But looking back, I find a few common themes in all the times I drifted off from the path of recovery. One of them, perhaps the biggest reason of all, is the inability to let go completely. I always tried to make compromises with ED. But 100 percent of the time, ED got the better bargain.

Let me first wind forward again to the time I was hospitalized at Northwestern, because there is an individual I need to thank wholeheartedly.

That individual was a woman named Danielle Yung (Chinese name is Xiao Xuong, which literally translates to “Little Bear”).

Danielle is a disciple of my dad’s. She’s a middle-aged woman living in Schaumburg (home also to my dear friend Christina) who listens to all of my dad’s sermons and invited him many times to preach at her own church. Prior to entering Northwestern, I had never met this lady before. But because she lives close enough to my university, and because she insisted, I got introduced to her. I even spent the first few days before school started at her house, and she gave me her daughter’s  old college dorm mini-fridge.

This is true for every person in the world: You truly discover who the angels in your life are when you face real hardship. Danielle was one of my angels.

When I got hospitalized, she was the first one to rush to the hospital to see me. During the three days I spent in the hospital, she drove over an hour’s commute and then stayed by me the whole day, talking, praying, and singing hymns with me. I will never, ever forget her kindness and genuine concern for me. Even now, we keep in touch via phone calls, and every year, she remembers my birthday and sends me gifts. I think of her as my fairy godmother.

I remember the first days of my hospitalization, I was just so desperate to get better, I was willing to eat just about anything. Well, anything except…junk. “I need to get better,” I would tell myself. “I need to treat my body well! That means no crap shall enter my body! I’ll only allow good, wholesome, nutritious foods!” 

But  the hospital basically offered the same boring, bland foods every day, and I disliked how it had so little healthy options. No whole grain pasta? No brown rice? And how is a vegetable serving only worth 1/2 cup of iceberg lettuce? When I complained about the lack of edible options in the hospital, Danielle immediately offered to cook something for me. I knew exactly what I desperately wanted. But I told her I only wanted two things: salmon and sweet potatoes.

I somehow wasn’t able to ask for my third cravings, which was bagel and cream cheese. The reason? I was afraid she would get me a plain or cinnamon-raisin bagel instead of a whole grain one.

You may be wondering why I even mention this. So what if you didn’t ask for the  bagel?  You ask. What is the big freaking deal?

The big freaking deal is my inability. I was putting a restriction on myself: no simple carbs. I could easily ask Danielle for the salmon and sweet potato, because I knew they were “good” for me. But I just couldn’t ask for a bagel, because it is a “bad” food. Already I was clearly labeling food into “good” and “bad” categories. I wasn’t ready to recover. I wasn’t ready to gain back normal eating behaviors. All I wanted, was to get well enough to survive.

In other words, I wasn’t ready to go the whole mile. I wasn’t ready to let go of my eating disorder; I wanted to go on living with my eating disorder.

The pathetic thing was that I really, really craved a bagel. A goddamn thick, chewy bagel smeared generously with smooth, tangy cream cheese. Basically, that was all I could think about. It was driving me crazy, and I couldn’t find pleasure in other foods, other than the salmon and sweet potatoes that Danielle so kindly brought in each day.

Finally, one afternoon, I walked down to the hospital cafeteria, determined to end this craving.

But it took several hours of mental preparation beforehand, in which I was debating with myself, gearing up my courage and determination to face that Big Bad Scary Bagel. The first hour, I argued with myself that I didn’t need one, and then the next hour, I promised myself that I would just get half a bagel, no cream cheese, and then finally, I gradually haggled up to a full bagel, with maybe just a thin spread of light cream cheese.

As I tottered down to the cafeteria, my heart was racing, my blood was pumping loudly in my head, and my hands were twitching nervously. You would have thought I was going to the execution room, when all I wanted was a freaking bagel. With cream cheese.

I arrived at the cafeteria. My anxious eyes spied the  bagel basket. I walked tentatively, yet ridiculously excitedly, over to the basket. I examined each bagel lying in the basket. Cinnamon raisin. Sesame. Poppy seed. Plain. Asiago cheese.

No whole grain.
No whole grain.
NO WHOLE GRAIN!!!

Both an enormous sense of relief and a crush of disappointment collided and rippled all sorts of conflicting thoughts and emotions within me.

Well there you go, a voice inside me smirked. No whole grain. You can’t get any bagel now. But at least you tried. You tried, and that’s all that matters.

