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isa-ly · 3 years

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THE TRUTH UNTOLD

TW: mental illness, eating disorders, depression, anxiety

I know the title might be a fun little hint to a certain k-pop song (which is a reference about three people will understand) but despite that little quirky pun, this post I’m about to write and that you’re about to read, is not gonna be easy. Or witty, or funny like some of the previous posts were. It’s most definitely going to be the longest one, though.

Because, in all honesty, this is the one post I have been absolutely dreading to make. However, it’s also the post that I kind of started this blog for because, unlike my depression, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and quarter-life crisis, this is something only my closer circle and those who happened to ask, really know about.

And, once again in all honesty, this is the actual reason I started therapy almost a year ago. Because in every way possible, shit had hit the fan so hard that there had been nothing left but to step on the emergency breaks. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. So, let’s try and start from the beginning.

I’ve talked about my more or less mental breakdown and burn out during my last year of university a few times now. Didn’t spare any details either. However, there is one thing that I’ve been mindfully avoiding that actually took up a pretty big part of that time of my life. The reason I avoided it, was because in my head, I kept running in circles on how I would phrase it and explain it in a way that would a) not sound too shocking and b) not make me look like a complete stranger to people who, until now, had no idea of what I’m about to say.

Eventually, though, I realized that I was doing the exact same thing I’ve always been doing. Which was searching for excuses to not talk about the biggest struggle in my life and make myself vulnerable. And I don’t want to make these excuses anymore because, really, all they ever did was harm me. So, here goes nothing.

Hello. My name is Isa. And for over a year now, I have been suffering from an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa.

The sheer act of just having typed this sentence out on virtual paper, threw me so hard that I spent a good 15 minutes simply staring at my laptop screen just now. I told you, this wasn’t going to be easy.

Since the only place I’m really “promoting” this blog on is Instagram, I’m just going to try and somehow use that as a segue to this post. Over the last year, I’ve received quite a few messages from friends, family and sometimes also random acquaintances, whenever I posted a picture of myself on my story or feed. Some of them were jokey, some of them interested and a very select few were concerned, too. All of them were about my apparent change of appearance, however. Of course, I didn’t only receive those messages online. The people who know and see me in real life, the above mentioned inner circle, have known for a while and some of them, as much as I wish they hadn’t had to, saw all of it happen in real life.

I know I included it in the trigger warnings already, but I want to point it out one more time here because I know how incredibly triggering these things can be – especially to people who have struggled or are struggling with similar issues. So, if reading about body image, dieting, weight loss and eating disorders makes you uncomfortable or could trigger bad memories and behaviour, this post might not be the one for you. I don’t want to be patronizing, you know what’s best for you, just wanted to make sure to highlight it before I continued.

I also want to preface this by saying that I can and only will talk about my own experience here. I am in no way, shape or form an expert on mental health and eating disorders and what I’m going to say and talk about, is purely a narration of what happened in my own life. Eating disorders, just like any other mental illness, are very individual and I do not want to come off as blurting out generalizations about them. Just so that we’re clear here.

Therapy taught me that the psychological, biological and/or societal origin of eating disorders is still almost completely scientifically unknown. It is for that exact reason, that the various EDs are some of the most stereotyped and stigmatized mental illnesses there are – which is also why it took me so long to actually pluck up the courage and energy to talk about it. I imagined people reading about my anorexia and thinking: “Oh, I bet it’s because she was bullied for her weight when she was a kid”, or: “Well, just another one of those girls who wanted to be skinnier”. Possibly also: “I never would have thought that someone like her would end up with an eating disorder. She always seemed so confident!”

So, to combat the fear of coming off like a cliché or sob story, I knew simply had to tell my whole and honest story. Because even if I’m worried about being put in a box or labelled as something I’m not, it still happened. And it’s still my story. And to move on from it, or better, with it, I have to tell it. And I have to tell it right.

So, here it goes.

Ever since I can remember, I have disliked my body. Growing up as a Human Person™ in this society, I realize that’s not really something that makes me stand out (which, if you think about it, is actually incredibly fucking sad). Apart from my own self, however, no one ever really shamed for the way that I looked and I was also never bullied or teased by others because of it. So, that’s a no for the “Oh, I bet it’s because she was bullied for her weight when she was a kid”-stereotype. It makes me want to gauge the patriarchal beauty standard’s eyes out, to think that never actively having been shamed for my body or weight, is something that I can consider a “privilege” in this world. I’m aware that a lot of kids and adults don’t have that twisted privilege, which, again, just makes me want to set the world of body ideals on fire, but I don’t want to diverge too much from the point of this post.

