The first thing you need to know about me is that I tend to
think metaphorically, so please bear with me.
My eating disorder began in late elementary school, though I
only realized that my weird eating habits were a disorder when I was in middle
school. I was always very anxious, perfectionistic, and sensitive, so I’m not
surprised when I look back at diary entries from just after I turned thirteen
in which I was terrified that I was becoming anorexic. I first started trying,
albeit halfheartedly, to get better when I was fourteen, but I didn’t receive
any real treatment for years, and I struggled almost constantly until midway
through university. In my second year of university, I was losing weight
rapidly, feeling suicidal almost all the time, and pretty much too anxious to
function. My roommates were so worried about me that they didn’t let me go
anywhere by myself, and I was sliding downhill rapidly despite having more
therapy appointments every week than I had classes.
When I came to Homewood at the end of 2007, I desperately
wanted to feel better, but I was convinced that I couldn’t be helped. I was
lonely and terrified and spent most of the first couple of weeks crying. But
with the support of my family and several of my good friends, as well as my new friends and
my roommate from Homewood, I began to turn around and fight with everything I
had towards getting better.
As is typical of anyone recovering from an eating disorder, I
had a lot of ups and downs while I was at Homewood and in the time after I went
home. There were many, many times when I wanted to throw in the towel. As most
of you know, living with an eating disorder, as painful as it is, can be easier
than trying to recover from one. Going back to my summer job was hard, as was
returning to university. And in the first few months, I realized one pattern I
had in the way that I thought about my disorder and recovery. Every time
something went wrong, whether it was doing poorly on an exam or having a
conflict with a friend, I would think, “I’ll restrict just for now, because I
have to in order to deal with this. And if anyone asks why I relapsed, well,
it’s no wonder. Just look at what I’m
dealing with.”
That was what I’d done for years – restricted just until
exams were over, just until all of my friends were emotionally healthy, just
until I found a job, just until spring came.
Just until everything was perfect.
I realized that life doesn’t work that way – at the very
least, my life doesn’t work that way.
I doubt that yours works that way either. Maybe at some point, all of the stars
will align and everything in my life will come together exactly the way that I
want it to be – but I can’t wait for that point to start living. I realized
that I needed to stop making excuses.
This brings me to my metaphor. In my first year of
university, I lived in an apartment in residence with three other girls, a
couple of whom kept our kitchen in a constant state of disgusting disaster. One
night, I was the only one home and was cooking supper. As I watched the toaster
oven to make sure that my toast wouldn’t get overdone, I heard a crackling
noise behind me. I turned around to find some fairly substantial flames coming
from my stove – a bit of macaroni had gotten stuck under the burner and had
caught fire.
My first instinct was to run out of the apartment and scream
for help. My first thought was, “well, if anyone asks why the building burned
down, it’s not my fault. I haven’t
made macaroni recently. It was someone else’s food stuck under the burner. No wonder there was a fire – my
roommates are total slobs.”
Fortunately, common sense got the better of me. I turned
around, ran back in, and stuck a lid over the flaming burner. The fire was out
within seconds.
Two important things came from that day. The first is that I
won an award in residence for being most likely to set off the fire alarm while
cooking. The second thing was that years later, I came up with a highly
metaphorical mantra that I now use all the time:
One piece of macaroni is no excuse
for burning down the house.
In the eating disorder context, what I mean is this: Don’t
let any little thing send you spiraling back into your disorder. A flaming
stove is a sign that something was stuck under the burner. All I had to do is
put a lid on the fire and remove the burned piece of food. It doesn’t mean that
the house has to burn down – there are other options. It’s the same with my
eating disorder: a slip is a sign that something is wrong. The macaroni under
the burner represents whatever is causing the stress in my life. The house
represents my life itself, my mental health. Whatever it is that I’m dealing
with, no matter how troubling it is, it doesn’t mean that I need to relapse; it
means that I need to fix the problem and take good care of myself.
Before getting treatment, I used to let any slip be an excuse
to relapse. Now, I know two important things:
First: slips happen to all of us. They’re part of recovery.
But knowing that they happen is not an excuse to relapse. A slip is a sign that
something is wrong, just how a small kitchen fire is a sign that something
flammable was left on the stove.
