Sarah-Kate Says

23 is the next step. 

The number 23 doesn't sit well with me for a number of reasons:

What happens when you turn 23? Do you get a tax bill the next day? Are you booted out of your parent's house with a "HIRE ME!" sign stapled to your pressed work blazer? Should I be looking at getting a financial advisor? And oh my goodness, have you seen how expensive renting is??

When you're between the ages of 18 and 22, it feels like you still have time to figure things out, mess around, and have fun. But now it feels like I'm running out of time to just be. Being older than 22 is scaring me to my core. Being 23-years-old doesn't generate any excitement or herald a milestone. I'm no longer an adorable emerging adult. I've got two university degrees under my belt, my driver's license, and a little bit of work experience. 

Young people hold themselves to such high standards because of the capitalist rat race we live in. We're bombarded with social media images of Instagram models and TikTokers our age and younger living lavish lifestyles beyond our wildest dreams. We feel an internalized pressure driven by competition and insecurity to work faster, earn higher, be better, and fly higher. I have found that I always fall short of those expectations. Over the years, I have noticed my pattern of searching for the next quick fix- Something that will give me a boost of happiness, a chance to earn money, anything that will get me to the dreams of fame and success I wove as a child. And whenever I fall short of the crazy standards I set for myself, I crash and burn.

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?

By this I don’t mean, “I hope he thinks I’m pretty” or “I hope she thinks I’m cool enough to invite to her party”. I mean more abstract worries that are even further out of my control. Worries such as, “My best friend is upset, what have I done?” Or “My lecturer didn’t look at me this morning, did I do something wrong?” This speaks very clearly to my anxiety about how much effect and influence I have on other people. It stresses me deeply and is quite a pervasive experience. I can’t seem to go through one day without worrying that I am the source of other people’s misery, misfortunate, or distress. 

This places immense pressure on me to be a kind of social chameleon: I change my colours and adapt to different social situations in order to be the kind of person different people need me to be so that I don’t upset them or leave them feeling deserted. When I am on my own, however, I don’t know what kind of person to be for myself. I am exhausted at the end of the day after being different people for everyone else around me:

Happy Sarah-Kate who will laugh at the joys and mishaps of daily life with you.
Comforting Sarah-Kate who will talk with you till all hours of the morning about your worries.
Care-free Sarah-Kate who will go for drinks with you.
Patient and Understanding Sarah-Kate who will stay with you until you feel more relaxed and calm.

Even so, I still manage to convince myself and fill my head with terrible thoughts that the problems of everyone around me are somehow my fault. If I see my friend looking upset on the bus, I will think it is because I offended them in some way. If my mom doesn’t say hello to me in a friendly tone, I will think that I made her angry or frustrated. I place so much pressure on myself to be just the right temperature for other people to avoid conflict that I believe I inevitably start.



What I have come to realize after countless, and often circular, therapy sessions is that the misfortunes of people are not my fault. I genuinely overestimate how much of an influence I have over other people, and I don’t know why. All I know is the liberating truth that most times it is not me, it’s you. I am working more and more towards liberating myself from the bullying side of my brain that tells me that the world’s problems rest on my existence and that I need to make myself small and likeable in order to keep the peace. How is that fair? How is fair for me to assume blame for the burdens of other people that have nothing to do with me? If my tutor gives me the side-eye glance, maybe they just had a bad morning, left the house late, or even had a fight with their parents, and NOT because I have done something wrong to them. If my friend doesn’t wave back at me, maybe it’s because they really didn’t see me or they aren’t feeling their best, and NOT because I made them feel angry or upset.

I feel like I am continuously retraining my brain to question my coping mechanisms, unhealthy behaviours, and my previously unquestioned views of myself and the world around me. I don’t, however, see this as a burden or punishment. Everyday I am becoming a stronger and more enlightened version of myself as I learn, discover, unlearn, and reimagine ways of becoming the best possible version of myself, for myself. I find my mental state becomes stronger the more I question why I treat myself so badly and place immense pressure on myself to be perfect. Thought it is incredibly daunting and difficult to interrogate your own mind on what it is convinced to be true, you  will also come to realize how mentally constructed feelings of worthlessness are, and that they can be dismantled by you, the true commander of your worth.

I recently went through something that caused me to take three major steps back and re-evaluate the way I treat people. I asked myself the following questions: 

“Am I a genuinely good person?” 

“Do I emit the authentic and caring vibes I want to receive?” 

“How can I preach friendship and care when I can barely look inside myself and show myself the same love?"