I didn’t even consider getting the other bagel options. I couldn’t even really imagine allowing myself to eat something that wasn’t “healthy” and “nutritious”. That was how messed up my mind was at the time. But since I was there anyway, I bought a bottle of diet coke and went back up to my ward.

Yes, I realize the contradiction here. Didn’t I just not get any bagel because I would only allow “good” food into my body? What’s that carcinogenic diet coke for, then?

Well, here reveals my true reason behind my food labeling: In truth, I was simply just afraid of weight gain. But I knew I had to gain weight in order to get “better”…thus, my compromise was that I would eat to gain, but if I’m going to gain, then dammit, I’m going to gain it in the most minimal way, with the foods I deem to be “right” for my body. And diet coke passed the test, because it has no calories and thus not so… “bad.”

Somehow, I saw no reason to challenge these thoughts of mine. Until Danielle spoke up.

I got into a small argument with Danielle over a oatmeal raisin cookie.

The hospital menu always provided a dessert option: cookie, pudding, slice of cake, graham crackers. I always asked for no dessert at all. I just didn’t want any temptation staring at me in the face, and somehow the nutritionist never did minded, so long as I got in enough calories and hit all the required food components.

But one evening, the hospital kitchen messed up and they brought me an oatmeal raisin cookie for dessert. Danielle happened to me sitting next to me, and she watched as I immediately tossed the cookie off to the far side of the tray as though it was leprous.

“Don’t you want that cookie?” Danielle asked.

“No,” I said, staring at the offensive cookie disdainfully. “It’s not good for me.”

“Why do you say that?” Danielle asked again. “It’s still a food that you can digest. It’s got fat, carbohydrates, and a bit of protein, all nutrients that your body needs right now.”

“I just don’t like cookies, okay?” I started getting agitated. I didn’t like it when people questioned my eating habits. Didn’t she understand that I needed nutritious food right now? That if all my body needed was fat and carbs, I would be pigging out on donuts and cheeseburgers right now! No, what my body needed right now, was nutrients!! I didn’t want to just fatten up, I wanted to gain health! Does the word “health” mean anything to you!?!

But Danielle was persistent. When a random doctor passed by my room, she called him in. “What are your thoughts on eating a cookie?” She asked the bewildered doctor. “Can she eat a cookie?”

The doctor eyed me carefully. “A cookie isn’t going to kill you,” He told me. “And it certainly isn’t bad for you. In fact, I highly recommend treating yourself to cookies, in addition to a regular diet.”

I wanted to cry, I was so freaking mad. Why the hell was everyone trying to stuff these evil foods into my face? Did they think I was freaking stupid!? Haven’t I been reading up on nutrition for all these years? Did they really expect me to believe that sugar and butter and white refined flours were good for me? All they are trying to do is fatten me up!!!

In the end, I still refused to eat the cookie. Danielle ate it for me, just to show me that it was entirely harmless (oh, she’s a stubborn one!). I breathed out in relief that the cookie was gone, and made a mental note to toss out future desserts before Danielle noticed to avoid future confrontations. It really did not occur to me how disordered that was.

All I knew was that I was willing to get better. And at that time, that seemed enough for me. I just needed to get better so that I could return to Northwestern University.

Danielle, however, realized that day that there was more to an eating disorder than just not eating. She saw me eat up her salmon and sweet potato. But she also saw me struggling to eat a small oatmeal raisin cookie. As someone who had never had any experiences or encounters with eating disorders, Danielle later told me that was the day she discovered a whole new layer to eating disorders, and realized the complexity of this disease.

I want to thank Danielle. I want to thank her for challenging me that day, and even though she couldn’t change the way I thought that day, she spoke up when she realized something was not right. I also dearly want to thank her for all her prayers.

You see, Danielle touched something in me. I had only known her for about a month, yet she showered so much love on me, as though I was her own daughter. And that impacted me more than any lecture about nutrition. In addition to her care and affection, she shared with me her own stories.

About a couple decades ago, Danielle’s husband cheated on her and left her so grieved and embittered that she was paralyzed for days, crying unstoppably at home by herself. But through the gospel of Jesus Christ, she recovered back her life and her joy, even being able to forgive her ex-husband. Now, she counsels a lot of women in her church, taking care of them and teaching them the gospel.

Danielle’s story cut deep into my heart, and filled me with hope for my own recovery. It also shed a yearning inside me to know Christ the way she does, and experience Him the way she did. Though I only had a few days with her, those few days were surprisingly peaceful for me because of her presence and testimonies. Most of what she told me I had already heard from my parents before, but it was yet a different feeling to hear these stories from someone else, at that particular situation.