Living with an eating disorder - student blog 4

The Truth Behind the Photo

This is me.

Bridesmaid at one of my closest friend’s weddings, smiling and enjoying the beautiful, precious day. It is a day which I will treasure forever.

However, there is a cruel truth behind the smile.

If I think about my eating disorder as a continuum, this photo was taken well after Anorexia had been overtaken by Bulimia. I was in second year at QMU, and I was in intense therapy. On the outside, I am recovering. At this stage I have finally acknowledged that I have an eating disorder. I am making jokes about how I am a cheap date because of my lack of eating and drinking. Some of my friends and family are aware that I am unwell, but are reassured that I am on track to wellness again. Getting back to me. No one talks about the elephant in the room because I am “weight restored”. I look like Sarah again.

What people didn’t know, was that I was miles away from being “Sarah”.

I was restricting and counting my calories again. The nature of my exercising was obligatory. I was cutting myself. I had started to disregard my therapy. I didn’t want to recover – It took me ages to get tiny, why would I want to be this size!

I was relapsing.

Approximately 20 minutes after this photo was taken I remember running to the bathroom, removing my bridesmaids dress, and inspecting myself at every possible angle to see if I had changed since I last checked that morning. I hadn’t been able to do any exercise. I couldn’t estimate the calories in the meal at the wedding. I was panicking. In the bathroom I cried and tried to compensate for the lack of “control” that I had exercised that day.

The following day I met up with one of my best friends and told her that I didn’t want to be alive any more, I just couldn’t do it. All she could do was sit in silence with me, allowing the words to just linger.

I don’t want to be morbid, but I do want to be truthful - this is Eating Disorders Awareness week! Eating disorders are never trendy, or shameful; but they can be a lot of other things…

Devastating. Dangerous. Destructive. All-consuming.

One thing that mine was at this stage, was hidden.

Almost two years on from this moment, I am not going to give a rosy monologue of how empowering it is to recover from an eating disorder. How I have it all together. Even though I may seem like I do… I don’t!

Yes, I am in such a better place than I was at the time of this photo. I am not remotely embarrassed about suffering and I will spam my social media feed with talk of eating disorders, in an attempt to counter the messages that are hyper-saturated with photoshopped washboard stomachs and body goals… But I am not immune. I still worry about my physical imposition, on space, and I still feel like I am worthless because of the way that I look.

The difference is, I now know how warped this thinking is. I now know that I could eat all the raw-cacao-chia-quinoa-soy-shit that the world has to offer; but if I still obsess over that once slice of cake then I still have a problem. Food is not the enemy. It never was. The enemy is my mind.

So that is what I work on. Day in and day out. I try to treat myself with kindness. I am shocked and amazed that despite the judgment and trauma I place upon my body, it continues to show up each day and do its job. This thought made me realize that we don’t actually need to change our bodies - we just need to change the world! If only it were that easy huh? IT IS!!! We are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society we grew up in. We can change these skewed societal messages by ignoring and rejecting THEM, instead of ourselves.

I struggle. EVERY day. I have an eating disorder EVERY day. But I practice self care everyday too. And despite what Pinterest tells us, “self care” doesn’t just have to be aesthetic journaling or painting our nails. Self care can be ugly. It can be sitting on the bathroom floor crying and hugging, telling yourself that it’s gonna be okay. Don’t be ashamed… just do whatever you need to do for you. 

Owning my story and allowing myself to be a square peg in a round role is the bravest thing I have ever done in my life so far. If I can do it, absolutely anyone can.

Let’s give ourselves a break.

You’re perfect. You don’t have to be everything - you can be ANYTHING! You were made to do hard things so believe in yourself.

 

Happy EDAW.

 

This blog has been written and released as part of QMUSU Eating Disorder Awareness Week

Registered address: The Students' Union, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, EH21 6UU              

Telephone: 0131 474 0170

Email: union@qmu.ac.uk