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What I Learned

By: Emily

I don't even know where to start.

I come back to this web site every once in awhile, to print out as much information as possible. I put it in a binder�organize it perfectly with computer printed labels on clean white dividers. I make sections: nutrition, treatment, help, even "somethingfishy.org." Then I buy books, a journal, and pen, and I wrap it all up and take it to the most recent person who has confided in me that they too suffer from an eating disorder. . .anorexia or bulimia or somewhere in between.

"When I heard you talk about what you had been through it made me think that I might be able to do something to," a friend told me one night as she described her 10-year battle with bulimia to me.

I am 21 years old. I have struggled with self-doubt, self-hatred, starvation, fear, alienation, physical pain, and mental pain for almost 6 years now. But I have been in recovery for almost a year now. And after months and months of searching for that one big break through that would explain to me why I rather spend a Friday night in bed from exhaustion or over a toilet, than out with my friends, I began to realize that it is the tiniest revelations that will help you in your struggle to overcome an eating disorder. I used to spend hours at the gym, or sitting behind my desk at work constantly reminding myself how fat and ugly and undeserving of food I was. Slowly these thoughts have been replaced with a con! scious effort to tell myself something positive, even if I find it hard to believe. "I am a good human being." "I deserve to be nourished and energized." "The world is a kind and loving place that can offer peace to anyone who will embrace it." "I deserve to be loved and respected, most importantly by myself."

Don't listen to what anybody else tells you. "You look great." "How did you do it?" "You're way too skinny." "Hey, you look anorexic!" Their messages will always be mixed, and you will never get the same answer from everybody. Listen to your body. Listen to how it aches, and cries, and longs to be protected and cherished. Recognize how your mind is tired from racing around in circles day in and day out.

You can't work or study because you feel the way your stomach touches your shirt and the way your socks fit around your ankles. And you can't sleep because your body is writhing in pain. Everyday, work harder and harder to be kind to yourself the way you are to everyone else in your life.

Don't wake up one morning and decide that you're going to love yourself or that you're not going to have an eating disorder anymore. Wake up and decide�today, I will sit in the park for one hour and write in my journal. Wake up and choose to go hiking with a friend rather than running on a treadmill for one hour. Allow yourself to be nourished and taken care of with food that is proven healthy by doctors and professionals all over the world. Don't pressure yourself to take a step any bigger than you're ready to, it won't do any good.

As you work to let go of your eating disorder, be kind and gentle and forgiving of yourself. Don't expect too much, don't pressure yourself, and do your best to stop criticizing yourself. The hard truth is that you will not be cured of an eating disorder. But you can find new ways to survive, new ways to thrive�and as you let go of your eating disorder, you will discover that your definition of happiness wasn't even close to the reality of what real joy is. Let yourself make mistakes, let yourself be human, let yourself be a WOMAN, or a young woman, or a girl. You are all these things. And you are wonderful.


©2001 Emiliy. Reprinted with Permission.

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