10/5/2021 - Why My Eating Disorder Sucks

Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders 

So in my last post I was talking about some really sad crap. I mentioned I was having an anorexia relapse. But now I am once again trying to push myself towards recovery, thanks to my girlfriend. I ended up telling her the truth and I just ended up venting to her. About how I don't really want to do this to myself anymore but I don't know how to get better, though I do want to get better. I don't want to hurt myself anymore, I want to be able to think of things other than calories and how much food I'll have to eat in a day. I know my way of thinking isn't healthy.

I'm going to list all the things that suck about my eating disorder. This way, whenever I want to go back to restricting my calories, I can read this list and try to remember why I don't want to keep coming back to this. Just a note: Everybody is different and have different feelings about their ED's. Not all of us think exactly the same. So if you read this, please do not think that all anorexic's feel this way.

Like I was talking about earlier, my way of thinking isn't healthy. My mind is always on numbers - my weight, calories, servings of food. It doesn't leave much room to focus on much else; my grades in school have suffered because I was just unable to focus my mind on the work. My mind was always on on of the three (weight, cals, food) or I was just so tired and out of energy that I just couldn't put my mind on anything. I've noticed that when I eat more calories, I'm more energetic and even if my emotions aren't the best, I feel better. Plus, when I'm eating healthy amounts, my relationship with my girlfriend is way better, as we aren't arguing about how much I'm eating or debating about whether or not I have anorexia. Which I do - I can admit this now. I've always felt like I was too fat to have an eating disorder, but I've come to realize that it isn't about body size when it comes to this stuff. The eating disorder is in your mindset and behavior, though others like to associate being unhealthily underweight with anorexia. So some may call my eating disorder "atypical anorexia", but I believe that this is bullshit. Who the fuck are we to decide what is typical for an eating disorder? We're basically invalidating someone whenever we say they have an atypical eating disorder.

I must say though that my issues with food can become the complete opposite - I can go from starvation to overeating very quickly. The things that I told myself I'd never eat again, I end up eating all of it. And when I start eating a lot and gaining weight, it triggers me and makes me end up relapsing again. It becomes a cycle. Overeating is just as unhealthy as starvation. What I need to do is find the balance between - eating a healthy amount, neither over nor under doing it. What I'm trying to do is eat three meals a day, only getting more if I actually need it, plus two snacks, and every now and then something for a dessert. And that's it. And it's been working okay, I haven't really felt out of control with my eating, I've been eating enough to where I'm full, but not comfortably full.

Oh, another thing. My eating disorder is mostly about my weight, but now it's become more than that. When I don't eat, I feel sort of... powerful might be the word? I feel like I'm taking control of my life by taking control of my eating and body image. My life is full of controlling people - my grandma was the worse of them. They could try to control me all they wanted to, but when it came to eating, nobody could make me eat. I know it sounds awful, but it made me feel strong. Nobody could force me to eat, all they could do was watch as I starved myself. But I realize that I still wasn't in control of myself, it was the opposite. I was losing control with each meal I skipped or purged. I was losing myself. There's already parts of me that I'm not sure I can find again, but I'm going to try.

The headache and stomach pains aren't the worst part of eating only 500 calories a day, but they aren't the best. Hunger itself I don't usually mind - it actually makes me feel stronger and more motivated. I think, well if I'm hungry, at least I know I haven't eaten a lot, and I'm getting thinner. If I keep going, I'll keep getting thinner. But just because it kept me "strong", it doesn't mean it didn't suck. Sometimes all I could think about was how hungry I was, how badly I wanted to eat, but how I felt I couldn't because I was fat and if I ate that meant I was giving in and letting food control me. The headaches were awful. I always felt dizzy and lightheaded, but I told myself I was fine and just kept drinking water and taking pain killers. But it didn't usually help. Once, I was just walking down the stairs, and I got dizzy and fell down the stairs. This was actually recently, and was the day I told my girlfriend I was relapsing. Another thing about this. I have derealization, and most the time I feel disconnected from either myself or the world around me. I can usually deal with not feeling like I'm real - it's kind of nice, I can pretend that I'm just watching some other girl ruin her health. But whenever things around me don't seem real, I get bad anxiety and panic attacks. Starvation doesn't help with that, it makes it even worse. I already rarely feel fully connected to everything, but when I'm starving myself it becomes even rarer if that's possible.

