I thought I might get some things out. Here goes…

Hey there, and welcome back to Growing Pains.

I was reading through my previous post, Bulimia: My Eating Disorder Story, and I decided to return to the Google doc which inspired me to write that post. It was several pages I had written during one of my many relapses, documenting my eating disorder experience in as much detail as I could muster. All the pain, all the suffering. Everything that hurt. 

I hate to admit it, but again, the pillar of my writing is honesty, and I just can’t help but feel that I sugarcoated my experience in writing Bulimia: My Eating Disorder Story. I think it may have been to protect myself from the true self-destruction I had really put myself through.

When I wrote these pages I’ve attached below, I was between the ages of fifteen to seventeen. I was a little high schooler struggling with a violent home and painful thoughts of self-destruction. These words were for me and me alone, not edited or gently curated for an audience. They were so I knew that everything I had gone through was real and as horrible as I remember.

I haven’t added to these pages since I was seventeen, and I have had many relapses since, ones that I’ve already covered in my previous posts. When I was seventeen and I wrote the final update of this document, I really thought that was the end of my eating disorder story.

I hope that by reading my exact thoughts and feelings from this time, you all can see how destructive eating disorders truly are to both the mind and the body.

TW: Self-harm, suicidal ideation, disordered eating, calorie counting, and weight tracking

“I thought I might get some things out. Here goes…

So, about starving: 2018? 19? I don’t remember—All I really remember of that year was cutting. Cutting, cutting, cutting. My thighs have been covered in those thin, scabby scissor cuts since I was what? Ten? Nine? I was too scared to use a real blade, but one day, I broke. I needed some real pain.

After that habit started, I felt so tired all the time. I never wanted to be anywhere. I thought of death often. Not even of suicide, of maybe just disappearing. I just wanted to wrap myself in a blanket and be consumed by it, to turn to dust and be done with it.

Eventually, I stopped eating. I guess I just felt embarrassed to eat at lunch, maybe I was just neglecting myself, I don't know, but I remember first losing weight and being scared about it. But not scared enough to start eating again. That was the year of Cheyenne and friend drama and such and I just felt like crap all the time. I felt so hated at that time, in every aspect of my life. At home, at school. I never wanted to show my face anywhere. I wanted to be gone.

One of the last things I remember of this time was M—’s birthday party. Everyone was gonna be there, at some candy place I think. I was curled up in the car, dizzily fantasizing about disappearing after a high school orientation at Chaparral when my mom brought it up. The moment I heard the word ‘party’ I declined. My mom told me it would be good to say goodbye, have some social interaction, but I refused. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this, and I especially didn’t want their last memories of me to be stuffing myself with candy and sugar.

I felt no guilt until I managed to scrape myself together to see E— one weekend (to drink unsweetened green tea at AJ's). She had a photo album for me, I think she said she gave one to everybody at the party and she felt bad that I didn't get one. I flipped through it, the usual teenage photos, holding hands, covering each other’s stomachs. None of me, though. Until I saw one. It had a filter, something stupid like a bunny or a dog. A few more pages pass. Another one, me stuffing my face with Hot Cheetos. A few more pages, and another one. Again eating. Maybe a third one, I don’t know, I haven’t looked at it since.

My exact fear came to life in the worst, most permanent way possible: everyone’s final memories of me, a few pitiful pictures pulled together from the depths of E—’s endless camera roll, printed and collected into a keepsake that each person has the freedom to look through whenever they'd like, all of me stuffing my fat ass with food. That broke me. It absolutely tore me apart.

After some troubles within our home, I stopped eating. Officially. It wasn’t necessarily to be thin, but just mainly out of anxiety since I would have frequent panic attacks that resulted in me throwing up, and eating any food made me feel nauseous.

I think it was also around this time that my nightmares and sleep paralysis started. I just remember laying in bed with four blankets because my body was so thin and cold. Shivering was so exhausting that it hurt. The nightmares were horrible. I would have these gory dreams of cutting myself and I’d wake up trembling and crying. That summer was absolute hell.

Fast forward through two months of hunger and brain fog. Then 2020, Covid year. High school starts. PE starts. I finally had an excuse to work out for painfully long amounts of time. Breakfast was what motivated me. That was when my mom was forcing me to eat breakfast, slathering my toast with extra butter, or putting too much cream and sugar in my coffee to help me gain some calories. I wanted to work it off and I weighed myself every morning, obsessively, just watching the numbers go down. 98, 97, 95, 92, 90, 89, 86, 84, 80… 67, 65… things got fuzzy for a time. I don’t remember the 70’s. I don’t remember my lowest weight.

