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xxparabellumxx-blog · 5 years

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A Cry For ̶H̶e̶l̶p̶ Validation

Since when I was about 12 years old, when I was already massively struggling with food and weight, occasionally, someone who wasn’t part of my family would voice their concern about my eating habits, at times even directly referring to the risk of me developing anorexia, while other times it’d be a more sublte remark. My family’s reaction was usually something like “hahaha that fatass, i think not”, again, sometimes a little more subtle than that, but not much. And not always. They made the same jokes when doctors told me my blood sugar level was too low and that I should definitely eat some time soon. They continued to make that “joke” for months, even years after, each time I was going to eat or skip a meal or when someone randomly mentioned food. “Better eat, you know what the doctor said, you should watch your blood sugar level hahahhah”, usually accompanied by a direct or indirect comment about my weight or body. Always in the context of weight or body shaming. Now, while around that time I was slightly overweight (nothing dramatic, just a slightly chubby kid. I also was in so many sports clubs that I had a different activity after school every. single. day. I wasn’t lazy, I was rather active and always had been), it was defintely uncalled for. I learned to invalidate any medical issues and blame literally everything bad that ever happened to me on my weight. More specifically, on my lack of self control and discipline that had shaped my body, or rather failed to. (This is the short version of course. There was a lot more to all of that.) At age 14 I was already the weight loss QUEEN. -10kg in two weeks, no big deal. I’d do that several times and be cheered on my family. I had a perfectly healthy BMI by then, but that didn’t matter. Not only did I see myself as he fattest and most disgusting person in the world, regardless of my flat stomach and perfectly alright figure, I was deeply ashamed of ever needing food. Feeling hungry was a disgrace. Giving in and actually eating was a disgrace. Not losing weight rapidly was a disgrace. Every normal body function made me feel ashamed. Every curve of my body, my boobs, my hips, my thighs. Every rib I couldn’t see without sucking in my stomach. I got deep into heavily restricting my food intake and exercising until late at night. Then proceeding to do crunches in my bed. Sleep is for the weak, right? It was around the age of 15 or 16 that I started to be more obvious about my disordered habits. People started noticing that I’d never eat in public, that I’d skip meals, that I was obsessing over my exercise schedule. And each time someone mentioned any of that, I panicked. I felt exposed for being obsessed with my weight and STILL not having the perfect body. I felt like a miserable failure for putting in so much effort and still not being good enough. But I also felt like people were finally seeing my struggle. And how badly I was struggling. I remember being utterly terrified when after half a week of fasting I fainted in P.E. Sure, I was feeling like that lazy fatass kid that embarrassingly collaped while trying to be active, I was deeply ahamed, but my physical condition also scared me so much, that I decided to eat when I got home. But I didn’t really feel like eating. I had no appetite and each time i considered what to have, I just felt sick. I got worse physically, so I grabbed a cube of cheese - and gagged. I put it back and lay in bed. I was miserable by then. Blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, pain. I was shaking. I was on the edge of passing out several times. Walked to the fridge to get that cheese cube several times. Gagged at the mere thought of eating it and put it back several times. Until I decided to keep it next to my bed and eventually, after a long, long time of mental preparation, I took a tiny bite and swallowed. It felt nearly impossible not to throw up, but I managed to keep it down. I wanted to eat, I wanted to feel better, I wanted to be healthy, but I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t let me. It took a while until I was able to get myself to eat little portions again and I only did because the incident had left me terrified. I still felt fat. I still felt like a disgrace. I still wanted to lose weight. But I also wanted people to see I was struggling. So I started to talk about my excessive exercise. Talk about skipping meals. Talk about not being hungry at all. But I did it with a smile, full of joy, as if it was a relief that I didn’t have an appetite so I didn’t even have a desire to stuff my face with all the unhealthy food everyone my age was craving. I even started talking about how fat I was, a topic that I would never have DARED to bring up before, because I realised that people started reacting differently. They seemed concerned. They pointed out that I had already lost so much weight, that my stomach was flat, that I didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to my figure. They suggested I should make sure to eat regularly and be less hard on myself when exercising. That I should allow myself some food I enjoy. If you do not have an eating disorder, chances are you cannot possibly understand the thrill of all that. The joy it caused me. They were seeing my struggle. They were seeing my effort. AND the process. The more obvious I was about my doubtlessly disordered habits, the better I felt about myself. But was that a cry for help? Was that me wanting to stop? Next thing I know is I’m addicted to the feling of that validation. I’m making myself worse so more people would notice, more people would point out my weight loss, my extraordinary discipline and self control that they usually thought impulsive, over-emotioal little me was lacking. Not to mention I finally had people worried about me. People cared. But then they also wanted me to stop. Well, I couldn’t have that, could I? If I stopped, all that constant validation would be gone. I’d have to go back to feeling fat and ugly and unlovable and undisciplined and like a failure again WITHOUT people constantly reassuring me the opposite was the case. No bloody way. So, of course, I had to pretend to be fine in order to stop people from wanting to stop me. I needed to go on making obvious progress but without worrying people enough to take that away from me. My own family was still body shaming me and making jokes about everything food related all the time, so I didn’t have the self esteem to stop restricting my food intake, constantly weighing and measuring myself, over-exercising etc. That wasn’t an option. In my head, there was literally no option other than making myelf worse and constantly finding new ways to get away with it. When I cried out, I clearly needed help. But each time I told myself I only wanted the validation.