I'm going to say it - I fucking hate diet soda. But when I'm restricting my calories it's all I drink. Either diet soda, tea (sweetened with cal-free sugar), or just plain water. I love water, and most the time I love tea, but I am so sick of diet soda. I never liked it until I developed an ED, and that's because it fucking sucks. I don't think I ever really liked it, my ED voice just convinced me I did. I miss drinking other stuff, like hot chocolate and milk and apple juice. I just recently discovered a love for coffee, which I guess anorexic's do drink to lose weight, but I stopped drinking it because I cannot drink it without creamer, which has calories even if it's only a few. Every little calorie counted to me, so I cut a lot of small things out of my diet along with bigger things. I was forced to eat dinner every night, as my family knows about my ED (but they think it's in the past). So I tried to go through the whole day, not eating anything, because I gave myself a 500 calorie limit each day and dinner was most of those calories and usually an unknown total. I would pack a diet soda in my lunch bag, or fill it to the brim with tea bags that I could make at school. Let me explain that my school is an online academy, yet there is a site that students can actually go sit and do their work at, which is what I do. They have a snack shelf, filled with all of these high calorie foods. I had to go over there to microwave my water for tea, and I would always be tempted to just grab all of the highest calorie snacks and eat them. I always thought the best feeling in the world was being able to turn my back from the food and walk away with only a cup of tea, but there are so many better feelings then that.

I've never had any serious health issues from my anorexia, which I'm grateful for. Even at my worse (which was towards the end of 2018), it never caused me anything that was too serious. My doctor at that time told me if I didn't start eating again, my liver would start to fail, but thankfully I started to eat more and it didn't happen, but then about half a year later I relapsed again, and the cycle of relapse and recovery started. Luckily my liver never did fail, somehow, and I experienced no health issues that I've noticed. But while I'm healthy now, if I continue to starve my body I will eventually develop serious health issues, and that is something that sucks. I could also begin to lose my hair, which would suck extremely as my hair is one of the few things I like about myself. My period will eventually stop and I could possibly never have kids, something that would suck majorly as well. And eventually, I will die. Even though I am a bit suicidal, I don't actually want to die. I just want to go somewhere I don't have these constant bad thoughts anymore and be in peace. Death honestly scares me a bit because I don't know what happens after it. I don't want to just stop existing, but I'm not religious either - so I don't really believe in Heaven or Hell or anything. I don't want to die yet, but I will if I don't recover.

On the the worst of all of these in my opinion - the lying. I don't mind lying to people usually, I do it all the time with things unrelated to my ED. But lying to my girlfriend is something I hate doing, and usually try to avoid. She knows me better then anyone, knows all about my anorexia, and tries to help me with it. We have a long distance relationship, but she can usually tell when I'm lying, and whenever I lie and she believes me, it makes me feel so guilty that I usually end up telling her the truth. I hate lying to her, but my ED tells me I have to. Because I have to lose weight and if she knew what I was doing she'd try to convince me to stop - like she should. I also don't like lying to my family, but it doesn't hurt as bad as when I lie to my girlfriend. My family knows I had an eating disorder in the past, but they think I'm recovered and it's over with, like it was just a phase I was going through. Which is why I'll never confide in them and tell them when I'm struggling. Me and my fam are usually doing our own things during the day, but we always eat dinner together. So when they see me, I'm eating. And on weekends, I usually would end up binging, and they see all the food I'm eating. I doubt they'd even believe I have an ED since they see me eat, but I don't want to test that by telling them. My friends don't really understand (or even try to understand) my eating disorder, and they honestly don't really care. So I don't have to lie to them since they don't care about my eating habits. But the main one is lying to my girlfriend - it sucks, I have to stop doing it, I have to learn to be honest. Because she really does want to help me and have me be healthy. She doesn't care about my weight, and I shouldn't either because nobody else cares either. But I'm not just lying to her when I try to say I'm fine or not hungry - I'm lying to myself too. And I deserve better then treating myself like this.

I didn't list all the things that suck about my anorexia, just all the things I was thinking about right now. Sometimes, though, I forget all of this and decide to start restricting my calories again. Sometimes I forget all of this and I want to be sick again. Because even though anorexia sucks, I feel a weird sense of comfort in it, which I know is false but I can't help it. I've been suffering with ED's since I was 9. It went from bulimia, to binge-eating, to anorexia. It's kind of hard to imagine my life without an eating disorder, since I've had one for so long. But I know that it'll be a better life. I just have to let it go. Let all of it go and move forward. Even if it's hard, I'm going to try my best to do it. Because it's worth it. I deserve to be healthy and live a good life. Even if I slip up again, I'm going to stop lying. I'm going to be honest and get back on the right track.