Anorexia was my first love. We met and were instantly attracted to each other. We spent every moment of the day together. Through its eyes, I saw the world differently. It taught me how to feel good about myself, how to improve myself, and how to think. Through it all, it never left my side. It was always there when everyone else had left, and as long as I didn’t ignore it, it never left me alone. Losing anorexia was painful—like losing your sense of purpose. I no longer knew what to do without it to consider. Whether the drill sergeant approved or disapproved was no longer a concern because he was no longer there. I let him go with the overwhelming feeling that continuing to fight for him was futile because he was too good for me; he was too perfect, too strict and demanding. Slowly, over several months, maybe even years, the feeling that I wasn’t good enough for him dissipated, and I gradually came to feel as though we were just a mismatch, he and I. We never should’ve been together in the first place. We were too different for each other, and we wanted different things from life. Knowing that, however, didn’t make it less painful. Without anorexia, I had nothing. Without it, I was nothing. I wasn’t even a failure; I simply felt like I didn’t exist.
I was diagnosed with lupus. I had osteoporosis and was showing signs of cirrhosis of the liver. My potassium and electrolyte balance were at critical levels, threatening the function of my organs. I no longer felt lazy, like I was giving up because it was too hard, I felt defeated. I felt as though I simply didn’t have a choice. I had to accept that the road I had chosen was the wrong road. It led to sickness and death. I had to allow the voices of the professionals into my closed mind. I had to try to take their road.
As I began the long journey on the road to recovery, there were a couple of detours that I wasn’t prepared for. Initially I had thought that once I began to gain back the weight, I would have the strong support base that I’d felt in Australia. I thought I would have loving, concerned people around me to ensure that I was getting healthy. But after I had gained an acceptable amount of weight and looked like a regular person, mostly everyone in my life assumed that the problem was solved. Almost instantly, I felt like no one was listening anymore, no one cared. It felt like caring was only necessary when my life was on the line. As I gained weight I was no longer something to worry about. I truly felt like a pubescent thirteen-year-old, ugly, voiceless; my cute days of being delightful were in the past, and my future accomplishments were too distant to elicit any kind of hope or joy. At that point, if I had still had the axe to grind, if I hadn’t got what I wanted from the disorder, some sense of acceptance of my sexuality, I would have relapsed. It would have been very easy for me to start losing weight again to get the attention and the concern that felt like love. It would have felt like a great accomplishment to not just do it once, but twice, proving to myself that I had the willpower I had always suspected was only fleeting.
Gaining weight is a critical time. The anorexic mind doesn’t just magically go away when weight is gained—it gets more active. Anorexia becomes bigger and stronger as it struggles to hold on, as it fights for its life. If I hadn’t seen my mother break down and accept me for being gay, I would’ve gotten right back on the path that made me rebel in the first place, because being anorexic did feel a little like rebellion. It felt like a passive-aggressive way of renouncing my mother’s control over me. It was definitely a statement that demanded “accept my sexuality or accept my death!” Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well again means you have to check back in. It is absolutely crucial that you are ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick. Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start life over. And with all the time it takes to have an eating disorder—literally the whole day is consumed by it, both mentally and physically—it’s important to find something other than your body image to be passionate about. You have to create a whole new life to check into, and the life I knew was waiting for me was a future relationship and the acceptance of it from my family. I had the key ingredient to want to check back in: I had hope.
For a straight-A student, a model, an actress on a hit TV show, the bar was set very high. I’m the one who set it. I thought that by accomplishing things that were exciting to people, I would receive their admiration and love. I thought that if I accomplished enough, that somehow I would be let off the hook in the future. Like I didn’t have to keep striving and achieving because I had done that already, and it would add up to being enough. Anorexia lowered the bar. Instead of having to be a high achiever to receive love, all I had to do was be alive. All I had to do for the caring, nurturing kind of love was lose another pound. All I had to do for acceptance of my sexuality was not eat. Of course, I didn’t think I was doing that at the time. I thought I was just trying to stay thin.
Recovery feels like shit. It didn’t feel like I was doing something good; it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again. I felt pathetic. I remember having so little self-esteem that I couldn’t talk loudly; I literally couldn’t make myself heard because I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be spoken to or looked at or acknowledged. When someone paid attention to me, I thought they were doing it out of sympathy, kindness, and so it felt condescending. All recovery meant to me was being fat. Unlike the case of an alcoholic or a drug addict, there are no immediate benefits to getting well. My joints might have stopped aching pretty quickly, but after that, I didn’t feel better, I felt worse. I experienced all kinds of physical changes that made me feel gross: my period returned, I had gas and was constipated. And then there was the fat that came back. It was truly awful for me. One week I felt lean and perfect, and the next week I was fat. Again. I felt like a failure. I hated every moment of it. I missed my bones so much. I cried at night because I couldn’t feel my hip bones and not having them to physically hold onto was like losing a dear friend.
Being anorexic was incredibly difficult. Eating, once I allowed myself to do it, was easy. Being diagnosed with lupus was like a pardon; it granted me the freedom to give up. It felt like an excuse to let go of starvation, and it allowed me to eat again. I could no longer starve or I’d die. Therefore, it was essential to eat. So I did. I ate everything in sight. I ate everything I had wanted to eat for a year but hadn’t allowed myself. I started by eating the healthy foods I’d missed: bran muffins, protein bars, granola, and smoothies. But very quickly the list began to include candy, cake, chocolate, and fried food. I felt that if I were going to give up, I might as well give up all the way. The floodgate had opened.