To Recovery and Beyond!

Anorexia defined the first 25 years of my life and brought with it quite a bit of negativity and actually some positive experiences; but the upside of an eating disorder cannot remotely compare to the freedom and love that I will experience living in recovery for the rest of my life.  This is my story.

The first time that I knew that I was not good enough was when I was about 4 years old.  My then-step father violated me and made sure that I knew not to tell my mother.  “If your mother finds out about this, she will stop loving you” were the words that cut through my little body and scarred my heart.  This was my first full memory, but I didn’t remember it until I was 16.  Not long after this event, my mom ran into financial issues and made the decision to give my dad full custody of me.  By the time I was 6, I was living in Minnesota with my dad and his wife (who would become the mom who raised me).  One of my first daycare providers took it upon herself to monitor and manipulate my weight by allowing me half of the amount of food that the other kids got and having me run laps around the perimeter of the house when the other kids were having snacks.  This coupled with hearing women in my life discuss their ‘fat thighs’ lead me to the realization that my body was definitely not good enough at six years of age.  

Enter Ed, the being that would become my best friend, my confidante, and the thing that would eventually attempt to kill me.  You may be wondering who Ed is…where does he fit?  Ed is actually an acronym for Eating Disorder.  In the world of psychology it is shown that the ‘empty chair’ technique is highly effective in treating eating disorders.  This technique involves separating yourself from the eating disorder, and attributing a personality to the eating disorder as if it were sitting in an “empty chair” in front of you.  The goal is to eventually ‘divorce’ Ed and leave him behind.

Through elementary and middle school, I was bullied for my weight and general awkwardness and I would quietly cry myself to sleep at night praying that God would just make me sweat a lot so I could lose weight.  When I was about 12, I began to work out after bedtime and in the bathroom after lunch at school.  It was when I was 13, in the 9^th grade that I was introduced to Ed officially.  I was in choir with a girl who was bulimic and it became my way to ‘accentuate’ my restrictive eating habits and midnight workouts.  I began to purge anything that I ate until May 20, 1999 when my mom walked into the bathroom at Hardees to find me standing the wrong way in the stall…I was purging. 

For the next 3 months, I was attending treatment at the Methodist Eating Disorders Institute until I decided it was time to go back to cheerleading in the fall.  Unfortunately no one knew that the eating disorder was not ‘cured’.  Through high school, I was chided for my weight not only in the cheer community, but also by my peers, I was convinced I was obese and did all that I could (without being caught) to lose weight.  The midnight workouts continued through graduation and I swore to myself as I went off to college that I would look amazing at my 5 year high school reunion. 

In my first semester of college, I was terrified of the diversity of gender that I was faced with every day.  Freshmen are a different breed anyway, but I was faced with a perfectionistic and judgmental Christian group, a secular group of partying friends, and a whole new world of freedoms and responsibilities.  I found the gym long before I found the dining center, and by Christmas of 2002, I was unrecognizable to my family.  I had lost a large amount of weight, except I didn’t even notice.

During that semester, my parents (dad and stepmom) separated, she got breast cancer, and I was 3 hours away in Duluth with no idea what to do.  Enter Jim, a tall, seductive, and smooth freshman who knew exactly what to say to get what he wanted.  We dated on and off for a year before he asked me to marry him.  Shortly after our engagement, I passed out at school and my bodily systems started to shut down.  I was rushed to the hospital only to hear that my blood pressure was so low they were surprised I was still living.  After this incident, Jim convinced me to enter treatment.

May of 2004 I entered the Eating Disorders Institute again this time receiving a more intense round of treatment.  After a few months I had gained weight and looked like it was over.  At this point, my dad and Jim both decided that I should go back to school and work because I couldn’t stay in treatment forever and I had bills to pay.  I went to cosmetology school and had about a year of time without restricting or abusing exercise.  

In November of 2005, I began work as a cosmetologist and was 8 months away from my wedding.  It was then that Jim began to make comments about my weight, and essentially told me that I was being disrespectful for being the weight that I was ‘because it was not appealing to him, and I didn’t look that way when we got together’.  He painted a convincing picture of me as a liar who trapped him by looking good and then letting myself go before the wedding even happened.

Enter Ed.  I lost a large amount of weight in the next 8 months while working up the ladder in my new career as a cosmetologist.  It was common knowledge in our apartment that I was hideous and needed to work out at least once a day, sometimes twice, and it was healthy because I was just “Eating Healthy, Eating Less, and Working Out”.  I was praised by Jim when I was on the treadmill because of my self control and willpower that “not many people in America have”.