Remember that society I was talking about? Yeah, with that around, having someone point out or shame you for how your body looks different from what’s considered the ideal, isn’t really something that’s necessary in order for you to still notice it and develop massive insecurities. So, even though I was “lucky” and “privileged” enough to have avoided being bullied for my body by real-life people, I still grew up not liking the way I looked, always noticing that my stomach, my thighs, my arms, my boobs, my butt, were different to those of the girls everyone called pretty. Which inevitably led to me harbouring a contained, yet undeniably significant amount of self-hatred for the way my body looked over time.

Now, I might have been one of many body-conscious teenagers, but, in quite stark contrast to that, I was also a seemingly self-confident one. Or at least I really, really wanted to be. It’s what everyone always told me I came across as. The loud, opinionated and self-assured girl, who didn’t care what people thought of her. Maybe that was to compensate for my own insecurities, maybe it was for protection, or maybe it was also because I just knew, or hoped, it was the right way to go. I believed and preached that how I looked, what I weighed and what I ate didn’t matter, both to myself and to all of my friends and family. I knew I was absolutely fine the way that I was, as long as I was physically and mentally healthy. I’ve always known that, and I fully believe in it too. And yet, here I am. About to tell you what both you and me are already suspecting: The story of how that knowledge didn’t end up protecting me as well as I thought it would.

Despite me always having believed in not giving a shit about beauty standards, ideal body types and the obsession with whatever the fuck “skinny”, “slim thick” and “lean” are supposed to be, it undeniably had an effect on me. Just like it has an effect on literally every other person, regardless of gender or age. It’s pretty much passed onto us the minute we’re born, like a part of our literal DNA. It makes me sick to my very core, but I always knew that this insecurity, no matter how much I knew it shouldn’t have ever been one and no matter how much I fought to stand above it, was woven into the very fabric of my being. The very minute we learn to interact with others and the world around us, the clear, limited and completely unrealistic image of how we’re supposed to look in order to meet societal expectations, is indoctrinated into our innocent brains – consciously, subconsciously and in literally every other way possible.

I don’t want to give a lecture on how society, media, and peers make us believe it’s necessary and right to chase bodies that, realistically, no one can ever outrun, but I felt like saying at least this much about it to set the base for what’s about to come. Certainly, this almost innate, underlying dislike for my body – or most parts of it – wasn’t the sole reason for developing an eating disorder in my early twenties. But it was most definitely a cruel predisposition that played a big part in how my anorexia unfolded and the leverage it had and still has on me.

I mentioned in the beginning how, despite it being one of the most common mental health disorders, there’s barely any scientific explanations as to how eating disorders really come to be. Which is why assuming that being unhappy with my body and the way it looked was the only reason I slipped into disordered eating, would simply be false. After all, I lived twenty-one years of my life being more or less fine with it. It was an insecurity, yes, but it didn’t dictate my every day life, it didn’t influence how I lived it. So, the “Well, just another one of those girls who wanted to be skinnier”-stereotype, doesn’t really prove to be fully true either.

Which leaves the last assumption: “I never would have thought that someone like her would end up with an eating disorder. She always seemed so confident!”

To which I can only say: Yeah, uh ... same? I mean, do you really think there’s anyone who found themselves developing an eating disorder only to think: “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, I always knew I’d end up like that!” Sorry, that was a bit dark. I know that this assumption is something that mostly I myself am worried about and that there’s no reason for me to actually get defensive. However, while most reactions to me talking about my eating disorder have been very comforting and caring, I’ve also had a few quite unpleasant experiences and well, those tend to have the harsher impact. So, please forgive my mildly cynical reasoning here.

Right, then. If I didn’t ever get bullied for my body or weight, didn’t just want to “be skinny” and really am that confident – how did this happen?

Well, I’ve already given part of the explanation just now, when I told you about my unfortunate predisposition of never really having fully loved or accepted my body. The other part of the explanation, lies in pretty much every other post I have written so far. Most of all the latest one: Control.

It was a real challenge to have written that last entry without ever mentioning my anorexia with even one word. Because really, for me personally, control is literally all it ever was and will be about. My therapist told me that it’s quite common in other eating disordered people too. But again, I’m not here to talk about anyone else, I’m here to talk about my own experience. And it starts just like I said in my last post: With losing control. And in many ways, the combination of always having disliked my body and suddenly having slithered into a massive life-crisis where I felt like I had lost all power and control over everything, was the very dangerous mixture that started it all.

