I Thought They Knew

A few weeks after I returned home from a 40-day stint in a Tennessee-based eating disorder treatment facility, we invited two of our close friends over for dinner. Seth and Lilly were both members of the very small group of individuals who knew of my absence and the reason for it. They approached me with the same cautious awkwardness that I’d grown used to since my homecoming. I was the same person, but everything was different, and no one knew exactly how to behave. It was as if they wanted me to tell them what they could and couldn’t say, and what subjects were appropriate; it was exhausting for all of us. But finally, after a few drinks and one too many cursory conversations, Lilly asked me an authentic question.

“So, was it just that you really wanted to lose weight?”

I almost laughed in reply. The question was incredibly honest, but the assumption was alarming. Perhaps it had been about weight loss when it began; thirteen-year-old me wanting to fit in and be someone that others saw as physically attractive. (And doesn’t that always mean being small in size?) I have no doubt that at the outset, my teenage counterpart made herself vomit up dinner, out of the fear that it might make her fat. But at 39, it had been a very long time since the answer to that question was, “yes, it was just about losing weight.”

At some point, things morphed from an unorthodox approach to a diet, to something much more pervasive. There was a definitive shift, not unlike developing an addiction, where it went from me struggling with an eating disorder, to the eating disorder taking up residence and running the show from the inside out. An intense desire for losing weight, while it may have seemed to be the main objective to an outsider, was no longer the diseases’s true functionality.

Lilly’s question went unanswered that night. I could not find the words to effectively communicate and make her understand the complexities behind why it was so much more involved than how it appeared. But her curiosity and innocence around the subject shed light on a fact I had not previously considered. I naively believed that everyone else in my life knew as much about the eating disorder as I did. When the only way for them to learn about it was from me, and I had not taken even the first step in teaching them.

What Lilly was really asking was, “How did it serve you? What was the purpose?”

There are the reasons why it began and the reasons why it persisted; the answer to her question lies in the latter group. After three years of thinking about it, I managed to compile a list of those reasons why my eating disorder was so essential in my life for so long:

• It provided a way to cope in times of distress

• It gave me the ability to detach from reality; provided a distraction from trauma and pain

• It gave me a means to physically shrink my body, when mentally, I wanted to disappear

• It allowed me to bottle up all of my emotions, stuff them deep inside, and put on a mask with a smile for the outside world

• When no one else was around, it helped me purge myself of all of the things that ailed me

• After living with it for so long, it was an old, familiar friend, always there to keep me safe inside of my head

• It served as my armor, rigid and resistant, built strong over time, and nearly impossible to remove

This list was always present in my head, even back when Lilly asked the question. But only through time spent in recovery have I been able to outline it. I know now that this description of my eating disorder is a glorification of something truly horrific; that as comforting as I may make it sound, it could have seriously injured or killed me. It is a list of reasons, ones that I clung to for a large period of my life, but not one was worth the fallout that accompanied them.

In my struggle with the disease, there was a juxtaposition of wanting to be understood, but not having the strength or courage to voice what it was truly like to experience it. I should have never assumed that even my closest friends and family knew what an eating disorder looked like behind the scenes. So, Lilly, thank you for asking the question; for forgoing etiquette, sparking thought and conversation, and ultimately leading to my ability to communicate hard things.

Authentically Yours,