be with friends, watch the sunrise, swim in the ocean, or have loving moments with your family without feeling the draining impact of your illness. No matter how much I see a future for myself, that future will forever be hindered by my eating disorder as long as I invest myself in it.

I know exactly where to go from here. I know that I have to work harder, try more, and liste more intently to my kinder voices that want to see me achieving everything I’ve always wanted. But still, I feel the toxic grip of Ana’s cold hand. I still hear her voice above all else telling me that I’m not strong enough to defeat her. “Do you really think you’ll be happy without me?“ She taunts relentlessly. “If you really wanted children, traveling, and your own apartment, you would have found a way to beat me by now. Clearly, you’re not ready or committed enough. Might as well quit now...” 

Is she right? Is this it for me? As I’m getting older, I have found that it’s been more difficult to fight Ana. The hardest part of this is that it is all up to me to defeat her, but I’m so confused about how to keep my recovery consistent in the face of doubt and my fear of weight gain. I’ll never be the person I want to be while holding onto my illness. But I still don’t know how to let her go.

This has been a deeply traumatic awakening for me. Being in lockdown has given me the time and space to extrapolate my most submerged feelings around anorexia and what it means for me to be anorexic. I do not know whether to be thankful or fearful. I had no idea just how intrinsically I was tied to my eating disorder, nor did I anticipate unearthing all of this trauma. I can speak to my psychologist about it on our video call sessions, but in the end it is up to me to figure out what to do moving forward.

One day lockdown will end and we will all emerge into a different society. Who will I be then? Will I move forward with it into a new era, or will I regress into state of mental lockdown?