Not Quite Anorexic

I did, indeed, eat pizza that night. Yet, I experienced such guilt at consuming all those delicious calories, I barely ate a thing the following day. At that point, I’d been eating about 600 calories a day; I forced myself down to 400. Sometimes, I would not eat more than 200 calories daily. I also frequently used the stationary bicycle in my den.

When I snacked, I was convinced that I had gained twenty pounds overnight. I would pinch the non-existent fat of my stomach between my fingers, repeating the mantra “If you can pinch an inch” over and over and over again in my mind. I would do the “pencil test”, wherein I would stick a pencil between my thighs and if it tumbled to the ground, I was satisfied. A thigh gap was an absolute necessity.

Shortly after the episode at the mall, I stopped menstruating. For six months, my hormones were completely out of whack, resulting in acne breakouts, a problem of which I’d never had before. At this point, I was so obsessed with so-called “perfection”, I did all I could to relieve myself of this acne all the while remaining on my strict “diet”. I tried creams, holistic remedies, I consulted the internet, and I even went to the dermatologist once. I was convinced that my slight, mild acne was much worse than it really was and that I needed Accutane, a drug once used to prevent tumor growth in cancer patients but is now mainly given to those with very severe acne. Accutane has many side effects, not limited to possible hair loss, vomiting, liver damage, and depression. But I did not care. After all, the models in all my fashion magazines, which I so revered, were perfect. Why shouldn’t I be?

It was what the boys wanted, right?

Yes, part of why I did this was in my quest to find romance. I would repeatedly tell myself that guys did not like “fat” girls, or “ugly” girls. And, in my addled mind, a few pimples here and there were “ugly”. Anything above a size zero was “fat”.

My illness wasn’t just concentrated on one aspect of myself. I was desperate to achieve perfection; I was desperate to look like those photoshopped girls in my magazines.

I wish I could tell you that there was one specific, emphatic moment where clarity just came to me, an epiphany of sorts. But real life doesn’t often work that way. Mostly, I was exhausted. Trying to achieve the beauty ideal the Western world, as a whole, is fed on a daily basis was wearing me out. I was tired; I was miserable; all I wanted was a Snickers bar.

My experience with an eating disorder did not quite ebb until I started college in 2010, when I became preoccupied with a boy who made my first involvement with a real, adult relationship quite hellish. That is also for a future article, but I will say this: he caused me to relapse on more than one occasion. During the entire year-long “relationship”—I use that word very loosely—I was either too engrossed in the euphoria of first love or entirely shattered when this boy dangled that first love in front of my face, then cruelly took it away just as I was close to grasping it. Throughout these bitter moments, ones that would last months, I would find myself relapsing. The mere smell of food was enough to make me physically sick. Once, for three days, all I could stomach were smoothies. It wasn’t until my friend, who’d also suffered from an eating disorder in the past, forced me to the dining hall and all but shoved food down my throat that I managed anything substantial.

Fast forward to 2013. I’m at a healthy weight for my height (which is “slightly taller than a Keebler elf”), that toxic guy is no longer in my life, and my years-long battle with not-quite-anorexia—I call it that because I was never officially diagnosed—is largely behind me. However, when I’m very sad, I have to remind myself to eat. When I’m depressed, I tend to fall back on old habits—not as obsessively as before, but I still find myself restricting food. It’s in these moments that I flick the band I always wear around my wrist, allowing the brief pain to remind me that I need to eat, no more excuses. Even if it’s difficult to force anything down, I eat what I can—because if I don’t, I may revert to my former self. Once you’ve succumbed to an eating disorder, it follows you around for the rest of your life. Often times, you have to physically remind yourself to eat, lest you succumb again.

For me, my not-quite-anorexia, as well as my acne dysmorphia, was about perfection—achieving that completely unobtainable ideal that is presented to us via every form of media, whether it be television, electronic media such as the Internet, or print. It was all about control. My mentality was, I had lost my hearing (see previous article: “Deaf, Dumb, and Disabled”); I was not going to lose my looks. But because of that mindset, I became a mere statistic. I was no longer interested in any of the things that had previously made me happy, like writing.

I had lost myself, albeit briefly, in order to be perfect. Ladies (and gentlemen) who may be reading this, I implore you as a one-time sufferer, please don’t lose yourselves. You’re perfect as you are.