I don’t want to make it about that too much, but it’s still worth mentioning that after my semester abroad, which had ended in January of 2018, I had gained some weight. Weight that, having changed up my diet a few years prior, I had actually lost and that all of a sudden, was now back on again. It had just been a very wonderful yet also stressful time abroad and well, heaps of uni work, very little sleep and the general student lifestyle, just caused me to pile on a few kilos. The part of me that genuinely never gave a fuck about body standards, once again did genuinely not give a fuck about that. And yeah, when I came back, there were the occasional family remarks of “Look at you, gained quite a bit of weight there, didn’t you?” (which I know are made with no malicious intent, by the way, but, forgive me if I say this: just shut up) and I had also obviously started noticing that none of my old clothes fit anymore and I did indeed look a lot larger than in any of my older pictures. Was that a blow to my self-built confidence because we live in a society that rewards weight loss and punishes weight gain? Sure. Was that when I developed anorexia? Nope.

Because, if you’ve been following the timeline of my mental health issues that I have oh so passionately been crafting in the last few posts, it wasn’t until autumn of 2018 that I first started struggling with my back then still undiscovered control issues, which lead to my anxiety, depression, insomnia and – now that I’m telling my whole story – my eating disorder. Or, to be fully correct, disordered eating, back then. Because just like the rest of my mental health issues, this too, crept up on me slowly at first.

I remember the first time I had this very simple thought. At least, it felt simple. Simple, but so deeply wrong and dangerous. And yet once I had had it, it wouldn’t leave anymore. It should have rang all the alarm bells in my head. It really should have. But I understand now, that the reason I had this very simple, deeply wrong and dangerous thought, was because I was desperate to control something, anything at all. Regain power over just one part of my life, whatever that might be.

So, that thought kept coming back. Over and over again:

What if I just stopped eating?

I would snap out of it and tell myself: “What the fuck, Isa? That’s ridiculous. Also, what does that even mean, are you crazy? You love food, you love eating it and you need it to survive.” And I’d ignore it again. But it would come back. Every now and then, usually in the moments where I felt worst about myself, it would echo stronger in my own head and ignoring it would become harder and harder. It was a thought so insane and so ridiculous, I told nobody about it. My rational mind knew that it was totally stupid to even consider something like that, and so I felt stupid for doing it. Which is why talking about it was off the table for me, back then. It was my dirty, little, silly secret and I was going to keep it that way.

I was smarter than that, I knew better than that.

It didn’t change the fact that I felt so lost in university though, and even more lost in life, and so that shitty thought just wouldn’t leave me alone. Until eventually, I budged. And that’s the part where it really stops being witty and smart-assy.

Because that’s the part where I made the decision to only eat once a day. And it was a decision that I fought for with an iron will. A decision that gave me control. Over all the wrong things.

I said I would tell my whole and honest story, but in case you were wondering: No, I’m not gonna give any numbers, not when it comes to weight and not when it comes to calories. Mainly because the only thing they do is create competition and shock value. Even to people who don’t struggle with eating disorders. And apart from that, they’re also triggering to me, even if it’s my own story. So, all I’ll say is that I limited myself to one meal a day. For an entire year. It didn’t always work, thank God for that in hindsight. But I tried to do it every day nonetheless, and even though it wasn’t a by-the-books eating disorder yet (which is a whole other rant I have but that’s not for now), it completely ruined my relationship with food, my body image and my own self-worth.

Every time I ate, I would feel guilty, it made me feel like a failure. I had never experienced this kind of shame before, the idea of feeling accomplished whenever I managed to go without eating for almost an entire day. It was this sick sense of pride and, you guessed it: Control. And yet it wasn’t enough, because my body would obviously fight back, demanding food with every bit of power and rage it had over me. I felt awful. On top of university stress, panic attacks, anxiety, depression and insomnia, I was now also hungry almost all the time. And when I had my one meal a day, I wouldn’t enjoy it. I would simply gorge on it because I was so depleted and ravenous. And then I would feel guilty and hate myself for it.

This went on for many months. I hid it as best as I could and in most social situations, I would make exceptions so that people wouldn’t notice. Exceptions I would hate myself for, but they had to be made to keep this habit my aforementioned dirty, little secret. It was like an entire new personality was starting to form inside my own. A dark and hateful one that chipped away at all that confidence and rational I had built over the years. A few close friends suspected eventually that something was off, and some of them asked about it but I would immediately play it off as just not feeling well because of all my other mental struggles, the ones they already knew about. It was an excuse that made sense, so no one really dug any deeper. And I couldn’t really have given another explanation back then anyway. Because again, I didn’t know yet why any of this was happening. I didn’t know that not eating was a twisted and horrible coping mechanism, that I had developed to gain back some sense of control in my life.

