Interview 4: Anorexia

• How do you perceive your physical appearance?

I used to think I was really ugly ‘cause I would concentrate on the little things that were wrong with me. Now, I have started to cut myself more slack, thinking that it’s okay and appearance is not all that matters and stuff.

• Have you been feeling your life has been out of your control? Do you feel trapped in the pressure to succeed? Could you please give an example of such?

I used to feel that my life was very much out of control. When things would go wrong or people would hurt me, I would find a way to blame myself, and then stop eating as some sort of punishment. I also didn’t had a lot of time because of school and other activities, so anyways, my access to food was very limited. Then, when I tried to eat eat again, I found that my appetite was gone. I would be full as soon as I started eating. Then, I would cut my food very small to make it look like I had eaten, and say that I had already eaten to the people who were eating with me. Worse, when I stated to eat even a little, I would see myself become considerably fatter. Because of that, I bought that I must have been fat in the first place, and that I should continue to not eat so that I could be my best. When I would eat even a bite of something, I would feel self conscious and fat, even when people would ask me why I was so thin. I thought they were ironic.

• Do you find yourself binge eating? If and when you do this, do you find yourself having lost control over the amount of food you consume during that time period?

I never binge ate, though. In my culture, we don’t do that, and I was always very disciplined when I didn’t eat, so that never happened.

• Do you find yourself restricting the amount of food you consume? For how long have you been doing this and what did it make you feel?

I wouldn’t even feel hungry anymore, so it was really easy to not eat. When I did feel hungry, I would tell myself over and over that it didn’t hurt, until I believed it. Sometimes, I would tell myself I deserved it and use the insults that other told me against myself. My brothers used to call me fat, and I told myself I wasn’t the only one who thought I was fat. Other people would bully me saying I was ungrateful, unloyal and I would take it out of context when I was alone and tell myself that because of those traits I had I deserved not to eat.

Then, I would drink a lot of water when the pain was absolutely unbearable and I didn’t have time to eat. I would suddenly feel very full. But also very fat, because my belly got bigger, and so it reinforced my need to starve myself. Then, I would lie to people and tell them I had eaten this or that, or tell them I didn’t like whatever they were offering me to eat, to look normal. I would pretend everything was fine, and usually, they would believe it.

Sometimes, I ate enough so that my appetite would come back, and then I’d eat regularly for a few days, but the cycle would repeat because I would see myself in the mirror and realize I was way too fat again.

I did feel the pressure to succeed. I constantly thought “I don’t have the time to eat if I want to achieve all of this” to justify not eating. I kept myself busy so that most of the time I didn’t even realize I was hungry. I was also not sleeping a lot because of how busy I was, and the hunger would help me stay awake

I never binge ate, though. In my culture, we don’t do that, and I was always very disciplined when I didn’t eat, so that never happened.

I did this for about 2 months in the summer, then I started eating again. But then, a month later, it started again way harder, for about 5 months? I got used to it and the whole thing was no longer a big deal or hard to sustain for me. I would also walk a lot (to other cities, neighborhoods, etc) even when I was starving, and I would scowl when my stomach growled and tell myself I would weak and walk faster. Walking faster usually helped myself focus on something other than hunger.

• When did you realise this was an issue?

I realised this was an issue when a friend of mine who had had anorexia told me about it and told me I looked suspicious in my eating habits, but even when I realised this wasn’t good, I still thought that I was fat, and that what I was doing was contributing to my health.

Or maybe not contributing but that it was essential to me being successful, and thin of course.

I know some people who suffer from eating disorders. I try to encourage them to eat, but really, I know it most likely won’t help. You have to take the initiative yourself to stop. When people caught me not eating, I found other ways of not eating without them knowing, like hiding my food, and “going out to eat” without my family when I was really telling my friends I was eating with family. You can always get around family and friends. The person has to really want and agree to stop. Unless you put them in a hospital, but for that to happen people around you would have to realise how bad it is, and the person usually does a pretty good job of hiding things so that no one catches on.

I feel like if other people knew... they would think of me differently, yeah. I would be “the anorexic girl”. Sometimes, girls come up to me and ask me how come I “always have the perfect waist/always look neither too fat nor too thin”. If people knew I didn’t eat, that perception would break. It might help them but it wouldn’t help my self esteem. People would also always make sure I’m eating, not very subtly - I know this because some of my friends know and will go out of their way to test how I’m eating and make me It in front of them. This always makes me uncomfortable; it’s like other people don’t trust you to take care of yourself anymore, even though now I don’t have anorexia anymore. Hunger can make you not be able to concentrate. Your vision blurs, you shake - I personally get hypoglycemia, a condition where I have a very fast metabolism, so I digest very quickly and am supposed to eat more frequently than most people, and if I don’t, I shake, yawn, tear up, and eventually, faint. This happened to me once - I fainted, but it was at home. I’d like to say that I didn’t eat mostly when something really bad had just happened. On those days, I wouldn’t eat a thing. When I woke up from fainting, I was very weak, and right after I woke up, someone close to me came and screamed at me. He didn’t know I was sick, much less that I had just fainted, but it encouraged me to stop eating even more drastically since that was how I took out negative emotions, and run away. This was really hard, because as I said I was very weak, so walking or running - was very hard. I had to sit a few times to rest. I went to my school, and they made me eat a clementine.