(All of that was very different from how I talk about my struggle nowadays to point out my recovery progress and call out the disordered thoughts instead of embracing and encouraging them)

What motivated me to sit down and write all of this down today? Well, I see more and more young people joke about their clearly disordered eating and I see other people attacking them for “normalising” unhealthy eating habits that can cause a severe disorder. BUT THIS IS WHAT WE ALL DO. This is what eating disorders tend to make you do. You invalidate yourself because you want to talk about your struggle, but you’re too scared of the consequences of someone taking you seriously. This is the only way most of us can manage to ever talk about their struggle at all. Maybe the people casually joking about skipping meals every day and just drinking iced coffee are assholes. Maybe they’re just like you. Maybe they’re just unsure whether they’re crying out for help or validation.

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xxparabellumxx-blog · 5 years

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First rule of ed club, you don't talk about ed club.

Having an eating disorder tends to involve feeling invalid, like you don’t even have a disorder, wanting to get worse and not wanting anyone in your real life to know. I pretend to be okay, I lie about having eaten a lot already to get away with skipping meals around other people or find other excuses to cover up my numerous disordered habits. Now LISTEN CAREFULLY. I’ve been working towards recovery for 1 ½ months now and when suddenly I DO talk about the addiction and intrusive thoughts to people who don’t have the same issues, that’s a goddamn POWER MOVE. You may feel like me obsessively talking about how I’ve been eating normally despite being afraid to step on the scale every morning means I’m getting worse but you’re wrong. Quite on the contrary. I’m taking back my voice. I’m being stronger than the disorder that’s telling me to shut up and suffer in silence. Or in the words of Dido “if I didn’t say it, well, I’d still have felt it”. I’m talking about my small progress and minor achievements to motivate myself to keep going even though everything in me screams “STARVE YOURSELF” and I can assure you the very last thing I need is you telling me that I’m sick. I fucking know that, that’s why I’m working so hard on fighting this shit. What you don’t know is that I’ve been way worse and telling you about my progress makes me feel better. What you don’t know is how much it takes me to be here breaking the silence and opening up about it. Talking about my struggle and the progress I’m making, no matter how small, makes me feel in control. The only other thing that gives me that same feeling is starving myself. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By not acknowledging the progress I’m so proud of, you take that sense of control away from me, which leaves me to self starvation as the only way to restore it. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not to mention it makes it unlikely for me to open up again anytime soon. Instead I’ll just start lying about being okay again to cover up my self destruction. If you love me, that’s not what you want.

I am fully aware that recovery should include not obsessing over food, weight, my body etc but the thoughts won’t go away within a day or a week or a month. And the only way I can fight them is by facing them. Not only am I firmly calling out the disordered part of my brain for making me think “you fat pig need to stay away from people and starve”, I’m also doing so OUT LOUD. How can you not see what a power move that is?

In conclusion, no matter how obsessive me talking about my recovery attempt sounds to you, it’s a good sign. This is me actively working on getting better. This is a necessary step and I chose to open up to you because for a moment I felt safe enough with you.

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