"But You Don't Look Anorexic"
by Ilona Burton
‘Anorexia is so much more of as[sic] bitch when you don’t look anorexic.’
I tweeted this remark in amongst a rare splurge of personal eating disorder related rantage. Within minutes, I had a stream of comments in response, sharing my outrage that to anybody on the outside is so incomprehensible. It didn’t calm the anxieties I was storming my own silly brain with at the time, but it assured me that I’m not the only one who feels this way, who suffers with this torment and who lives every day in a limbo that nobody else has any insight into. It also provoked me to write this – to try to shed a little light on an area that people with eating disorders try so hard to hide.
There is no black and white when it comes to eating disorders and recovery. Between being ill and being recovered there is an expanse of grey more vast than any wastelands or landscapes you’d see on any BBC documentary. Even those who are on their way to recovery, who have made inroads into the path and who are fighting every day to follow that meal plan every day no matter how mundane, who wake up every day wishing it didn’t have to start with breakfast and who sit with overwhelming urges to run as long as it takes to work off the chocolate biscuit they had for snack, even they could be years away from being recovered.
The hardest part is perhaps that our bodies heal much quicker than our minds. As tissue builds back around our organs and slowly we fill out, get boobs and bums and curves and lumps and bumps, we appear as what the world love so much to tell us; well. “Oh you look so well!” “So good to see you looking better.” Switch the word to anything of that effect and it means exactly the same to us. “FAT”. But we know that you mean well, we can’t be angry with well-wishers simply for expressing their gladness to see us looking anything more than a bag of bones wrapped in clingfilm. So we grit our teeth, smile and repeat said comment in our heads for the next hour/day/week/month.
I tried on two skirts today and got my 2 year old niece to choose which one I should get. The two older ladies in the shop oohed and aahed in admiration and sparked up a conversation with my mum. I heard mumblings about my “pins” and about bigger girls coming in and bulging out of these skirts and yada yada. As I thanked them and turned to leave, one said: “Don’t ever change that figure”. Just 10 minutes before, mum had been begging me to get help, knowing full well I’m trying to hide a slight relapse. “Don’t ever change that figure,” indeed.
My perception of myself, how I look, is pretty screwed. I don’t look at myself in the mirror and feel repulsed at the obese monstrosity staring back and I don’t hate every inch of my body – not far off at times, but I can handle it – but I do grab at my tummy and see a roll of flab that shouldn’t be there, stare at my thighs and wish they were thinner and tug at the skin under my chin secretly hoping to wake up one day without a double chin. I’ve been ill for so many years with weight going up and down but never remaining at any kind of natural resting space, that I don’t even know if what I see is real or not. How can I trust something which has always ended me up in hospital? If I am that fat, how come I can fit in the same clothes I wore in the eating disorders unit? There has to be some rationality somewhere but you often have to dig around for it and you’re not in a position to do that when you’re wracked with guilt after eating.
The struggle really begins when the way you look doesn’t match the way you feel. At the moment, I feel far from ill but I know that I’m also far from well. The ladies in the shop illustrate perfectly the point that a person can look well, not knowing at all the intensity of my anxiety when it comes to almost anything food related. Once the body is anything more than emaciated, it becomes a mask and the struggle becomes invisible to the untrained eye. It’s difficult for the recovering anorexic or bulmic. When a skeletal person is crying into their bowl of cereal you can see why; they’re obviously scared to death of anything that might build on that fragility. When a healthy looking person is crying into a yoghurt pot, it makes no sense. They must have done it before, they must eat every day, look, they look fine, they must be fine.
So there we have it: Don’t judge a quivering wreck by his or her oh so healthy looking figure.
I tweeted this remark in amongst a rare splurge of personal eating disorder related rantage. Within minutes, I had a stream of comments in response, sharing my outrage that to anybody on the outside is so incomprehensible. It didn’t calm the anxieties I was storming my own silly brain with at the time, but it assured me that I’m not the only one who feels this way, who suffers with this torment and who lives every day in a limbo that nobody else has any insight into. It also provoked me to write this – to try to shed a little light on an area that people with eating disorders try so hard to hide.