At that point, I had started weighing myself too. Something that had given me a big, bad shock when I first saw the number on the scale. In my mind, it was big and bad too. I knew how much I had weighed pre-semester-abroad. And so I knew how much I must have gained and by now also lost again. And yet that number was still way too big. It crushed me. And sadly, only spurred me on more. I would try not to eat. I would “fail”. I would hate myself. Rinse and repeat.

And no one knew what was going on. Least of all me.

It got a little bit better over the summer of 2019, just like the rest of my mental health did. That was around the time I had finally made the decision to take a gap year and figure out all my issues. And that included the very bad eating habits I had developed over the last year. In a way, that decision was also a way of me gaining back control, which was presumably why all my other bad coping strategies, including the not eating, faded away a little. No more nightly panic attacks. No more insomnia. And a lot more breakfast, lunch and dinner. I still didn’t like my body, I was still scared of the number on the scale. But I was ready to turn my life around again, get therapy and fight that nasty, dangerous habit I had let myself fall into.

Unfortunately, as I already mentioned in previous posts, the therapy I was so clearly in desperate need of, didn’t work out as quickly as I had wished (again, thanks for that, health care system). I had gone to my first ever assessment where they had diagnosed me with anxiety and depression disorder. And, actually, the psychiatrist that I had had my first ever session with, had also decided to diagnose me with anorexia nervosa because according to her, while I hadn’t ticked all of the eating disorder boxes yet, I definitely did show signs of eating disordered and anorexic behaviour. To me, that had sounded quite ridiculous and harsh at the time. Anorexia? Pft, no way, I didn’t look like the girls from the shocking posters and depressing documentaries, it was no where as serious as that. (Tip of the hat to those stigmas and stereotypes I was talking about earlier)

But of course, she was right. However, they didn’t have a free spot for one on one therapy and group sessions weren’t really what I was looking for either. So, I went on a waiting list and never heard back from them again.

The cold season crept back in and the wonderful, warm and sunny-safe bubble I had lived in all summer, burst as quickly as it had been blown into existence. Everyone went back to work, back to uni, back to life. And I ... well, I went back to being lost. To not knowing what to do. To having to write my thesis I still couldn’t write for some reason. To having panic attacks. To having insomnia.

To not eating.

Only that after a year of being so miserable whenever I ate food and still feeling so awful in my own body, I decided I would have to change the way I was going about it. In my extremely mentally fragile mind, I thought I had to step it up if I really wanted results. And, as I like to say it, that’s when shit really hit the fan. In a way, it felt like I had spent an entire year sitting on a roller coaster ride that was slowly climbing up the incline, getting closer and closer to the inevitable drop. And just like on any actual roller coaster, when that drop came, it came fast.

It was no longer about just eating one and any meal a day. In the matter of a week or two, it became about numbers, calories, measurements, grams, milliliters. All of a sudden, I found myself meticulously writing down every single thing I ate and when I had eaten it. The food groups kept shrinking and so did my portions and the amount of calories I would consume in a day. I would set a new limit on Monday and decrease it again by Wednesday, pushing myself harder, restricting more and more with every week. All I could think about was food. And all I could do was not eat it. In what felt like a matter of seconds, a worry, a fear, a habit had turned into a full-fledged obsession. An addiction. And that’s when anorexia entered my life.

I’ve re-written this part over and over again because I’m desperately trying not to make it sound like a pseudo-romantic and tastelessly dramatic young adult novel. But I realize that’s just my fear of sounding like a cliché again. So, I’ll stop scratching and writing everything anew now, and just keep going.

In the first few days and weeks of crashing into this new, horrible world, I remember yet again thinking another very simple, yet dangerous and devastating thought. The one beside “What if I just stopped eating?”. And this thought, to me personally, was even scarier than the last one.

It was the thought of: “What if I can never eat again?”

Because that’s exactly what anorexia felt like to me.

Many people describe it as a whole other person in their head. Almost like a foreign entity, taking over your life. And while I very strongly relate to these descriptions, I have learned that it’s best for me to not always manifest my eating disorder into a separate identity to my own, because in certain times, that gives it too much power and makes it seem undefeatable. Which it isn’t. So, I’m going to try and describe it in another way. The way I first described it to my therapist. With a metaphor, of course.

