My Mind

I so appreciate your support, your prayers, and your kindness since I announced my illness. I understand that for some (perhaps most) of you, the general lack of information in my post might have been distressing. I have spent the time since I posted weighing my options and more closely evaluating my reasons for desiring privacy. I have come to the conclusion that, as much as I would like to keep silent about this and never ever tell you what’s going on, the price of keeping my mouth shut is not worth it. And you deserve to know. 

However, it’s important that you understand I have a laundry list of reasons for not wanting to tell you what’s going on, the first of which being that, when I tell people what I have, the first question (whether voiced or just visibly thought) is generally “why?”. Which is unfortunate because, to me, the why of the illness is more complex and private than the illness itself. So while I want to be able to help you understand why this is happening to me, I can’t. 

But I can still tell you what’s going on. 

The summer after I turned sixteen, just a few months after my friend died, I lost over thirty pounds in two months. Another good friend asked me point blank if I had an eating disorder, and I told her that no, I just hadn’t had much of an appetite lately. I might have blamed it on the heat or something—I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I lied. 

For reasons that I won’t go into, I got a handle on the disorder before it got scary far, and it left me alone until this summer, when I was beginning to feel safe and happy and more like a person than I have ever felt. Somehow it managed to sneak up on me, tap me on the shoulder, and catch me by the throat when I turned around to see who was there. It seemed innocent and harmless at first. I was stressed about the idea of working late, so I decided to make a habit of skipping lunch breaks, with the idea that I would eat when I got home. As November progressed and things got worse, I skipped lunch on writing days as well because I’d had coffee and I wanted more time to write, and again, I could just eat more later. Only there were times when I forgot to eat later and felt proud of myself because, for once in my life, I felt like I had finally managed to exercise self control around food, that for once food was not the one in control. One thing led to another, and somewhere along the way, I changed from someone who had an embarrasing sweet tooth to someone who has frequent anxiety attacks at the thought of eating. 

As I said before, I have multiple reasons for wanting to keep my struggle with anorexia a secret. The guilt I feel at having this particular mental illness is ridiculously disproportionate—if you were to step into my head right now, you would think I was admitting to being a serial killer (which I’m not, in case you were wondering) rather than admitting to being someone whose brain has just broken down tremendously through no fault of my own. (I say “through no fault of my own” because that’s what trusted people have told me, and I am trying to believe them.) See the thing is, I blame myself. Even though this sickness snuck in through the attic window when I was preoccupied with cleaning the grime from the backs of the cupboards in my head, I still catch myself thinking there had to have been some conscious moment when I held the door open for the devil and led him to the kitchen table of my mind, where I proceeded to let him dictate my death. So, in that way, I feel like admitting to this means I’ll have to wear a scarlet A now (only this time it stands for anorexia). 

Furthermore, the idea of people thinking I’m suicidal or nuts or stupid or high maintenance or attention-seeking bothers me more than I can adequately express. I don’t like reflecting on the multiple small deceptions I have let myself use to mask this illness (even though all the times I screamed on the inside for someone to notice and call me out must amount for something). Perhaps my gradual break-up with full disclosure might explain why I’ve not felt like myself for some time. 

In other news, I feel unoriginal, because why do I have to have such a mainstream disorder, of all things? Seriously. I’m a writer. I’m supposed to be interesting and imaginative. (This is the part where you laugh awkwardly because I make bad jokes when I’m in distress. And also just in general.) 

I have felt ridiculous because I feel like I don’t fit the visual profile for someone with anorexia. Which, when you think about it, is rather ironic: I feel like I’m too fat to be taken seriously as someone who has an eating disorder that makes them feel fat even when they’re not. Ahem. 

As a Christian, I have felt shame at the amount of time I have dedicated to listening to Satan’s lies. Because at it progressed, I was aware on some level of what was happening. And you could argue that at that point it was already too late simply to make the choice to stop my behavior, but that doesn’t change what my thought patterns looked like. It doesn’t change the fact that I was willing to look to the devil for salvation because I stopped trusting that God loves me enough to take care of me. All this, even though I knew Satan would never help me out of the kindness of his heart, that his “aid” would never come without a monumental price tag. Because while I know this is a mental illness, I also know that it is very much fueled by lies that I have ingested and continue to embrace, lies like: I take up too much space, I am intrinsically unworthy and unlovable, every bite I take disqualifies me from being loved, etc. 

Additonally, I am afraid that people will attempt to slap me with easy solutions like “just eat” because they don’t understand how complex this disorder is, how the not-eating issue is a symptom, not the root of the problem. I don’t want people wrongly assuming I crave self-destruction when, in reality, this disorder has so much control over me that even eating a mouthful, much less a meal, feels like a defiant gesture, and straining against the boundaries of this disorder brings down fresh punishment from the enemy. 

In other news, I care too much about what people think. Years ago, a friend of mine told me that, and while I have tried to fix this aspect of myself and have made strides, I’m sorry to say that it’s still very much the case. Even though I know you won’t judge me, my coffee beans, I am also afraid that you will. Honesty, however uncomfortable, is important to me, now more than ever, and I am sorry that I have let myself pretend that it doesn’t matter this time around. I am sad because, in giving ear to this disorder as it tries to trap me in silence where there is no help, I have drifted from the person God designed me to be. I still want privacy. I still want to pretend things are normal. I know, after posting this, people I have to see in person on a regular basis will likely look at me differently (not that they don’t already), and that’s almost enough to convince me that I am making a mistake. There is an extent to which I don’t want people to know because I don’t want the constant pressure to get better—or rather, that’s what the disorder tells me I don’t want. But I have established a precedent for honesty on this blog, and I don’t want there to be any confusion or misinformation about what’s going on in my life. 

So here’s the deal: I have been getting help, and I will continue to do so. As much as it feels like pushing a boulder uphill on the daily, I will continue to fight. I’m not eating normally yet; I probably won’t be for a while. But for the moment I am eating more than I was, and that is not nothing. 

There are many things I can’t be certain about with regards to this, but there are a few things I know for sure. I won’t be the same person I was before. That could be a bad thing, but with God’s help I can also make it a good thing. Like most mental illnesses, anorexia is also not something you recover from—as people have reminded me—it’s something you learn to manage. Regardless of how well I reorder my mind and relearn normal eating habits, it will always occupy some small space in my psyche, and it will always be looking for a way to return. 

Again, I would really appreciate your prayers and your understanding. I’ll also be sure to update you from time to time and all that fun stuff, so please don’t fret. And hey, no worries if you don’t know how to respond to this—just share your favorite Bible verse or Twenty One Pilots song or something. :)