Second – please excuse the metaphor: you have to know the
difference between a big fire and small fire, and when to call in the
firefighters. Sometimes, a slip is more than a slip, and you really do need
help. Just as one little piece of macaroni is no excuse for setting the
building on fire, nor is thinking that you can fight a fire yourself when
really you can’t. I’ve learned that I
can’t do it all by myself all the time. Sometimes, I need to see my therapist
more often, or I need to ask a friend to eat with me to help me stay
accountable. I’ve learned that asking for help is much better than letting my
whole life catch fire.
The past few years have really put this to the test. Two
years after finishing the eating disorders program at Homewood, I finished
university and went to grad school. For anyone who hasn’t been, grad school is
just as stressful as the movies make it out to be. I was studying to be an
elementary school teacher, so I had to balance my teaching placements,
coursework, and earning money. I also sing in a professional choir, which often
has a rather rigorous schedule.
Then, to add to all of this, I got hit by some things that
are much bigger than my metaphorical little pieces of macaroni. Sticking with
my kitchen fire metaphor, it would be more accurate to say that some sort of
explosive was planted in my kitchen.
Midway through the first year of my Masters, my life began
unraveling. The first thing that happened was I started constantly feeling
sick. I lost a lot of weight without trying to, my heart rate was ridiculously
fast, and I blacked out frequently. I caught infections from the kids far more
often than any of my classmates did. I also had terrible insomnia; without
taking sleeping pills, I would only sleep for an hour – if that – in a night. My
doctor had no idea what was wrong with me.
And then, in March, 2011, my roommate from Homewood died from
her eating disorder. The guilt, grief,
and denial were too much for me to handle. Many, many times, I had slips with
my recovery. Many times it occurred to me that if I blamed a relapse on Laura’s
death, people would understand – and it almost happened.
But instead, I asked my friends for support, returned to
using my meal plan, and started going to therapy and a support group again. I
put a lot of my time and energy into taking care of myself, of my emotional and
physical needs. I was not going to let even a giant thing like losing a friend
be an excuse for returning to my eating disorder.
Throughout the next year, while I was struggling to cope, my
weird physical symptoms got worse and worse. I lost a lot of weight for no
apparent reason, which was really triggering. Emotionally, I felt like I was
about to fall off of a cliff – and I knew that it was not just because of
grief.
I felt suicidal almost constantly, and my anxiety was through
the roof. I couldn’t focus on my schoolwork, I had trouble getting out of bed,
and I couldn’t talk or think properly. My mind and body seemed to be in
overdrive, and I felt like I was going crazy. My friends became concerned, and
last spring, one of them made me go to the hospital. I was diagnosed with
hyperthyroidism, which causes all of the strange physical symptoms I’d been
experiencing.
I spent most of last spring in the psych ward because I was
really anxious and suicidal. The hospital was awful. Knowing that my thyroid
disease only partly explained my psychiatric symptoms, the staff kept
suggesting that I had all kinds of disorders that I knew I didn’t have. I hated
living in a locked ward, and I was miserable – and I slipped many times, only to
have friends tell me that they were not going to allow me to relapse.
And so I used my mantra: no excuses. Over and over again, I
would repeat to myself, “don’t let the macaroni burn down the house. Don’t let
the macaroni burn down the house.”
Later in the summer, I returned to Homewood for the anxiety
and depression program. I was diagnosed with OCD – a diagnosis that I actually
agreed with – and my psychiatrist there found medication that worked for me.
Just like in the eating disorder program, this program was hard – really hard.
I had to work through things that I didn’t even want to admit were real. At the
same time, I was still in treatment for my thyroid disease – and one of the
effects of the treatment was weight gain. While I’m doing much better with body
image than I was five years ago, I still struggle with my body. So as you can
probably imagine, the unintentional weight gain was really triggering. And many
times, it crossed my mind that if I restricted, if I allowed my eating disorder
to relapse, nobody would blame me. After all, I’d been through so much.
Once again, I had to remember that I wasn’t letting myself
use anything as an excuse. What I’d been through this year was much bigger than
my metaphorical piece of macaroni, but I still wasn’t going to let my house –
my life – catch fire.
What’s helped me in the years since finishing eating disorder
treatment is a change in my attitude. Where I used to look for excuses to
relapse, I now have a very different approach. Nothing, including losing my
roommate, being diagnosed with a physical illness, experiencing extreme weight
changes, or spending the spring and summer in the hospital, was a good excuse
to return to my eating disorder. It’s the same for you. That voice in your head
will try to find a reason to justify a relapse. Fight back against that voice.
There are no excuses.
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