I looked disgusting. I used to get undressed in the morning to shower and just stare. I would study every scar, every curve, every bone. The way the light fell on my shoulders and highlighted where the bone bulged out beneath it. The way my jeans flattened a bit where my hips stuck out. The way a tight shirt wrinkled and folded over my stomach where it caved in beneath my ribs. It disgusted me. What had I done to myself? But I was still convinced I would be prettier once I lost more weight.

I remember one day, I was on my usual online hunts for 2010 eating disorder forums and suicide helplines when I came across a recording of a radio show. There was a girl, probably my age, calling about cutting problems. I could never forget the desperation in her voice as she was letting out one final cry for help, pouring her heart out to a complete stranger over a call. I saw myself in her in a haunting sort of way, as if I were the one making the call. Apparently, it took only seven words to turn my life around: “Go tell your momma who loves you.”

The final words of the call were: “Katie?”

“Yeah?”

“Hang in there, okay?”

I was in tears willing myself to get up and go tell my mom how I was destroying myself. But how could I? How could I bring this kind of pain into her life? But those seven words held me by a thread through the rest of it. I still repeat them to this day.

Sometime later, school started in-person. I was knee-deep in razors and scars and cuts, and I wore a rubber band on my wrist per some self-harm internet forum’s instructions. I was supposed to snap it whenever I felt the urge to cut. It was supposed to help me to do something less destructive than cutting, but in all honesty, it hurt a hell of a lot more than cutting, which deterred me from ever putting it to use. It served more as an amusement park wristband to distinguish my time as a cutter from my current self.

On my first day of in-person school, I wore leggings and a small shirt, flaunting my excessive weight loss so I felt like I had something to show for all my pain. It only drove me deeper into this abyss that I had already drowned myself in. Seeing my reflection in the big windows of the gym, seeing the thigh gap that I had worked so hard for, seeing the collarbones and the jutting elbows and the wrists. I despised it. I wanted it gone.

Eventually, I just got so angry with myself that I starved out of spite, as punishment for believing that being thin could give me any semblance of worth. The punishment era ended quickly and the brain fog returned. I had simply reached a point at which I was no longer angry. I was so exhausted and in pain all the time that I just didn’t have the energy to take care of myself, causing me to starve with no motive whatsoever.

My mind was so foggy every day, and all I could remember was being so tired and cold all the time. That cold was the worst. It felt like every gust of wind would pierce through my chest and shatter me to pieces. I felt so fragile. I bruised easily and my hair fell out in clumps when I brushed it in the morning, on the days that I had the energy or desire to brush it.

I remember just stumbling from class to class with my head hanging low, staring blankly at the ground as I tripped over my own feet. My brain retained nothing at school, assignments went undone, and grades dropped as my teachers probably thought I just didn't care. My legs were always shaking and caffeine would send my nerves through the roof. Eventually, I realized I had to quit coffee and turned to tea for a softer boost of energy.

This shed light on the idea of counting calories. After all, I was just drinking leaf water. Milk and sugar were officially out the window and I had a better chance at this game. I think this was the most “logical” thought I had throughout it all, if you could consider that logical anyway. From this time, I remember logging my spoonfuls and sips and calories into a Google doc. But right off the top of my head, I’ll never forget it, I wrote one day that I had eaten six cashews, two crackers, and half a sugar-free lemon Vitamin Water. That was my food for the day. No breakfast. No dinner. No snacks. Days like that, I felt like I was on top of the world, when really I was just a pathetic little skeleton with depression, no friends, and failing grades.

I tried to only eat about one-hundred to two-hundred calories at most per day at this time. Whenever I felt like I was gonna pass out at school, I nibbled on cashews or macadamias, those fatty nuts that I could make the most of without getting too carried away. When my stomach hurt, I mindfully ate half a saltine cracker. I remember feeling so grateful for that light dust of salt on my tongue. When it was too painful to get out of bed, I took a few small sips of lukewarm sugar-free Gatorade that I’d bought by the masses at the school vending machine. There was always a bottle sitting in my bag.

It was so hard to pay attention to anything around me. The sound of Tyler Joseph’s screaming from his Trench album took me to some dizzy paradise far away from wherever I was. I always felt like I was floating when I left class. Stumbling, stumbling. I’d lose track of the tiles that lined the floors of the building I was coming from and suddenly be blinded by the light of the sun. I never had any idea where I was. I often found myself forgetting my schedule or walking to the wrong class after months on the same campus. When I asked myself where I was, I would only hurl myself down that huge black abyss, a spiral of questions turning me this way and that as I searched for building letters or familiar faces.

Sometimes, I would lose my sense of self. I asked myself who I was, I spelled out my name and found myself fumbling over the letters, slurring them just to get to the end. I just wanted to lie down right where I was and sleep.

