Trigger warning: I will try to be careful with my wording but I do need to discuss my eating disorder a little. Remember your body does not define you and you deserve recovery even if our stories don't match.
My story starts in 2020, the day after school was shut down due to the pandemic. I had hated my body for years before this. When we could not go in person a we still had tot my school, have gym. To make that happen my school gave us a set amount of time of exercise we had to get each week. I will not say what I did or for how long we had to do it because I know it will trigger people. At first, I was just hiding that mark. then I was doing it more, and more, and more. It became all I wanted to do. I saw a difference. With the scale, with my body, with the way people looked at me. People were proud, complimenting me.
Then my mom and I went on vacation. We followed all the Covid rules and no one we knew got sick at all when we got back. But all that weight I had lost over those months I managed to gain back in a week. That changed everything.
My entire life was consumed by what the scale said and how I looked. I started to diet. I will not say how for the same reason I did not talk about the exercise. I thought it was good. Because everyone says diets and exercise are "healthy" right? People at school who never even looked at me were talking to me. But I always had a headache. My hair was getting thin. I (a cisgendered female) lost my period for 6 months. I could never focus. I felt like I was dying. A part of me wanted to die. But I couldn't. I was too busy thinking about food and movement. Some people who I knew were telling me to eat more. When I would get annoyed I turned to self-harm. Because I was doing the healthy thing, right? That's what people on social media said. What most people said.
Just under two years after I started I reached what I had told people was my goal weight. It wasn't. Eating disorders don't have a goal weight above 0.
But then the binges started. For those who don't know, a binge is when your survival instincts kick in and you eat everything you can; as fast as you can. Even when my whole body hurt I could not stop. I had had these a few times before so I recognised them. But they were never like this, these were every day. I would barely eat in the morning and then binge all afternoon. For three months.
My mom and I had gotten into a few arguments because of it. But then there was the worst night of my life. I won't go into too much detail but there was lots of screaming, self-harm, crying, almost a suicide on my part, and my grandma almost moved out; all in less than two hours.
Some good did come from it. Mom started to listen when I said I could not control it. I met with an eating disorder specialist and was diagnosed with binge eating disorder. Said diagnosis later changed to atypical anorexia once my team and I learned more about it.
I have been in recovery for almost two years. Just like everything in life, there have been good and bad parts. I have been in both outpatient and a partial hospitalization program. Even though I was terrified at first, looking back at recovery is the best thing I have ever done for myself.
If you were to ask me what recovery is like I would struggle to. The best comparison I could make is that you start on an island. The island then starts going underwater. You make a raft following what people have said but you don't know if it will work. You take the jump anyway. At first, you are guessing at everything you do. Then you figure it out. Some days you are able to hunt and you feel good. Other days there is a hole in the raft that you have to repair. Some days you need dolphins, who you think are sharks, to help you continue to move. But one day you do reach land. The new island might go under sometimes but it will always come back up because of what you learned.
One day you will get better. I promise.