One of the lower points I experienced then was the evening I wound up sitting on the floor of dorm laundry mat. I was tired, I was hungry, I was shaking from malnutrition and fear, and I was balling my eyes out. The boy I was madly in love with (I think he suspected something but had yet to say anything about it) was staring at me, wondering what in the world was going on. Eventually I admitted that I had a problem, that I wanted to eat, I needed to eat, but I simply couldn't make myself eat. The boy, bless his soul, did his best to comfort me and I did eventually calm down. It was a low, but I still really did not understand how far I was falling.
A few weeks later I was at my parents house for winter break, and finally caught sight of myself in a full length mirror as I got ready to step into the shower. The view stopped me in my tracks. What stared back at me was not a cute shapely 19 year old who was preparing for medical school and had it all together. Instead it was bordering on a skeleton. My ribs and hips poked out of pale thin skin, my eyes seemed sunken in. I was frail and broken. I cried a lot more that day.
When I got back to school I began looking for help. My university had free counseling available, so I called their office and got set up with a counselor. He sent me to the campus health clinic where I met with a nutritionist (who suggested I eat as much fatty food as I could, she said peanut butter was my friend). So I was working toward recovery, but the gears seemed to move slowly. I would do okay for a few days and then would slip right back.
My counselor talked to me a lot, he went over relaxation techniques and asked about what in my life was bothering me so much. So I started delving deep into my life, trying to find the source of my eating problems. As with most people there were a lot of possible reasons.
However, one day I sat down with a hot dog, a hot dog that would kind of change my life. I stared at it, my nemesis. A roll of sausage wrapped in a white bun and slathered with some ketchup. It was mocking me, I could feel it. I imagined how it would squish and feel slightly rubbery in my mouth, how hard it was going to be swallowing it, and even worse how the chunks might taste as they came back up in half an hour. The hot dog was wining, I was losing my appetite. Suddenly though a voice from somewhere deep down inside of me spoke up.
"Samantha. This is stupid. It is a hot dog. Eat it, move on with your life. YOU are starving yourself."
The truth that voice had mentally uttered was astounding. I was starving myself. No one else was. I could trying laying the blame for what I was going through on everyone else.
I could say it was because I was a military brat and my father was gone a lot. I could say it was because my parents had a very rocky marriage to which I was witness. Or I could say it was because my grandparents and other grown up's had been trying to make me eat more all my life. Maybe it was because I was teased a lot by other kids growing up. Maybe it was because my mother yelled a lot. Maybe my friends were not as supportive as they could have been. Maybe the college was not as supportive as it could have been. The problem also could have laid with society, and the excessive pressure it put on girls to be popular, pretty and perfect. Or maybe I could claim the problem was a lack of education on the issues of eating disorders that had left me unable to handle my situation.
But that was all bull. It was ME. I was the one who was not eating the hot dog. No one was stopping me from eating. And even though it felt like it, there was nothing actually physically wrong with me. I was broken, inside, and it was my fault. I had let everything around me poison me.
When I realized that this was my fault, that I had caused my own eating disorder, I also realized that I was the only one who was going to fix it. No one else could make me eat, sure if it got bad enough I could be force fed through a tube, but that was only a temporary solution. Likewise I could not do anything to change what had happened to me, or even what I was currently living with. Waiting around for the world or people to change before I could change meant I was going to starve.
The change had to come from me. So I took a deep breath and told myself to stop being stupid and eat the dumb hot dog. Bite by bite I did. It took awhile, and it would be another several months before I could eat a meal without reminding myself that I had to. But it worked.
I took responsibility for my eating disorder, and in doing so I also took on the responsibility for curing myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment