It's Not About the Food

It took more than fifteen years for me to realize I had an eating disorder. Admittedly, that's a long time to not be fully aware of something so profound. But, when your brain is obeying a disordered voice and you can no longer hear YOUR OWN voice, self-awareness is all but obliterated.

I was working with a brilliant therapist when I had my "Ah-ha!" moment and understood that all the things I was doing (like pretending to eat) actually were abnormal behaviors. The moment will stay with me forever: I was sitting on my bed watching a show on Style called "What's Eating You?" I loved tuning in every week to learn about these men & women with extreme eating disorders and never felt anything more than interest...until I watched this. Everything she said out loud were the same things that had been swirling in my head for as long as I could remember. So, it hit me: what I was doing wasn't normal. I had an eating disorder.

Once I made the discovery, I was elated, terrified, sad and angry all at the same time. What I was doing to myself - the bouts of restriction where I'd drop 20 or 25 pounds, sneaking food, bingeing and purging - had a name and a face. And I wasn't alone. Fast forward two months. I was now spending four nights a week in an outpatient program for women with disordered eating. We sat together in group therapy, ate our dinner together, journaled about our experiences and kept food diaries, all to get to the bottom of WHY we were doing what we were doing. Some of the girls didn't want to be there and it was obvious as they stared at the floor and acted despondent. Some of the girls absolutely wanted to be there but were still so deeply entrenched in their disorder, that they just couldn't see the program through. And then there was me: hungry for the knowledge of where my behaviors came from and why I did what I did. Most of all, I was hungry to find a way out of my own misery. It was one of the first times I'd been emotionally hungry in a healthy way.

What fascinated me most about my eating disorder was that it acted as a seperate being. It said things I would never say, did things I would never do, acted in ways I would never act. The disorder looked like me and sounded like me, but it wasn't me. I even named it (Stephanie - which I'm often called by mistake) because it was so very different from Bethany. I started talking to Stephanie when she got too bold and told her to fuck off. I was also learning that it wasn't about the food. Trying to be perfect by starving myself was covering up all the wounded messiness that hid beneath my well-clothed exterior. Torment, rejection, failure - those were all things I had no control over. But I could absolutely control what I did or didn't put in my mouth. Relinquishing that sense of control, which had been a safety net, was (and still is) the most challenging part of recovery.

As I began to heal and grow, I could clearly see the destruction I'd left behind. Blinded by misery and depression - side effects of "Stephanie's" hold over me - I had relationships that needed mending. But the question in my head was, were those relationships at all salvagable or had I caused irreparable damage? I couldn't expect a friend or loved one to fully understand what I'd been through, but could I expect them to forgive me?

My parents, who will never quite "get" what happened, were totally fine. My brother was amazingly supportive. Most of my closest friends (who I'd abused badly with my less-than-fabulous behavior) were willing to leave the past in the past. And then one of my best friends, who swore she'd stay by my side forever and ever, just couldn't keep her word and essentially broke up with me. With the exception of that one person*, I was moved by the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity to forgive.

And speaking of friends, family and love, I added some extra of all those things to my life by adopting this little man, my dog, Norman:

 

Norman couldn't have shown up at a worse time - smack in the middle of my outpatient program! - but having him around gave me something bigger than myself to get better for. We'd both had pretty messed up lives and I looked at us coming together as a fresh start. And it was. It still is.

Much love,
Bethany

*Note: that friend who broke up with me did eventually come back around.  I've only seen her three times since then but we do occasionally chat via text or through email. We've both tried very hard to accept the new versions of each other but I know things will never be the same. Perhaps that's a good thing. Only time will tell.