It felt like up until this point, I had been sitting in the car that was my own life, driving down the road of my present and future, looking in the rear view mirror at my past. I was the one with the foot on the gas and the breaks, I was the one that decided what turn or exit to take. Autumn of 2018 had felt like breaking down in that car, having to pull over and being lost in the middle of nowhere, without any signs to guide the way. My bad eating habits felt like someone stopping and pretending to help me, jump staring my car and having it tucker slowly again while following me at walking speed, with me still not really knowing where I was going. And finally, anorexia felt like that someone kicking me out of my car, buckling me into the passenger seat, taping my mouth shut and taking over the stirring wheel.

All of a sudden, it felt like I had no say in where I was heading, how fast I was driving or what road I was going down. For over a year, I had used this dangerous and awful habit of coping by not eating, to wield control and have power over something. And now, it had taken that power away again, like a pact with the god damn devil, and had started to use it over me instead. Which is exactly what eating disorders do, and what my anorexia did too. They give you a false sense of control because control is all you want, and yet all you can’t have. All you need to do is replace control with food. Because food is all you want, and yet all you can’t have. Anorexia gave me my own, fucked up metaphor for my control issues.

I knew that what I was doing was more than just dangerous. It was no longer just trying to eat once a day, not managing to and then hating myself. This was barely eating anything at all, setting the bar lower each day and starving myself. And not in the figurative way. I lost weight so rapidly, I could barely keep track. The scale became my second home, the calories my worst enemy and food, or more trying to avoid it, the entire purpose of my life. Nothing else mattered anymore.

Falling into anorexia has been the scariest and most horrible thing I have ever had to go through. It felt like I had lost myself. I was still there, in my own head, somewhere. Still strapped into the passenger seat. But I had no say in any of my actions. I just silently watched and witnessed, obeying everything my eating disorder told me to do. I know I said I usually avoid completely painting it as a separate person in my own head, but back then, back when I was still severely anorexic, that was just what it felt like. Like a literal parasite, that had latched onto me and was sucking me dry of any and every life force and fight I still had left.

All my days would consist of trying to navigate around food, doing my best to avoid it, lying to everyone, most of all myself. I would look up every single nutritional information of everything, every meal at a restaurant, every drink. I had lists where I wrote it all down, tracking my calorie intake and weight loss. Documents that contained all the calories from every single food and also non-food item imaginable. It would start with things like fruits, vegetables and condiments and end with things like tea, vitamins, chewing gum and toothpaste. I would google how many calories a panic attack burned. I would pace up and down my room at night to get my step count higher. I would walk around the city aimlessly for hours every single day to avoid eating, no matter the weather, no matter the time. I would work out at the gym like a maniac and almost pass out every single time afterwards. At family breakfast, I would hide food in my sleeves and socks to avoid eating it. It was more than just ridiculous. It was insanity. But it was an insanity I couldn’t let go of.

Anorexia was the most twisted and horrendous full-time commitment of my life. I had felt lost and without purpose for so long and in the most fucked up way, my eating disorder had given me a 9-to-5 – no, scratch that, a 24-god-damn-7 job to do. It had given me a new purpose and a painful illusion of the things I had craved for so long. Control, willpower, strength, endurance. Only that it was exactly that – just an illusion. Because at the end of the day, I would go to bed empty, both literally and figuratively, feeling nothing and hating everything. Because that’s what anorexia does. It strips you of everything you have in life. It takes away every joy, every pleasure, every interest, hobby, passion or relationship, and it isolates you. Completely. It worms its way into your life and fills out every single nook and crack until it’s the only thing that seems to be left. And therefore, the only thing you still care about.

It felt like losing my complete identity.

Mentally, I was at the worst state I had ever been in my life. This was around December of 2019. I had barely been keeping all of this up for over a month, but I was eating so little that I had lost an alarmingly large amount of weight very fast, which came at a high cost. I was always cold, I couldn’t sleep, I had awful headaches, I kept forgetting conversations and talks I had had with friends, I felt dizzy and nauseous all the time and worst of all, I was so cripplingly depressed that I didn’t even care about any of that. Because when you deprive your brain of nutrients this much, it just shuts down. And that’s what I did, too. I just went into standby mode, as I kept losing more weight and becoming more miserable with each day that passed.

Both my body and mind were running on nothing but adrenaline and thin air and I lived life in this absolutely isolated and horrible auto-pilot, where I continued on as if nothing was happening, as more of me, both physically and mentally, disappeared and was replaced with complete emptiness. I still struggle to find the right words to describe how I felt back then. The only thing that comes close is just complete nothingness. Like a fucking black hole inside of me that had swallowed everything and created a complete vacuum.

