My never-again weight, part 10

Welcome to my final #edrecovery blog post, and a heartfelt thank you for following me all this way. I decided to impose a 10 post limit on My never-again weight, even though in truth I could write far more expansively on both eating disorders and mental health issues. I think if I kept going indefinitely this would morph into an autobiography, and I’m nowhere near interesting enough to style out that level of narcissism.

Instead, I’m going to attempt to answer the big question: WHY? Why have I tortured my mind and body for twenty years under the tenuous medical banners of depression, Anorexia, Bulimia, EDNOS et al?

On paper, I am a textbook case. I am white, cisgender, bisexual, and middle class. I was an only child, and an academic over-achiever, placed a year ahead in school. I was a senior prefect and I won the school Latin prize. My parents divorced when I was 13. My stepfather was a rampantly abusive alcoholic. I could have been the incredibly depressing poster child for eating disorders. Anorexia Girl.

Anorexia Girl would be a terrible superhero. Her superpowers would be passing out at inopportune moments and making food disappear under mysterious circumstances. She’d appreciate hiding behind the mask and cape, but cry at the prospect of lycra. Her accessories would be a lone rice cake and a battered copy of Cosmopolitan, the thinspirational Bible.

Here’s the thing though: Cosmopolitan didn’t make me do it. I felt trapped, and needed control, so I micromanaged my diet and body as a way of bringing order to a life that was largely out of my hands. I never idolised catwalk models or supposedly glamorous celebrities. They weren’t my people, and I knew Photoshop existed. I recognised bullshit when I saw it.

Certain pop culture references did resonate with me. Manic Street Preachers lyrics. Girl, Interrupted. Cassie from Skins, who, when asked how she coped when life was fucked up, simply said “I stop eating until they take me to hospital.” I was – am – attracted to romanticised fictional portrayals of mental illness. The lost soul. The waif. The medicated version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Cassie didn’t make me do it either though. I was a desperately unhappy child, and I just needed something to cling to that was mine. I acted out in school to the point of expulsion. I rarely attended college. I self-harmed. I drank. I smoked. I stole. I fought. I took ALL the drugs. But disordered eating was always in the background of all of my antisocial teen delinquent behaviour. As the other coping mechanisms melted away, incompatible with university, work and basically growing the hell up, my issues with food settled in for the duration. They were the easiest to hide, and often their outward effects were outright praised. They were my comfort blanket. Now, and for every day for the rest of my life, I need to shrug off that blanket and pick up the damn fork. Eat. Live.

I never wanted to be a ballet dancer or a princess. I never dreamed of the perfect wedding day, followed a celebrity diet, or craved size zero jeans. There is no cookie-cutter Anorexia Girl. If eating disorders were ever truly the preserve of willowy over-privileged white teenagers, they certainly aren’t now.

They are a modern epidemic because they fit so neatly into modern life. Eating disorders are not the fault of narrow slices of pop culture, but they are a symptom of a society that mythologises self-discipline, control, and the impossible quest for perfection. Everyone scrolls through everyone else’s lives on their phones, beating themselves up for not being enough.

I can’t tell you how to fix that. My only sweeping, generalised advice is to be kinder. To others, in the attitude and language you adopt when talking about food and body image, but also to yourself. You’re probably an okay human. Most people are. Your life may not be particularly Instagrammable, but on the flip side you didn’t get stuck at Fyre Festival crying over soggy mattresses. I’ll leave you with that charming mental image. Perfection is a soggy-mattressed myth.

Thank you, again. 🖤