Eventually, something snapped in me, maybe it was the way my mom and sister would look at me, or maybe it was because I knew deep down how much I’d missed white rice, but I decided to start eating again. It all began with a huge, uncontrolled binge where I ate every snack that I missed so dearly, and my god, buttered sourdough is amazing. But I threw up. Out of both guilt and sickness.

I grew fond of apples for some reason (maybe to keep the doctor away…? Ba dum chh). I ate at least one or two a day for maybe two months, which my mom was pleased with. I began eating a lot each day, but mostly sweets, maybe the occasional fruit besides my apples. I held onto every flavor, every bite. I never realized I’d miss food so much. I still wasn’t growing accustomed to eating a full meal, let alone three each day, and whenever I did try I’d end up throwing it up and feeling more and more sick each day. Eventually, I think I came around and I began eating at least dinner, even if I’d eaten nothing the entire day.

Then I started to gain weight. This completely blindsided me. It was basically letting go of all the control that I had worked so hard to gain. I knew how to drop fifteen pounds in a month and I could do it all again, probably more efficiently if I wanted to. And I was about to let that go. 60lbs to 70lbs was a breeze once I began eating regularly. 70lbs to 80lbs was possibly quicker, despite the few days I spent starving again when I realized that my body’s recovery was completely outpacing my mind.

But once I got to 80lbs, I hit a standstill. I just couldn’t gain any more weight. My body simply refused. I ate and ate and ate until I felt sick and was throwing up again. Sometimes I felt so sick that I made myself throw up just to relieve the pain in my stomach before I went to bed. But I continued.

I continued eating, playing that same stupid game of eating, eating, eating, and finally sitting down for dinner before losing all my progress. Every night. I’d wake up in the morning with these horrible cramps, and try so hard to settle my stomach with small sips of water and controlled breathing before eventually succumbing. It took so much out of me, it was so painful. Every ounce of energy that I had left was put towards destroying my own body all over again.

I was declining, losing weight, and once again, I was all alone. My hope had just plummeted. I think this problem continued for a little less than a year before I began fighting myself to gain weight. I researched ways to gain weight each day. I became as obsessed with gaining weight as I used to be with losing it. Yogurt was my best friend. It was a light snack that I could keep down and not feel guilty about. If I could attribute my recovery to anything, it would probably be yogurt and Danimals. I also carried a pack of Ritz crackers with me everywhere I went because during the recovery process, I’d get these awful cramps that made me feel like I was dying all over again.

I remember going to the mall with E— one day and getting those cramps. I had to beg her to sit down and wait with me while I nibbled pathetically on a cracker. I half-lied and told her I had a sickness that gave me cramps because I felt I wasn’t thin enough anymore to claim I had an eating disorder. I would have been too ashamed to admit it anyway.

But once I got over that 80lb hump, I started to look like myself again. My arms began to fill in, my face got back a bit of color, and some of my clothes started to fit again, though I ended up having to adjust most of them myself with the plain old needle and thread. I’ve still not been able to reach my original weight of 98lbs, but I've settled on staggering between 84-90lbs. 

I still struggle with feeling like a slob when I eat in front of people. It’s just some sort of guilt that continues to gnaw at me, I guess. I still hate those particular details about my body, the ones left from starving myself. I’m still skinny, but it’s a disgusting kind of skinny. It’s the kind of skinny that you achieve through starvation instead of dieting and exercising. It just isn’t pretty.

It’s seeing where your bones stick out, feeling where your wrists and ankles are weak and frail. It’s turning your arm only to realize that all your progress in eating normally has left you in the same body that you’ve grown to hate.

To this day, if I skip breakfast, I’ll feel my stomach turning with hunger and be brought back to that same feeling of comfort in starvation. I’ll think, “maybe I’ll feel happy if I try that again”. But I’ll take a few sips of water like the old days, and push the thought to the back of my mind. It comes back nearly every day, again and again.

I’ve never told this story to anyone but myself. I’ve recounted every moment over and over again in my head to remember it was all real. Sometimes, I just need a reminder of what I’ve been through to prevent me from hurling myself down that dark spiral again.

Honestly, I could write a novel about everything I felt during this time, of every little memory that still eats at me today. I’m glad to be healthy again, or at least well on my way. I’ve still got some work to do, it’s just a matter of actually getting it done. I do have some fears for the future, about growing and having to adjust my weight to stay healthy, or my body naturally adjusting itself. No longer being able to tell everyone loud and proud that I weigh 90lbs. But I can only hope that I’m strong enough to keep my mind under control.”

If you’ve made it to the end of my story, I’m so immensely grateful for your time and care. I wish you all the best in every hardship you’re facing.

With love always,

Alexandra