There is no black and white when it comes to eating disorders and recovery. Between being ill and being recovered there is an expanse of grey more vast than any wastelands or landscapes you’d see on any BBC documentary. Even those who are on their way to recovery, who have made inroads into the path and who are fighting every day to follow that meal plan every day no matter how mundane, who wake up every day wishing it didn’t have to start with breakfast and who sit with overwhelming urges to run as long as it takes to work off the chocolate biscuit they had for snack, even they could be years away from being recovered.
The hardest part is perhaps that our bodies heal much quicker than our minds. As tissue builds back around our organs and slowly we fill out, get boobs and bums and curves and lumps and bumps, we appear as what the world love so much to tell us; well. “Oh you look so well!” “So good to see you looking better.” Switch the word to anything of that effect and it means exactly the same to us. “FAT”. But we know that you mean well, we can’t be angry with well-wishers simply for expressing their gladness to see us looking anything more than a bag of bones wrapped in clingfilm. So we grit our teeth, smile and repeat said comment in our heads for the next hour/day/week/month.
I tried on two skirts today and got my 2 year old niece to choose which one I should get. The two older ladies in the shop oohed and aahed in admiration and sparked up a conversation with my mum. I heard mumblings about my “pins” and about bigger girls coming in and bulging out of these skirts and yada yada. As I thanked them and turned to leave, one said: “Don’t ever change that figure”. Just 10 minutes before, mum had been begging me to get help, knowing full well I’m trying to hide a slight relapse. “Don’t ever change that figure,” indeed.
My perception of myself, how I look, is pretty screwed. I don’t look at myself in the mirror and feel repulsed at the obese monstrosity staring back and I don’t hate every inch of my body – not far off at times, but I can handle it – but I do grab at my tummy and see a roll of flab that shouldn’t be there, stare at my thighs and wish they were thinner and tug at the skin under my chin secretly hoping to wake up one day without a double chin. I’ve been ill for so many years with weight going up and down but never remaining at any kind of natural resting space, that I don’t even know if what I see is real or not. How can I trust something which has always ended me up in hospital? If I am that fat, how come I can fit in the same clothes I wore in the eating disorders unit? There has to be some rationality somewhere but you often have to dig around for it and you’re not in a position to do that when you’re wracked with guilt after eating.
The struggle really begins when the way you look doesn’t match the way you feel. At the moment, I feel far from ill but I know that I’m also far from well. The ladies in the shop illustrate perfectly the point that a person can look well, not knowing at all the intensity of my anxiety when it comes to almost anything food related. Once the body is anything more than emaciated, it becomes a mask and the struggle becomes invisible to the untrained eye. It’s difficult for the recovering anorexic or bulmic. When a skeletal person is crying into their bowl of cereal you can see why; they’re obviously scared to death of anything that might build on that fragility. When a healthy looking person is crying into a yoghurt pot, it makes no sense. They must have done it before, they must eat every day, look, they look fine, they must be fine.
So there we have it: Don’t judge a quivering wreck by his or her oh so healthy looking figure.
I read this and say, "yes," "yep," "hell yeah," "fucking hell yeah..." Her blog entry captures one of the dilemmas that has made recovery impossible for me in the past: once the body heals, the mind simultaneously does not, but people SEE health and assume that this health encompasses both body and mind. People do not respond to the outwardly healthy me in the way they respond to the outwardly sick me. People's expectations and perceptions of this new me change. Many act as though the anorexia never existed, and some say really stupid, triggering shit around me which makes continuing the fight for recovery so much harder than it already is.
Ilona is right: "Between being ill and being recovered there is an expanse of grey more vast than" anything one can envision, and that is why recovery can seem so elusive, and why, for so many years, I just gave up. When I had that outwardly healthy body, I couldn't seem to get anyone to understand just how much pain existed within me. I couldn't seem to get the help I needed. I began to believe that I needed to look like walking death in order to be worthy of the help I craved. And then when someone eventually heard my cries, I began refusing help, thinking that I needed to get even sicker and smaller to symbolize the depth of my pain.
Learning to live within the cavernous expanse of grey has taught me that anorexia cannot be my voice. If I am hurt, scared, frustrated, angry, etc..., I must vocalize my emotions and my needs. The anorexia requires silence to breed, and I must choose not to feed it. I must remain connected to the few who understand just how much of a bitch anorexia can be. Those individuals will listen even when I look healthy.
Cheers!
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