Writing about this makes me want to just close my laptop and stop. In a way, it feels like giving my eating disorder and the hardest time of my life a spot light. Like giving it attention and a stage to perform on, to flaunt its dramatic tragedy. I can feel that the anorexia loves that, relishes every word I’m typing about it, every second of attention I’m giving to it. And hate that, I fucking despise it. Because it doesn’t deserve its own stage. It never did and it never will. So, let’s try and move on to the part where things changed.

Back then, I might have become a master of lying and avoiding most people’s questions about me never seeming to be hungry or wanting to eat. But thankfully, there were a few of my close friends that had started to notice. Not gonna name any names, but you know who you are. And I cannot even begin to say how incredibly thankful and lucky I am to have had you there. Because even when I had given up on myself, you didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine, oh no. I was still in a very, very bad place mentally, and my eating disorder was not planning on leaving any time soon.

But, with the help and intervention of said good friends and a few select, eye-opening experiences (that I won’t talk about because they really weren’t ideal but still ended up helping somehow), I finally realized the very obvious but up until then seemingly impossible thing: I had to start eating again. And I had to start now.

And I did.

Looking back, I cannot even express how glad I am about that. Because it had started to become really critical. And I consider myself to be very lucky that it didn’t have to get even worse. That I was still able to make my own decisions and finally get help. Finding therapy was once again not easy but eventually, I did find an outpatient clinic that offered immediate consultation, as well as an appointment with a psychiatrist for medication and an internist for physical check-ups. And, to maybe bring back a slight sense of cheerfulness: It was also when I finally got to meet my therapist Kerstin.

Again, none of this was as easy and swift as it might sound like with me narrating it in those few sentences, but this post can only go on for so much longer before I get too drained and decide to just delete all of it again, so I will try and come to a close, for now. There’s still so much more to tell when it comes to my journey with my eating disorder and my mental health, because it’s nowhere near finished. And worry not, I will tell it – not so much for the sake of those of you who read it, but more so for my own. But for now, I want to finish by saying this much – mainly to myself again, but also to anyone else who might need to hear it:

I know it might feel like you don’t care.

About yourself, about what happens to you, about the future, about happiness. I know it might feel like you’re faking everything, lying to everyone and just pretending all the time. I know you might feel so horribly and painfully empty that all you want to do is sit still in the void of your own head and let the misery wash over you in dreadful peace. I know you might think that the only sense of comfort you can find, lies in the things that hurt you most. I know your pain seems like an old friend, one that will never leave you and therefore is worth staying close to. I know that continuing to fight on and struggling through life and all the hardships it throws at you, sometimes feels so impossible, that it seems easier to just give in and give up.

The thing about that is, though: It’s fucking bullshit.

It’s nothing but a very mean and disgusting way of all your inner pain, trauma and warped coping mechanisms to try to pull you down to keep you “safe” from things that you can absolutely, completely and totally battle. And, yeah, it sure as shit ain’t easy. God, if I had a dollar for every time I had to pick myself back up after I stepped on a scale, after I ate something that scared me, after I looked in the mirror, after I relapsed, after I went back on track again, after I wished I could just melt into a formless blob and slowly whither away in peace– I would be a rich woman. But neither life nor capitalism work that way, unfortunately. So, why do I still bother?

Well, because after going through hell and back, it’s the only thing I have left. It’s the only option there is.

You might not know who you are. You might not know what you’re doing, where you’re going, if you’re ever going to get better, if you’ll ever feel happy and at home in your own mind, body and life again. But what you can and should know, is that you can always try. Even if it seems pointless, even if it seems like you’re running in circles, wanting to bash your head against the wall because of how senseless it all feels.

You can still try.

And try, and try, and try again. It’s a choice and it is a hard one. Maybe the hardest one you will ever have to make.

But I chose to make it, and I still continue to. Every day. With every morning I wake up, every therapy session I go to, every panic attack I breathe through, every depressive phase I crawl back out of, every meal I eat. I choose to do it, I choose to keep pushing because when it feels like all the bad and dark thoughts are more powerful than me and threaten to swallow me alive, making the choice to fight back as much as I can, is what proves that I am and always will be more powerful than them.

Because this is my life. My body. My head. My brain. My mind. And I’d be a god damn fool to give them up to those inner demons that would never know how to treat them right, how to cherish them and keep them happy, healthy and alive. Because I think we can all agree that, at the end of the day, being happy is a hell of a lot better than being sad and empty. And so, at the end of the day, I realized that nothing and no one, not even my mental health disorders and past traumas, can take away what will always, exclusively and fully belong to me and me only:

My choice, my happiness, my control – the right one, this time.

