Anorexia & Me

Lessons and blessings of recovery.

On Saturday at 3pm, there’s a swim meet happening in Balboa Park—at least, I think there is, until it reveals itself to be some sort of team bonding event, or maybe a fundraiser, because they’re doing trivia, and all wearing the same color suit. I can tell who the cool kids are from here, and I think about how I spent most of my childhood on the swim team, the Glen Oaks Sea Lions, where I was neither cool nor fast (those qualities went to my brother, however, who was definitely cool and fast).

I was consistently told by people who watched me swim that I had impeccable form but just needed to move my arms and legs faster. Yes, if I could I would, I always replied. Now, I think it was because I was anorexic during many of those years that I couldn’t move any faster—my body didn’t have enough energy. I wonder, would I have been a swim star, had I somehow escaped mental illness?

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It’s been 13 years since anorexia settled into my brain and body; since that dreadful 7th-grade nutrition project that triggered its development.¹ Sometimes I still feel the eating disorder haunting me, under the surface, deep in my psyche, but it’s easier now, to not hear or listen to it, and it’s easier to identify as not me. Its presence annoys me, when I sense it—I detest feeling constricted by the demands of something that does not come from my own agency, or from the universal consciousness that breathes life into me. Another part of me is not annoyed by its lingering presence, but comforted to know the disorder is not entirely eradicated yet; that’s the sick part, that’s my not-self. 

Recovery is remembering, over and over, that what keeps you sick is not you. Recovery is remembering that you are already free.

Dissecting mental illness during treatment (or doing any kind of therapy, for any reason) often leads one to try and pinpoint the reasons why it all happened in the first place. How did I land here? What made me like this? I’ve spent many years dissecting my own self and figuring out my patterns, which has been incredibly illuminating and supportive. But, like most challenging things in life, mental illness is something that can just happen. It may or may not have been preventable, or tied to a specific event; it’s more likely that it emerged from the ways your past and present environment interacted with your genes: an interaction between who and where you’ve been and who and where you are now. There may not be precise reasons why mental illness (or illness of any kind, rather) happens—it remains complex.

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I remember, early in my recovery, being asked to draw out all the things I loved and wanted from life. I drew things like the ocean, college, friends, books, and sourdough, and then was told “you can’t have or enjoy these things with the eating disorder running your life.” (That’s a recovery trick, to distinguish the eating disorder from my eating disorder. We don’t want to conflate our identities with mental illness, right.)

I remember scoffing at the implication that I couldn’t live my life the way I wanted, and continuing to weigh myself on the scale hidden in my closet, knowing that I would be the one, maybe the first, who was able to keep just a little of the disorder, just to keep me safe, and still have all of the things on my poster. Of course I was wrong, and of course it took me years of relapsing to learn that I would continue to be wrong: I know it’s true, now, that the life I want to be living is not dictated by the disordered mind.

When I first started getting healthier, it felt for a while like I was playing catch-up to learn what everyone else had learned while I’d been busy being hungry: things like how to be myself, and be in relationship with others as myself, and feel my feelings instead of repress them. I felt so behind, like I’d missed out on so much by spending so much time counting my calories and ribs on each side, and my therapist even said I might be—socially and emotionally stunted, I think were the words she used. Now, I think she was wrong (and what a horribly limiting thing to plant in my mind), because isn’t everyone learning how to be themselves, and be in relationship as themselves? Don’t we all have lessons to learn and growth to do, on our own timelines?

That same therapist also told me that the greatest gift you can give someone is the expectation of their success. She said she would hold the belief of my ability to recover for me, until I was ready to take it from her, and this stuck with me as profoundly loving of her, and as profoundly good advice. Believing that you can do something is often what will actually enable you to do it, so now I try to believe in the success and growth of others, even if they don’t believe it for themselves yet. What a beautiful way to love someone.

I think I’ve caught up, socially and emotionally speaking, but there are things I still feel like a child about, that embarrass me: that it’s still hard to go to restaurants, and that it continues to astonish me that eating enough food makes me feel good. Like, really? If I eat enough protein and carbs and fat, I can think clearly, and move properly, and not be afraid of collapsing?

The feeling of satisfaction after not experiencing it for years is simply astonishing.

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It’s usually true that as you make changes—changes that you know are right for you—the parts of life and you that are not so healthy get even louder and more obvious. Like, if you decide to become an early riser after historically staying up too late, your body will initially resist your efforts. The same is true of any kind of new routine that you’ve determined is for your own good—you might feel worse before it starts to work. Behavior change requires dedication: you’ve got to be able to stick it out through the discomfort to be able to enjoy the benefits of the changes you make.

Much to the dismay of the anorexia, when I didn’t listen to it, I actually felt better. But, this was not initially true: it took a lot of time, and willingness to trust the recovery process, before my brain got easier to work with. Recovery was the process of aligning my brain and body with my spirit—I needed them all on board to be healthy, and once they were, they worked so much better together. It’s almost like they’re meant to all be working together.

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I reflexively roll my eyes at vulnerability culture, where it’s become trendy for people to share ‘vulnerable’ parts of their lives to get views or support or sympathy. When I drop my ego, I remember that vulnerability is different based on who you are and what you’ve gone through.

It doesn’t make me feel particularly vulnerable to talk about my history with anorexia, or the fact that it still grips me at times, because I’ve done so much work with it. I think it’s important to be honest about heavy things, not because people will applaud or admire your courage, but because there is deep value in sharing about what is usually kept hidden. There is deep value in letting the dark, twisted parts of yourself out to see the light, and to let others witness you, in all your dark and twisted glory.

Vulnerability is always honest, but honesty is not always vulnerable. Only you know what feels scary and sensitive and difficult to share about—and only you know if you should share about it. Perhaps, though, we can raise our standards for the amount of honesty in our lives, so that fewer things feel scary or vulnerable to share.

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Gone are the god-awful days of calisthenics at midnight and stuffing my pockets with uneaten meals, but god bless the wisdom that came through keeping my eyes open the whole time I was underwater; they say pain is a great teacher and it’s true, it often is. I’ve thought I was dying so many times that now it’s easy to look for what’s worth living for; to see so much damn goodness and beauty in each moment.

Recovery has led me to dancing, and to what I feel is god, that universal consciousness that breathes life into all beings, everywhere. Recovery has taught me how to unlock love within me, the unconditional kind, and to trust that it’s always there.

I’m grateful for vanilla ice cream and coffee with cinnamon, crinkle fries and avocados, and the discovery that breakfast keeps me from passing out. I love being alive and having a body to be alive in.

Recovery has made me gentler, in many ways, and it has made me tougher, in many other ways. I guess that’s a testament for what makes a healthy human: gentle and tough, strong and soft. 

So, may our strength and our softness collide and collaborate within us. 
May we remember love, and may we always choose recovery. 

Maggie

1. There must be a way to help kids figure out how to eat well without forcing them to document their calories and have it be graded by their P.E. teacher, right?