The Body You See, The Pain You Don't

I go to yoga because I can’t stomach the inside of a gym. I spent half of my life in a room filled with sweaty people, weights, treadmills, and mirrors that ran the length of a wall. It was a prison for me and a place where I could hate myself freely. Sometimes I was there to train for something- a triathlon or 10k or trying to reach the goal of besting the amount of pushups or squats that I was able to do the week before. But mostly I was there for the sole purpose of changing my body; making it look acceptable when it wasn’t or working off something that I shouldn’t have eaten in the first place. It was never about joy or pleasure or a sense of achievement; it was pure punishment.

In yoga I have to be present; I have to pay attention and I have to connect my mind to what I’m doing with my physical body. I find a place behind a row of people so that I cannot see myself in the mirror and I do my best not to focus on anything except the rectangular space that spans the length of my mat. But I am human and I have spent decades watching other people in order to gauge how I am supposed to look and talk and behave. So as much as I try not to, in moments of weakness, I look around and I compare.

There are the teenage girls who come in matching designer athletic sets; high waisted leggings and sports bras to highlight their lack of body fat and slim hips that have not yet seen the effects of pregnancy or child birth. Men who practice without shirts and have chiseled abdominal muscles and biceps that can hold them up in poses with very little effort. And the women who can be overheard talking about their kids and their jobs but still have the time to be in such a peak physical condition that it makes anything less seem truly lazy.

I have conditioned myself to acknowledge these type of peers and quickly move on; dwelling would only serve to hurt me. But every so often I see one person who sends my mind into a spiral and makes me regret choosing to come to yoga altogether. It is not her fault…it’s mine. Maybe I am not strong enough to handle all of the triggers quite yet and this is simply a test of my resolve. She has just as much right to be there as anyone else, but unfortunately her presence puts me face to face with my eating disorder.

She could be 35 or she could be 60; her face is so emaciated that it is difficult to tell. I’ve never seen her wear anything but running shorts and I wonder if it is because her legs would swim in the leggings that fit tightly around my calves and thighs. She is barely taller than my 11-year-old, but I doubt that they would even wear the same size clothing. I spent 40 days in treatment with some of the thinnest people I’ve ever come into contact with, and this woman is undoubtedly the frailest person I’ve ever seen. There’s always that chance that I’m making a judgment call about someone suffering from cancer or a chronic illness that is causing her to look this way. But when I see her using yoga to punish herself, I know that we have commonality.

The temperature in the room gets above 95 degrees and hovers there for an hour, exacerbated by the lack of air flow and all of the moving, perspiring bodies. The further away from the door that you place your mat, the less chance you have to catch a cool breeze when the door to the room opens and shuts. The most dedicated yogis put themselves in the right hand corner of the front row for maximum detox opportunities. It is not a coincidence that she lobbies for this spot every class, no more than it is unusual to see her going off script to add her own movements and poses to an already advanced and fast-paced class.

When the instructor cues a break, she is upside down or doing air squats or more crunches and I stare at her, not because I am impressed or appalled or frustrated (although I am all of those things), but because I am waiting for her heart to give out. I stare at the teacher who is not paying attention to her and I try to remember what I learned in CPR. I know that somewhere inside of her, there is someone screaming out for help. It is the person who can look at this small, sickly body in the mirror and still see imperfection and fat deposits and wonders how much weight will ever be enough.

Right now she is not thinking about the strain that this is putting on her heart and organs, or the fact that the extreme heat is draining essential minerals from her body that she will most likely not replace. She cares only about the calorie burn and the fluid loss that will inevitably create a deficit on the scale. She is living in hell; an ever-turning hamster wheel that she can’t get off of without help.

I wonder if she is going home to someone who is trying desperately to get her to see the light. Or if somehow she has no one and is waiting for just one person to ask if she’s okay. Where does my responsibility lie as someone who understands her struggle? What would I have done if a stranger approached me at the gym to say that they recognized my struggle because it was something they suffered with as well?

Well, I would have been ecstatic. One, because I looked thin enough for someone to notice which meant that I was being validated for all of the hard work I put myself through to lose weight. But more importantly because I wanted my internal pain to show on the outside. That was the whole point. I couldn’t find the words to ask for help and I didn’t want to burden anyone with my problems, but hoped to God that someone would notice on their own. I didn’t want to hear “you’ve lost weight” or “you look so great,” although those types of comments fueled me. I longed for someone to say “hey, is everything okay with you?”

It would not have made me stop what I was doing, or run to the nearest ED treatment center, but it would have felt nice. I don’t know if I’m the right person to walk up to a stranger and say “I know what you’re going through”; I am not far enough along in my recovery to be that courageous. But I want to say to everyone that is struggling with this disease in private- you matter, you are not a burden and you don’t have to punish yourself this way.

Authentically Yours,