#mental illness #mental health #therapy #eating disorder #anorexia #depression #anxiety

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jasminaparade · 6 years

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IT'S A BLESSING AND A CURSE BEING A(N) (ASIAN) SECOND-GENERATION IMMIGRANT

Scrolling through Instagram this morning, I came across a beautiful photo of a European town. I double-tapped on the image and then scanned over the caption. “XYZ location is such a beautiful town to visit although it was swarming with (Asian) tourists.” It made me undo my double tap.

All of a sudden, I was full of rage. Just the one word – Asian. In brackets. I wanted to angrily type a response to the Instagrammer – why do you feel the need to distinctively highlight the tourists as “Asian”? Would you have said the exact same thing if the location was swarming with British or American tourists or white people in general? I have no idea of the Instagrammer’s thought process when they were typing this caption and I know it was no direct insult to me personally. Yet, I still felt angry and hurt; similar feelings I’ve felt in the past. And it made me reflect on several of my past experiences, how these encounters have made me feel over time and how I’ve come to deal with it as I get older.

Do we still live in a world where we continue to define or emphasise stereotypes in the media? Unfortunately, yes. History has shaped social conceptions and misconceptions of race. The rituals and traditions of cultures and sub-cultures are more globally exposed thus positive and negative stereotypes have become more prominent and pervasive. Society exacerbates these stereotypes in the media, in films and in the news. I don’t believe that all representations are intentional, whether accurate or inaccurate, complimentary or belittling. H&M recently received public backlash for an advert showing a black child in a green hoodie bearing the slogan “Coolest monkey in the jungle”. The retailer publicly apologized and withdrew the images. The beauty and the ugliness of language and imagery allows opportunity for semantics and insinuations where one can tread a fine line between a careless insult and deliberate racial abuse.

I am Asian. There’s no doubt about it. I have a Chinese name, my family hand out red packets during celebratory occasions, we burn paper money at our ancestors’ graves and boy, do we know how to eat! But I’m also Australian. An identity and culture which I more strongly identify with than with my Asian heritage. I live for days spent at the beach in my ‘cozzie’, playing beer pong with my mates and eating Vegemite on toast. I’ll devour smashed avo at brunch and I’m a down right snob about my flat white.

I’m a second-generation immigrant. My parents are Chinese, as are my grandparents who fled Mao’s reign in the 1950s for the warm shores of Fiji. My parents were born and raised in Fiji but immigrated to Australia in the mid-1980s. My parents’ families speak different dialects. English is their third language and they speak, read and write it fluently. When my parents met, they communicated in English as this was their common language. My brothers and I were born and raised in Australia. English is our first language.

I’m often asked whether I speak any Chinese. Unfortunately it’s only a handful of Cantonese words that hardly appease my maternal grandmother. A while ago, I asked my mother why she didn’t send my brothers and I to Chinese school when we were kids. She simply replied, “They wouldn’t take you. Unless you had a basic speaking level, they wouldn’t accept you at the school”. My parents’ reasoning was that if we were to live in Australia, assimilation would be easier if we could speak the official language of their adopted country.

At primary school and high school, I didn’t have any Asian friends. We lived in an area predominantly occupied by Anglo-Saxons. My childhood included piano lessons, playing netball and participating in Little Athletics under the Aussie sun. I’ve never dated Asian boys. Not because I was actively avoiding them but because I genuinely didn’t know any. My Oriental social circle was certainly lacking until my corporate career when Asian colleagues would comment “Jasmine, you can hardly call yourself Asian!”

I’ve referred to myself as a banana; yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Perhaps a mild form of self-deprecation, this analogy speaks truth for myself and perhaps my second-generation Asian immigrant peers. I oscillate between exhaustion and bemusement at strangers’ fascination of my distinct lack of Chinese language skills despite my appearance. I’ve learned to choose my battles and to pointedly ignore snide remarks.

Negative stereotypes are the ones that always seem to stick in our minds and once there, it’s difficult to remove or alter. Asians make cheap products. Asians are dirty polluters. Asians take photos of their food. Asians travel in large groups and flood large tourist cities. Asians are bad drivers. Asians make peace signs in all their photos. Asian parents are strict and make their kids study all the time. Asians slurp their food.

Admittedly, there are times when I cringe at the sight of a fellow Asian fuelling a negative stereotype. Is this hypocritical? Of course it is. Can one be racist of their own race? I would argue yes, particularly if one actively fights the stereotypes attached to their race because they themselves don’t want to be associated with such characteristics. Dealing with ignorant people who attach stereotypes to you and who have the temerity to mock you based on how you look is demoralising and tiresome.