Also, most of the time, I had no periods. My body didn’t have the energy to ovulate or menstruate, so my reproductive system shut off. I just thought it was convenient, so I would eat even less around that time of the month. Eventually, this worked against me, because a friend realized I wasn’t having my periods and freaked out saying I was doing something terrible and if I continued I’d be damaged forever.

The way I got out of this cycle: I decided, around the end of the year of 2017, that it was too much. The hunger wore me down. I hated my life, myself. Everything felt tiring, weak, exhausting. Everyone hated me. So I decided to stop eating altogether. I decided to starve myself to death. So I didn’t eat for 8 days. On the 8th day, I got off the plane, I was on break. I never eat on the plane, so it was super easy to get that passed my family. When we got off the plane, I couldn’t carry my bag. I almost fainted. My family was annoyed with me, saying that I was making them carry my bag for nothing, using them. We got in a rented car, and then everything spiralled from there. All of a sudden, I had pain in my stomach like never before. I felt like someone was stabbing me from the inside. It hurt so much, I thought I was going to die. I just wanted to die. I formed a ball on myself to make the pain easier, and I told my family my stomach was aching really bad.

We got to this Mexican restaurant to eat, and my family asked if I wanted to come. I almost said no - I was planning on saying no. I would have said that I was hurting too much. But then the pain... i can’t describe it. I couldn’t think. I suspect my organs were shutting down. Anyways - I couldn’t take it. I changed my mind at the last moment, and I went to the restaurant. I ordered guacamole and told my family I could eat it alone. Lies. I ate about a quarter of the dish - this tiny dish that was as about as wide as a cup - before I couldn’t anymore. My stomach was so small that I felt like I had just eaten a lot. It’s a funny feeling, because you feel very full, but you still feel the hunger. You think they go together, but no. I felt hungry, but like I had just eaten as much as I could ever. My body needed more, but it couldn’t take more.

So anyways, I realized I didn’t ever want that pain anymore. I realized it would take a while to eat like I did before. So the next day, to keep myself from changing my mind, I told my mom about it. I told her to make sure I eat. I didn’t say much - as you might have guessed with what I said before, I was not very close at all to my family. I don’t think she believed me, but she definitely made sure I ate after that. She mentioned it in front of my brothers. Everyone knew, and they made sure I ate.

But then, we met with other family, and during a daily dinner, they started making jokes about how I had said I was anorexic, and I was clearly being dramatic and seeking attention. I felt very humiliated and misunderstood in that moment. I went back to the place where we were staying alone. I wanted to stop eating, but it was toward the end of the meal. It was too late. I tried to vomit - I heard some people did that - but I couldn’t manage to. It wasn’t my thing. But I had to take out my anger and humiliation somehow, and it had to be on myself. So I cut myself. On my arm - it felt like the easiest place. From then on, I led a life balanced between not eating (stopping all at once is pretty much impossible) and cutting. I would reserve cutting for really bad events. But those seemed to happen more and more. I cut more and more, and eventually got to a normal eating diet (we’ll, I just ate dinner, and sometimes either breakfast or snack, but as easy as it gets for me).

But cutting was harder to hide. Some of my friends caught on. They tried to make me stop, but I would just cut in other places. Finally, one of my friends forced me to the school infirmary after school. She told them I was cutting, and not eating. That day, I was starving - I think I had gone without eating for a day or two - and I remember being so mad at her, because they called my mom and made me stay, and sent me to the hospital.

My mom came an hour or so later, she was busy. She smiled politely to them and left with me. I knew I was in trouble, and I was right. She screamed at me that I was useless, spoiled, always trying to get attention, and why did I have to make this type of thing up and force her to leave work for nothing? I kept silent the whole time, touched by the injustice of things. Finally, at the hospital, I was forced to show them my scars, or they would strip me down. I showed them the ones on my arm, still fresh for some. They asked if there were others, and I lied and said no. I had one on my ankle and one on my stomach, the stomach was the most painful place, in my experience. So then when the nurse left he room, my mom realized I wasn’t making things up all along, and started crying. From then on, everything went uphill. It’s nice to feel like people take you seriously. I self-harmed less often. I stopped completely about 6 months later - again, these things take time - and now I’m more or less healthy. As I said, it’s important to take the initiative yourself to stop, and to be supported. I did what I did because I could deal - I was doing hard classes, leading a few things, part of other things, and on top of everything I was verbally abused. There are always reasons why people do things - I found it was easier to blame myself for things to not hurt anyone, so that no one would dislike me, and to not start more problems. I would say, you just need a safe environment to never have these problems. It’s tough. Probably awareness, too.

Also, now I work out every day, ran for a while... there are other ways, and people should know about them. Also, they should know what happens if you stop eating or self harm or whatever else. Your muscles get taken apart so that your organism can have more sugars. You don’t get periods and can become sterile. Eventually, your organs shut down. You faint, your vision is blurry. You have scars for the rest of your life. For about 9 months after all this, I hid my scars and was ashamed of them. Now, I’m over all of this, but you will always have reminders of whatever you did. People should know. So yeah!