I was married on June 3, 2006.  After the wedding, Jim and I were able to eat privately while the guests were being seated.  As we were eating our first meal as a married couple, Jim asked if I knew how many calories were in the food and if I had enough calories in the day to have any wedding cake (because it was not an option to go over my allotted calories).  That night it was clear that something was not quite right.  On our honeymoon to Hawaii, my food was monitored, I was reminded of how important my work outs were in order to be a ‘respectful and Godly wife’, and it was made crystal clear how much I embarrassed my new husband.  (Had I known there was such a thing as an annulment, I would have pursued that option)

As the next 4 years waxed and waned, Jim’s name became synonymous with Ed, so much so that I didn’t even realize that I was relapsing in my Anorexia.  I was on a strict diet of a certain amount of calories per day, and I was to burn off a certain amount of calories per week (which took about an hour and a half in the gym every day to accomplish).  I was weighed every morning, and scrutinized every night before bed.  According to people outside of our apartment, I was getting ‘too thin’, but to me that meant that I just had beaten the culture of obesity, and I might be making my husband happy.

After 3 years of working at least 50 hours a week to keep Jim in school and support us both, working out religiously, and getting increasingly malnourished, I had a mental breakdown.  My brain said “That is ENOUGH” and shut my body down (presenting as a stroke).  I didn’t have a stroke for real, once the stressors were reduced, I regained my abilities, but was unable to work or do anything productive, I felt like an empty shell of a human.  I was referred to the Melrose Eating Disorders Institute to seek ‘stress management classes’ (smart of the therapist I saw because she knew I was in complete and utter denial of my eating disorder). 

I had an initial assessment on July 24, 2009, and was admitted to the inpatient floor for close to 2 weeks.  As I was moving in, Jim made sure to tell me that I needed to keep my head on straight and make sure to do just enough to appease the doctors, but to not gain weight regardless of what the team wanted.  Over the next 8 months, I struggled and fell, and struggled and fell, and struggled.  By December 2009, Jim wouldn’t even touch me or look at me when we went to bed because he was disgusted by my body size.  I finally accepted that I was not going to get better until I was allowed to live in an eating disorder-free environment.  By January 12, 2010, I was so sick again that I was driving off the road due to dehydration.  I drove to treatment for the day, and never went home.  My team admitted me to inpatient for the second time.

Jim was not around much for this stay (which lasted about 3 weeks), I had gained weight and he was more than unhappy with this.  By this time, my team and I had realized that Jim was a major part of my eating disorder but had no way to fix that fact, he was not willing to work on himself because I needed to fit his ideal in order to be a good wife.  I was admitted to the Residential living area at Melrose which was so very helpful.  There I learned to live in an eating disorder free environment and completed two and a half weeks before my insurance decided that I was no longer in need of the support and they cut me off.

February 13, 2010; I talked to Jim through facebook chat because he was unable to talk on the phone and told him about the fact that I had to move home that coming Monday (the 15^th).  He didn’t say much, and I asked what he thought.  He proceeded to explain that he expected to have more time to work on himself in his therapy and was surprised at the news.  He suggested I stay with my mom for 2-3 weeks so that we could continue to get better apart.  I agreed.  On Valentine’s Day, he took me on a pass to get ice cream and then brought me back to treatment for my last night before discharging.  The next morning, I was being discharged and also had a family therapy session with Jim at 8:00am.  It was in this appointment that he very cleverly brought up the idea of a divorce, but of course it was because we were both in need of it, and he would do anything to help me in my recovery…right. 

We divorced, and I was heartbroken and free all at the same time.  When we divorced, I felt that I finally divorced Ed too.  I used January 12^th as my last day of symptom use, and began working the steps of Eating Disorders Anonymous with a sponsor.  As I grew in my freedom and plunged into the pain of a divorce, I was able to focus on a set of principles that were faith and community based, and proven to work for so many other addictions. 

Over the next year, I stayed symptom free and learned what it was like to live away from the oppression of an abusive spouse and an abusive eating disorder.  Now I am taking it a day at a time and knowing that God is carrying me every step of the way.  As of this journal I am a year and a month free from restricting and abusing exercise.  I have friends that are abounding, I have family that I have reconnected with, I have learned to love myself and expect nothing but the best from people close to me, and above all I have learned that I am worth the fight for recovery.  My life is worth living.  I thank God daily for this new found freedom and for another chance at life.

This is my recovery.   I became a beautiful mess, and God has carefully and gently put me back together.  He has crafted me with the care, attention and passion that a great artist would take to a piece of art.  I am not finished, but I am more whole than I have ever been before.  I am embracing my pant size, my singleness, my grief, my friends, my circumstance, my faith, my beauty, my personality, my extroversion, my weight, my belongings, and my ability to learn and change. 

I am real, I am me, the light in my eyes, the pep in my step, and the smile on my face all reflect what is in my heart.  Today I am telling you that I am a beautiful and dynamic woman.  When I hear someone say that I am worthy of love, I will no longer respond with "really?” I will respond with "Thank you, I know what you are saying is true."