Often times the source of my discomfort and disbelief in myself and my abilities comes from social media. Social media, for me, has become a crutch. I have started using it as a tool to remind myself I am alive, to validate my existence through affirmation from other people, and to remind myself I am a good person by posting an inspirational quote. This has resulted in my life becoming an illusion, a fantasy. The picture I post in a single moment capturing a still shot becomes the defining aspect of my entire day. I become nothing more than a two-dimensional representation of the world I long to live in: A world filled with shocking blue Huji skies, VSCO iced coffees, puppies and sunflowers that aren't mine, and Pinterest pasta.

But of course there is the behind-the-scenes of social media: The messy bits, the crying fits, the bloated tummies, the bitten nails, the pimples, the scars, the bursts of rage... The colourful and mundane things we all experience but that are not "aesthetically pleasing" enough for social media. So what do we do with those moments? We suppress them, we delete them, we put filters on them, and we hide them from the world. I truly believe that this is the source of millennial and gen Z unhappiness: We have stopped living for pleasure and have started living for people through our growing obsession with social media. The likes, the shoutouts, the follows... we crave affirmation that we are alive, that we are good enough, and that our bodies are the right size.

I became obsessed with Instagram. I was one of those people who laughed at my friends who had a menagerie of editing apps on their phone for their Instagram photos: One for layouts, one for collages, one for adding just the right amount of saturation to make them look tanned. In reality, I was one of those girls too. I scheduled when I was going to post my pictures, what my captions would be, what hashtags I would use, and stressed over the minute details of posting the picture. I wondered how people would think of me if I posted a bikini pic, and whether or not I was pretentious for making my caption a lyric from a song I’d never heard before. Endless questions about my appearance and existence was handed to strangers across the screen and taken completely out of my control. I lost who I was entirely.




Comparing myself to strangers on Instagram became inevitable. Instagram models are among the 0.01% of women whose bodies runway-ready. But when I was a teenager and first starting on Instagram, I was prepubescent with no boobs or hips to speak of. Seeing these women and their attraction, popularity, and success all stemming from their beautifully toned bodies hit me harder than anything else could have at that tender age. I began idealising these women for the wrong reasons: Not because of their success, entrepreneurship, or their confidence, but for their bodies which I had always wanted. I craved the attention and glamour that their beautiful bodies afforded them. I wanted all that they had. I wanted to be bronzed, curvy, shiny, sleek, and overflowing with confidence. Instead I felt awkward, unnoticed, insecure, and unworthy.

I have found that sense of doubting myself, my recovery, and how far my body has gotten me comes back the more I post on Instagram. This is where the cycle starts:

The more I feel insecure, the more I post to make myself feel validated and 'heard'. But the more I post, the more insecure I feel about what I see other people doing and accomplishing on Instagram.

I was posting up to three times a day, spending hours on the explore page, and following model after model planning how efficiently and sneakily I would diet to lose just enough weight to feel just like them, but not so much so that I would relapse into anorexia.




I forced myself to step out of myself and look critically at my social media habits. I was seeking external validation to correct something inside me that felt wrong, out of place, and unlovable. I realised that that is where my eating disorder stems from too: Something inside me becomes bitter, and I begin to seek something external to manipulate instead of examining the problem as rooted inside me. With my eating disorder, the external thing I manipulated as food. With feeling insecure about my body and becoming conflicted about my self image and values, the external thing I manipulated was my Instagram. I put rosy filters and creative captions on square and static images of my life to try and fool myself that I was happy with the person  becoming: A person lived for social media.




So I stopped Instagramming which was incredibly hard initially. I felt what can only be described as social media withdrawals. That is when I saw just how obsessed with Instagram I was. I kicked myself into action by buying a new journal and writing myself a manifesto about who I wanted to become in this period of 'Instagram Abstinence'. I imagined the ideal version of myself, and after at least three more kinder and realistic versions of this, I penned down the kinds of values and vibes I wanted to emanate on my own without needing the rest of the world on my side.

I wanted to live for moments, not people. I wanted the freedom to read without checking my phone, of moving my body without taking selfies of my outfit, of eating a meal without feeling terrible afterwards by looking at pictures of stick-thin models. I wanted to know who I was by spending time with myself, not by scrolling through my Instagram feed to remind myself of who I was. Because those frozen moments forever archived on Instagram are not real life. They are stillness, not real life. They are static, not real life. Real life is falling, growing, gaining weight, finding love, healing, sweating, bleeding, and bruising. Real life is wildly tragic and insanely powerful. And that is what I am trying to experience in all its messiness right now.