Boys pulled their eyes sideways and wagged their heads at me in the playground. Friends have defended me from racial slurs at band camp. I’ve had my Australian citizenship and visa eligibility questioned at a scroungy pub in Bristol. I get tired of hagglers in foreign cities crying “Ni Hao!”. I’ve been handed a Japanese landing card on board a Jetstar flight and a Korean tourist information brochure was stuffed into my hand upon arrival in Zagreb. Recently, I was yelled at in the streets of Amsterdam, “Fuck off China bitch! Leave here and die!”. I do think the man was drunk (let’s give him the benefit of the doubt) but drunkenness is never an acceptable reason nor an excuse for racism. If anything, when a person is sozzled, their true feelings and opinions are voiced.

I’d be one of the first to raise my hand and admit to a lack of general knowledge of my Asian peers, the health of its economy or of our history spanning thousands of years and countless traditions and customs. What you may or may not know is that the invention of gunpowder is attributed to the Chinese. Asians gave us dumplings, fried rice and sushi. Chinese tourists currently contribute approximately AUD $9 billion to Australia’s national economy, with this figure set to increase to around AUD $13 billion by 2020. There are now 637 Asian billionaires, outnumbering fellow billionaires in the United States and Europe. Asia produced Jack Ma and Alibaba and China’s potential as the world’s next major superpower has been long debated.

Yes, it now sounds that I’m leaping to the defence of my Eastern counterparts but how can one not take a stand after years of bearing the brunt of stereotypes irrevocably tied to me based on how I look? Just because I have slanty eyes and take pictures of my food doesn’t mean that I automatically like eating chicken feet and drinking bubble tea (I don’t like chicken feet or bubble tea).

There have been times where I have tried to downplay my “Asian-ness” and other moments when I have staunchly defended it. Accepting my background and figuring out who I am, my identity and how I fit in has been and continues to be a steep learning curve. Despite there being arguable gaps in my Chinese-icity and my past encounters with racist behaviour, I consider myself blessed to feel an affinity to two cultures. I celebrate Chinese New Year and Australia Day. I’ll happily feast on char siu bao, siu mei and wonton one day and carve up a steak with a schooner the next. I’ll always be exasperated when assumptions are made about me based on certain Asian stereotypes but I also roll my eyes when native English speakers in adulthood (still) don’t know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ as well as ‘their’ and ‘they’re’. And don’t even get me started on the use of the apostrophe.

Nowadays, almost everything is on social media. Every move, every photo, every word is scrutinised. If you’re going to share your opinion, that’s fine. You’re well within your rights. I just ask that you take a pinch of compassion, a few spoons of empathy, a cup of respect and a dose of common sense (this ingredient may be a bit harder to source) before stirring with some objectivity and clicking ‘Share’. If you choose not to follow this method, no doubt people will tell you anyhow whether they like your recipe or not.

The one thing I am most grateful for in life is my education. I can never thank my parents enough for granting me the privilege of an education in a first-world economy. But it wasn’t just the opportunity to learn how to read and to write. They also gifted me with the courage to embrace my Chinese ethnicity and the strength to fly the nest and take on the world. They never tried to deny or squash out the Asian-ness and have led by example. There will always be haters in the world but you need to pick yourself up and forge ahead. Don’t feel malevolent towards those who consciously or unconsciously speak or act in a prejudiced manner. Don’t wish them ill-fortune but wish for them to learn empathy and compassion.

This world is not perfect and neither am I. I am grateful to have been born in an era whereby societal norms, attitudes, views and expectations have rapidly progressed in the realms of gender equality, feminism and the legalization of gay marriage. I’m thankful to live in a time in which multiculturalism, diversity and globalization is on the rise. There are more cross-cultural relationships, flexible working arrangements are not unheard of, and fathers can be stay-at-home dads. Racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice will always exist. The exposure to biased news, propaganda or the influence of another’s views and beliefs can incite fear and ignorance. But if modern day society has proven anything, it has demonstrated that governments and institutions can affect change. People can affect change. Views and attitudes can shift but there also needs to be a willingness to be open-minded and accepting of difference.

When I eventually visit my homeland, I endeavour to take an open mind with me. I hope to fully embrace my origins and immerse myself in Chinese culture, without forsaking my ties to Australian culture. I feel sad knowing that many Chinese traditions and customs will die with my generation. It’s likely that my children will be half-Chinese and they will know even less than me. But should they be subject to even half the intolerance and ill-will that I have endured, I hope that they will be imbued with the strength, courage and tenacity to deal with the stereotypes and labels attached to being a (half-Asian) third-generation immigrant.

#Asian #Immigrant #second-generation #personal story

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