Eating Disorders. I’ve had a about
every eating disorder you can imagine. I
have always hated the way I looked, so IF you happen to think that the girl
writing this is a skinny little blonde girl, you are wrong. I have mentioned that I was abused as a child,
one of those forms was starvation. My mother did not make very much money and
my step-father HAD to have his precious comic books so a lot of the times I was
not fed and if I was it was peanut butter and jelly which I still hate eating
to this day and I was four and five years old. Anyway the reason that is
relevant is once my mother ”died” and I
was put in the care of my grandparents and got to eat regularly again, I gained
quite a bit of weight and mixed with bad genes, I was a big child most of my
life. As you can imagine I was made fun of a lot and one extreme I remember the
boys who lived down the road threw rocks at me and called me ‘fatty patty’ but
it only happened once, it wasn’t a reoccurring thing.
I cannot remember a time in my life
when I didn’t hate the way I looked.
They say that you start to notice your weight and the way you look
around puberty, 10-13, but I always was aware. Why does it matter to us? WHY do
we think that the amount of love we deserve, the way people perceive us, what kind of job we will have, who we are as people all depend on what size
jeans we fit into? It’s not right and we can’t condemn the media to hell for
something that has been going on for many generations. We fuel it ourselves.
The first thing that really
happened was freshman year of high school. In the spring I started track and
field and my coach Bill wanted me to run three miles a day, at first I thought
the man was crazy but at the time after going through my first ever breakup and
when my grandpa and two of my aunts having cancer, it was how I dealt with
everything in my life. It was therapeutic and still is to this day, it’s a very
important part of who I am now and my theories in life but with it came the bad
too. I started to lose weight and I liked the feeling of people complimenting
me. I also was being put in races in track instead of just throwing Discus like
I was used to. I wanted to be fast, I wanted to be complimented, I wanted to be
good at something, I wanted to win metals, I wanted to be cheered on, I wanted
to beat someone, I wanted my ex-boyfriend to come back to me, so it started. I ate a snack pack of crackers
a day and a flavored sport water, that was it, that was all that I allowed
myself, essentially maybe 100-200 calories a day. I would run 2 warm up laps with the whole
team (1/2 a mile), go run around town for practice (3-4 miles),Lift weights for
an hour, after practice I would run laps
with my friend ben (1 mile), go home ride my bike (3-5 miles) and sometimes if
I had eaten something besides the crackers and water I would run in the loop
around my neighborhood (1-2 miles). That was a normal day for me. Once at a
team meal I was so hungry because of my routine that I ate a large pizza to
myself and I didn’t know what to do with myself, I had never felt so ashamed in
my life.
The funny part of it was not only
that the only person who seemed to notice was my track coach because I lost so
much weight so fast but the fact that I did not see what I was doing as an
eating disorder, because I was still eating a little bit. Turns out in English
class we had a talk about eating disorders and I had Bulimia. See I also
learned that I didn’t have anorexia because you have to be so much underweight
already and stop eating to have that, everything else is bulimia if you stop
eating, which to me is total and complete bullshit, I was “Too Fat” even to
have my own disorder.
I just started eating again slowly,
after that, I never had therapy like so many of my friends did. Maybe that’s
why it never really “went away” but really I truly believe that things like
this just go away, I feel like no matter what it is always a part of how you
act and do things. It’s been 6 years and every bite I take I still think about
the calories that are in it, if I splurge on cookies or cake I have to go
running, and when I don’t work out or feel like I have worked out hard enough I
feel disgusting, every morning I look at my stomach in the mirror to see if I
look bloated, flat, ect., I wear mostly just baggy t-shirts with jeans because
I feel fat in fitted shirts, I am most comfortable in sweats not because of the
material but I feel like people can’t see my fat as well, if I know I am drinking alcohol that night I
won’t eat as much food, I try to only eat veggies, those are all mostly ritual
things that I do.
I do try and keep my eating
disorder in check as much as I can though. I try and work out so that I won’t
feel as gross and worthless for not trying to lose weight by dieting because I
hate diets and refuse to do them. I try and not look at my body in the mirror
when I get out of the shower or unless I am clothed, if I have to be weighed at
the doctor’s office I do not look at the scale and I ask them not to say the
weight out loud for fear that it will send me into a fit (as I like to call
them), sometimes I care what I look like, most days I don’t, I guess it’s also
a mood disorder for me. If things are going ok in my life I don’t care but if I
am stressed or sad that’s the first flaw I look to even if it is totally
irrelevant to the situation. I also have tattoos on my back and I got them so
that people would see that art work and not the fat rolls and for that very
same reason I got my navel pierced, twice. It may not make sense to most people
but it does to me and most other people with a eating disorder of some type
might say that this makes sense to them as well.
I did have a rough time last fall.
I left one college of another and I really wanted to fit in and so I looked to
Greek life. Two weeks before rush I started tanning, working out for two hours
a day and of course throwing up everything I ate. It wasn’t the experience I
wanted so I got more depressed and ended up not being able to eat because
everything I ate made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t eat anything for three
weeks and I didn’t leave my bed that often. Depression meds helped a lot and I
moved back to my home college and I am doing much better now.
I want and try to challenge you all
to do something in every post and the challenge in this one is to never ever
ever ever under any circumstances compliment a friend for losing weight. Why do
we do this? You never know why someone lost so much weight or what the person
is going through, it should be as faux pas as asking someone if they are pregnant.
I know my friends have unknowingly said “oh you look skinny” or “oh you look
like you’ve lost weight” and it’s like fuel for the fire. It makes me want to
lose more and more and it’s not good. So don’t, instead comment on personality
or ANYTHING else.
If you feel like you would like to share your experience
with me or have something you would like me to talk about in the blog email me
at: a_song4hope1123@yahoo.com
God Bless
- Adriene
Song
