Not Quite Anorexic

There exists this misconstruction that when you are suffering through an eating disorder, you must be unhappy with yourself. But that’s not entirely true. Sure, I was disgusted with my “flabby” body when I was a size five, but after that, when I could fit in jeans I’d never been able to don before, I was elated. I looked amazing in everything; the only problem I had with clothes were that sometimes things were simply too big when formerly they were too small. In these cases, I would leave the store outwardly pouting but inwardly patting myself on the back. I was so thin that not even the “super-skinny” apparel would fit me!

Clandestinely, I derived pleasure from being able to sit completely flat, without any flesh hanging over the waistband of my jeans. Of having to hold aloft my old pre-crash diet jeans with my hands in order to wear them. Of asking store employees if they had any size zeros. Of my laptop painfully prodding my hipbones whenever I used it. This last was how I gauged whether I was “thin enough”—if my hipbones were plainly visible, I was good; if not, I needed to lose more weight.

My family and friends noticed my rapid weight loss, of course. My mother, especially, would comment on it. If I didn’t finish my plate at dinner, when previously I had with no problems, she was worried. She would needle me until I, exasperated, would shove a few extra bites into my mouth. Afterwards, I would swear to her that I just wasn’t hungry anymore, which was the truth. My prolonged crash diet had shrunk my stomach to the size of a ping-pong ball. After only a handful of bites, I was completely stuffed.

The climax of my eating disorder occurred in 2006. I was nineteen and so ridiculously skinny, a strong gust of wind could—quite literally—knock me over. But, somehow, even through my family’s concerns, I’d managed to convince them that I was just fine; I was just dieting and there was nothing wrong with a 1,000 calorie a day diet. Little did they know that I had been steadily restricting my caloric intake from 1,000 to, eventually, less than 400—not enough, as my friend said at the time, to “power a fart”. Yet, while I physically felt awful—tired, listless, weakened, and like my legs couldn’t support my body anymore—I thought that I at least looked great so who cared about such trifling matters as “wellbeing” and “overall health” when I could fit into a size nothing?

Some days, I could not physically leave the house because I was so weak that I was rendered bedridden. On these days, I would mumble an excuse to my mother that I had a migraine, and, since I have a chronic neurological disorder (more on that in a future article), these falsehoods were never questioned. But, on other days, my supreme thinness buoyed me, mentally if not physically, and I coerced myself out of bed in order to further show off my svelte physique to the public. On that particular day in February 2006, a lazy Sunday, I accompanied my mom to our local mall—the fancy one, with all those stores that only catered to a certain body type, the very same stores that I could now shop in with no problems. On that dreary winter’s day, I’d had nothing to eat at all before departing for the mall and I was congratulating myself for my perceived willpower—all the while fighting to remain upright whilst the urge to flutter into a tiny heap of human right in front of Hollister gnawed at me. I had visions of myself clutching my forehead and falling to the ground as a dramatic score played in the background and my mother overacted while making histrionic gestures ala a 1920s silent film.

The reality was slightly less romanticized.

At noon, I could no longer ignore my body’s need for sustenance so I suggested, after about an hour of shopping, that we grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria. My mother, delighted that I was hungry, readily agreed. She got a side salad and I purchased six pieces of sushi from the local Japanese place. Six pieces of California roll and a bottle of water. I couldn’t even finish all six.

After five pieces, an intense pain started to envelop my body, staring at my disturbingly flat stomach and working its way upwards. I claimed to my mom that I wasn’t feeling well and asked if we could leave instead of returning to shop. Just as we were nearing the exit, just as we were getting off the elevator to the first floor, the pain intensified and I began seeing flashes before my eyes. Seconds later, I was on the floor, right in the middle of the busy mall, and the concerned visage of my mother, plus a half-dozen strangers, swam before my consciousness.

“Is she okay?!” one of these aforementioned strangers, a middle-aged woman with frizzy blonde hair, frantically asked my mother.

“She’s fine, thank you,” Mom hastily replied, knowing that I wasn’t fine at all.

Once I came to, with the help of Mom and the blonde woman, I haltingly stood on my feet, wobbling as I did so. I hesitantly picked up my shopping bags, thanked the woman, and Mom escorted me out of the mall.

She stopped outside of the building, regarding me. The cool air of late winter felt refreshing on my heated skin. “You need to eat. Now. Or else I’m taking you to the hospital, where they will set up a feeding tube.”

I, shaken after the ordeal and envisioning myself lying in an eating disorder clinic with an I.V. sticking out of my arm, nodded and proclaimed that we would order a pizza tonight. Mom was relieved.

That should’ve been the end of it. That should’ve been my wakeup call. But it wasn’t. My not-quite-anorexia only escalated from there on out.