i’m sorry for what i said when i was hungry

Here’s what high school gym class didn’t teach you about anorexia..

Anorexia kills you before you’re dead. It takes away every single once of your personality leaving you in a constant numb and lifeless state. When you get to that place, of lifelessness, you get mean. The eating disorder makes you mean. It takes every aspect of life and turns it into a competition. Can I eat the least, be the skinniest, and make the best grades? Can I walk the two miles farther than I did yesterday on an empty stomach without passing out? Can I sleep every night without being scared that I won’t wake up?

It goes without saying that competition brings out the worst in people. To be blunt, anorexia turns you into a bitch. It makes you judge everything and everyone, but here’s where it gets confusing for healthy people. (I’ll only speak from my experience so I will speak in first person now.) In an anorexic mindset, the way I judge everyone is not typical. I don’t associate a person with what I’m judging. I don’t look at someone and say, “Oh, Ashlyn is fat” or “Ashlyn needs to wear a bigger sized dress.” I judge people in relation to myself, so by judging someone else, I’m more harshly judging myself. Instead, my thoughts are, “I’m way skinnier or fatter than Ashlyn” or “My anorexic body would look better or worse in that dress.”

Ironically, a lot of my observations about other people, when I do associate them with a person, are rather complimentary. I notice how happy people are and how healthy they are. A lot of times I notice people eating and think, “holy shit it must be nice to eat that without all these debilitating thoughts.”

Eating disorders also make you pretty manipulative. I literally cannot count the amount of therapists I’ve had in four years. I left most of them because my eating disorder was being challenged by them so I made so excuse and bam on to the next one. I have also told many lies to save my eating disorder. I can’t think of any specific lie, but an eating disorder doesn’t have the “fight or flight” response; it is exclusively a fighter. It will take down anything or anyone to meet it’s own needs and it doesn’t take a second look back to see it’s path of destruction.

Eating disorders aren’t for rich, privileged girls. They aren’t for sad, needy girls. They aren’t for skinny girls. Eating disorders live in women (AND MEN) with more passion and drive than can be contained in one person. You know how too much of a good thing is often bad? That’s how I think of people with eating disorders. We have so much strength, so much resilience, so much power, that sometimes it’s just too much and we turn it on ourselves, using our powers for evil.

Eating disorders are hard and they suck and they make life a literal living hell. But we are trying. We don’t want to be this way. Give us grace, give everyone grace and try to understand the struggles you might never have to face.