Recovering Anorexic

DISCLAIMER: The following may be triggering to those who still suffer from eating disorders. Although the FAQ section says weight numbers won’t be mentioned in this blog, weight numbers ARE mentioned in my story. Please choose wisely and ask yourself why you are reading my story in the first place. Thank you.

I probably had a better childhood than most children I knew. That’s not to brag about my life, but to help you understand that you don’t need a dysfunctional family life to succumb to the tragedies of an addiction. So – my childhood. Great, but also a recipe for disaster. Although I was given everything I wanted and more love than I could ever ask for,  my mother was very overprotective of me and demanded the best of me. If I didn’t meet her expectations I was often yelled at and/or punished. Yet at the same time, I loved her more than anything, and I was her pride and joy. Even though she had a bad side to her (I know now that she was just a sick person – a sad but true result of her childhood), she was probably the most loving, giving person I had ever seen in my entire life. And not just to me and our family – to strangers, to people around our town, to my friends, etc.

I was always insecure about my looks (even though I had always been underweight), so when I hit puberty and my body started to fill out, I noticed my body did not look the way it used to. I then made the decision to limit my food intake and only eat when I was hungry.

My mother died when I was in high school. Although it was the most heart-breaking thing I’d ever have to go through, at times it was a relief because I no longer had to live under her finger anymore. I didn’t have to get straight A’s, I didn’t have to look a certain way, I didn’t have to be afraid of screwing up. And a bonus – I could diet with nobody standing in my way. So standing at 5′0 and 93 pounds I decided to stop eating all together.

The things I experienced while starving were wonderful. I had a sense of power – doing what others couldn’t, which was not eating. I could focus completely on myself (what a selfish disease anorexia is) and not have to worry about the fact that the person I loved most was dead, the fact that I had other family issues surrounding her death to deal with, the fact that I had no friends, the fact that I was all alone with nobody to understand what I was going through. And as the weight came off, it was as if my life had finally found the happiness I was so in desperate need of.

And then it became bad.

I was hungry all the time. I was weak. I was 80 pounds and my hair began falling out, I lost my period, and I hated myself more than I did before I started starving myself. I was scared for my life, and as much as I wanted to be thin, I wanted help. I tried talking to my dad about it, and although he brushed it off as a phase, he agreed (reluctantly) to take me to counseling.

However, like any other addiction, it comes back and whispers in your ear that you need it, it needs you, and your life would be so much better if you could just get a handle over it. I foolishly agreed and lied my way out of counseling after three months of sessions.

After a year of starving my body couldn’t tolerate it anymore. The need to eat became so overwhelming that I switched over to compulsive overeating. I was bingeing on food from seven in the morning until nighttime. I wouldn’t eat at school to maintain some sense of decency, but once I got home the junk food came out and it wouldn’t be put away until well after everyone in the house was asleep. As a desperate attempt to keep the weight off I used laxatives and starve but the urge to eat always won. I gained all my weight back, but got severely depressed over it. I didn’t want to kill myself but I surely wanted my eating disorder to kill me – maybe as a way to get back at my father or to just leave everything behind because Lord knows my life was so bad. I know now I was lucky, but then, I felt like my life was just worthless. I was worthless, and I ate myself into oblivion. I felt embarrassed and ashamed of all the food I was eating and it was getting harder and harder to hide the wrappers, the empty cookie trays, the half empty peanut butter jar that was full yesterday, etc. I turned to self-harm as a way of punishing myself and coping with the fact that I was a failure. I had hit the first of my many rock bottoms.

After that I decided I couldn’t do it anymore and tried to eat normal. So from then until my jr. year in college, my anorexia was “on and off” with my weight fluctuating between 85-90 pounds.  And then I relapsed.

Anorexia is very prevalent on the internet and I allowed myself to be triggered by it. I told myself I could beat my lowest weight (80 pounds) and that once I did, I would resume eating normally. But what I was forgetting was I still hated who I was, I was extremely jealous, insecure, and angry. I was only eating one meal a day and was extremely jaded with how “recovered” I was.

The diet began. I starved myself down to 78 pounds. I beat my goal weight and decided to eat a sandwich. When I finished that sandwich, I knew I had crossed the line because I felt so tremendously guilty. I was back in the arms of anorexia, and that’s where I would stay for another four months.

I enrolled in a couple of treatment centers; one outpatient program and one inpatient program. Outpatient pretty much kicked me out for not complying and sent me to inpatient. There I found out I had osteopenia, I had ketones in my urine, and my body was so used to starving that once I began eating again I developed pancreatitis and liver abnormalities.

Inpatient was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do in my life (besides losing my mother). Saying goodbye to my eating disorder was like losing my mother all over again. I had to mourn my anorexia, and it was one of the saddest times of my life. I was losing my best friend, my secret lover, my confidant, and my protector. But long story short – inpatient introduced me to Overeaters Anonymous and when I was released six weeks later I was a stickler for recovery. Or so I thought.

That passion for recovery lasted maybe for about a month. I didn’t attend any meetings because my anxiety with driving kept me from going anywhere except my outpatient treatment center. Plus, the meetings I attended in the inpatient facility were so boring and unhelpful that I just assumed all of them were like that. I slowly began losing weight again, and by that summer I was 84 pounds – 10 pounds lighter than my weight when released from inpatient. Self-harm crept back into my life again and I was once again digging myself into a hole that would be impossible to get out of unless something drastic happened.

God gave me that drastic event that summer. My house burned down and I knew I had to get in recovery and stay there or I would surely lose more than I already had. I realized how selfish I was and started going to Overeaters Anonymous once again.

Overeaters Anonymous has changed my life. The meetings I went to were nothing like the ones I went to in inpatient. They gave me the motivation and courage I needed to surrender once again. Besides, after what happened over summer I had nothing left to do BUT surrender. I won’t lie – recovery came very, very slowly. I didn’t get a sponser or start working the steps for about nine months. But once I did, my life continually got better because of it. Not because my circumstances changed (my life has pretty much been an uphill battle since that event over summer), but my actions in response to those circumstances have changed. OA has taught me how to handle those baffling situations, to give it up to my higher power, to let it go, and to do what I can. Everything else will take care of itself.

I started getting abstinent after getting a sponser – 84 pounds definitely was not an abstinent weight and I knew I’d have to gain weight eventually. I stopped weighing myself all together and started following a food plan.

I’ve been abstinent from restricting my food intake in order to lose weight since April 8th, 2008. This is the first time I’ve been abstinent since I was 15-years-old. I can’t believe it took me seven years to “learn” how to eat three moderate meals a day, but that was my disease.

I’m still a little insecure about my body, but my life now is so much better than it used to be. I’m no longer the over-jealous person I was. I’m no longer the girl who used to yell and throw things in fits of rage. I’m no longer the girl who cries or fights everyday with her boyfriend (now husband). My relationships are 100% better than they were, and my outlook on life is so much healthier than I ever could have dreamed.

And I keep coming back.