I didn't say goodbye to my eating disorder. This is why.
Trigger warning. This text is about specific aspects that I experienced; it does not reproduce the general panorama and does not aim to romanticize, inform or educate people on this topic.
I was 11 when, for the first time, I hated my reflection in the mirror. I remember the clothes I was wearing: a black T-shirt, a pair of jeans and bare feet — I had unusually spent the whole afternoon watching tv and eating crackers. I also remember the words that made me run to the front of the mirror.
“If you continue eating like this, you’re gonna get fat.”
I was always the skinniest girl in my group of friends, and for reasons explored later in therapy, being considered fat was the most terrible circumstance I could imagine. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my little 11-year-old self grew up believing that I would be happier if I suffered from cancer than if I were fat.
That day had lived hidden in my subconscious mind and, only 12 years later, it emerged on the surface of consciousness so that I could, at last, say goodbye.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I clung to the eating disorder that started taking over my life that day, because letting go of it seemed to be even more frightening than carrying it with me.
One day I stopped running
I used to ask myself every day things like “why am I so weak that I can’t get the body I want?”, Or “why can’t I just not eat”, “Why do I have to be like this?”
The answers were just self-imposed punishment. I am not going to share them here because they can be a trigger if your own eating disorder reads them through your eyes.
Another year has passed and I was tired of running away from this invisible enemy. Until, on a genuinely random day, I stopped running. Literally. I was running, as I do almost every day (to burn the calories that my ED insisted on hating), and I stopped. I went back home and decided that I would not run away anymore.
Instead, I'd stare that enemy in the eyes, and no longer try to hide from it.
I gave my eating disorder’s voice a separate personality
In therapy, I was oriented several times to try to identify that “little voice” that was very critical and that measured my value through mere results.
And so I did it. I sat on my bed and started listening to it: you are so weak. You weren’t even able to finish your run. I bet you will eat like a nut later.
I closed my eyes.
And imagined that this voice, subtle and Machiavellian, had shape, size, and personality. I pushed it out of me. And there it was, sitting next to me on the bed, wearing black clothes that covered their entire body — just as I've done so many times — and watching me with cynical, yet very melancholic eyes.
So I cried copiously, for hours and hours. And it stayed by my side. For the first time, in complete silence.
Why is it so hard to say goodbye to it?
Thirteen years of memories started navigating through my mind.
At 11, I met it for the first time, standing by the mirror while I looked at my profile and noticed my slightly protruding belly under the shirt I was wearing.
At 12, I would dirty my plate with some food and lie to my parents I had already had lunch. And it congratulated me on that. Well done! See how strong you are?
At 15, when I, in fact, gained a little weight, it shouted at me. Told me that my value was a number on the scale. And it was then that I let go of any trace of control I had over it or it's voice.
At 17 I made it feel very proud when, for a week, all I consumed were a few glasses of orange juice.
At 21 I started lying to my friends and family that I couldn’t go out with them, because, secretly, I preferred to stay home with my eating disorder. Being with it had already become comfortable.
And today, at 25, I try to say goodbye to someone who has been with me all these years.
I think that, like me, people who suffer from eating disorders develop a type of “Stockholm syndrome”. This voice, full of criticism and distortions about reality, at a certain point, ends up becoming our only company. We avoid everything else. Still, we fear it so much that we become submissive, docile, slave hostages.
So when my eating disorder and I were sitting on my bed, ready to say goodbye, I couldn’t let it go just like that. I was afraid of what my life would be like without it.
I got used to obeying that voice. It was in control. I didn’t need to feel responsible for avoiding the company of my friends; I didn’t need to feel irresponsible for missing classes when I thought that people in college would find me too fat; I didn’t need to feel what my body was asking for (nutrients, exercise, rest), I just had to eat or drink the least caloric option (or consume absolutely nothing). It was all my eating disorder’s fault, it was the one who should be held responsible, not me.
Instead of saying goodbye, this is what I did
I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t send it away. I didn’t even hate it.
I let my eating disorder comfort me while I cried by its side, and I embraced that awkward, wicked, pitiful figure that I had personified hours earlier. Holding it, as if, at that moment, I was the one taking care of us, and not the other way around.
I felt my own arms, which hours earlier I had called “fat” in front of the mirror; I ran my hands over my belly; I hugged my legs against my chest and, after crying next to me in pain (which for me was love), it had finally rested quietly.
I didn’t say goodbye at that moment because I was able to find, in this experience, genuine reasons to feel grateful.
I recently learned that, in order to change what causes us dissatisfaction, we first need to exercise acceptance. And accepting is not agreeing or becoming passive. To accept is, in fact, to recognize circumstances as they are and not run away from them, but face them and assume the share of responsibility that is ours, and then make conscious choices that will guide us to healing.
It is a long and difficult path, but from experience I can say, even if it sounds contradictory, that the shortest path is also the longest. Shortcuts can lead to certain results, of course, but they will never be able to teach us what a long and challenging journey can.
Originally written on March 10, 2021.
