**** Happy Mother’s Day, everyone! I hope you all gave your mommies a kiss and a hug. I haven’t since my mom is a whole America away, so all of you who live close enough to your mother to be able to do that, I’m super jealous of you.

So…I was buying cheese from the grocery store today morning, and this cashier said to me, “Happy Mother’s Day, if you’re a mother!” Uh…do I look like a mother? That kind of made me start wondering if I look old?! That said, I was dressed in rumpled clothes, my hair was unbrushed as always, and there were probably dark circles under my eyes, so maybe she thought I could pass off as a mother of a newborn? Either way, I felt totally old. Maybe my mother is right and I should start putting on creams and lotions and all the other fancy girly stuff women slather on their faces.

Anyway, I just want to add, before I continue with my Weekend ED post that despite what I may write here, my relationship with my parents is great and what happened here was four whole years ago. To catch up with my previous ED posts, please refer to my Weekend ED Series Page. ****

 

Every human being, whether consciously or unconsciously, has a sense of purpose in their life.

It is this purpose that keeps that you going, that leads you to do what you do, say what you say, like what you like. It may be a purpose that shifts and alters as you go through the processes of life. It might be an intermix of different purposes, or perhaps just a simple basic one like giving yourself pleasure. It can be something ambitious and self-serving like earning money and sending your kids to Harvard, or a charitable one like fighting for human rights. Whatever it is, everyone has some kind of purpose in their life.

But when you lose that purpose…well, there is simply nothing as frightening as that sensation of having no direction and meaning to your life.

After I returned from my check-up at Northwestern University, I found myself spending less and less time at home. Not because I was busy at work at Olive Garden, but because I couldn’t stand being at home. I felt like I was constantly being observed and monitored by my parents.

Whether that was true or not, it was mostly from my own paranoia and guilt in knowing that what I was doing was not right. My daily routine was highly disordered; and my food rules were getting stricter and stricter. I really wanted to avoid all meals with my parents, because each time they started nagging about my weight or eating habits, it was like there was a silent scream deep within the pit of my stomach welling up and threatening to break open into a high-pitched, ear-shattering wail of frustration and rage.

I knew my dad would never stand for that kind of disrespect, so I had to reign my emotions in and that struggle for self-control was wearing me out. Thus I just tried to avoid all contact with my parents. I was out the door the moment I woke up. I would always exercise for a couple hours a day, then hang out at the library or Borders bookstore or Whole Foods, and then go to work at Olive Garden, or vice versa. Either way, I was out the whole day and didn’t want to be  back home until I knew my parents had already eaten dinner or was out for a church meeting.

I can’t really explain my relationship with my parents at the time, because everything was mired heavily with my eating disorder. I want to first flat out say that my parents are the best parents in the world, and they tried very, very hard to support and understand me. But there was of course a limit. After all, how can you understand an mental disorder? You can’t. The only person they could understand was the daughter they had given birth to and raised, but that daughter was gone.

Instead, a really disturbed and messed up spirit seemed to possess me. I was a confused soul at the time who was devising all kinds of cunning ways to regain back the Anorexia that I felt I had lost because of my weight gain and bingeing. The only thing identity I had for a long time was Anorexia, and without it, I was at a loss of what to do with myself. I didn’t even know what to think, how to react, how to interact normally.

But the only thing I had left at the time, was the promise of college. College was my purpose of life.

Yet in a sick way, the image of college for me was befuddled with a desire to recover Anorexia. I didn’t really actively think it as that at the time, but now I know, clearly, that I equated going back to college as freedom to pursue my eating disordered interests. Finally, I could do what I wanted, eat what I wanted, when I wanted, however I wanted. That was college for me. Freedom to be Anorexic again.

At that time, I was also slowly distancing away from God. I couldn’t pay attention during service because I was too absorbed in my hunger and anticipation for my evening nut binge. My passion to know and experience God had dissipated as my passion to recover back my eating disorder increased. The idolatry of food and weight had taken up too much of my mind and soul. A broken physiology and psychology = a broken spirituality as well.

However, even as I had twisted reasons for wanting to return to college, I also in a contradictory way was convinced that college would finalize my recovery. I somehow told myself that if only I could return back to a normal college lifestyle and surround myself with contemporary friends, I would be able to stop thinking about food so much, and instead learn to enjoy life. Yes, I truly believed that college was my ticket out of this hellhole I was in.

Imagine the angst and despair I felt when I received that letter from Northwestern.

I don’t remember exactly which month or date it was that Northwestern sent me the “rejection letter.” Those few months were a messy blur. All I remember is opening that letter with the Northwestern stamp on it, and reading silently with a still heart.

I also don’t remember the exact words on that letter. I think I stashed it somewhere in my room back at Northern Virginia. But basically, the school told me that though my physical and mental condition seemed adequate, they would not let me come back unless I showed them proof that I had admitted into an in-patient treatment program for at least two weeks. Or was it six weeks? I don’t know. It didn’t matter, because there was no way I could go to a treatment center. I didn’t have insurance. I can’t pay $1000+ a day for weeks at a treatment center that cannot even guarantee my recovery.

It was over. The conditions that Northwestern laid out for me was bullshit. They simply didn’t want me back.

And why would they want me? I was fucking Anorexic—or at least, semi-Anorexic and now binge-eater. Why would they want to take a chance with me, and continue to give me a full scholarship, when there are loads of other healthy, brilliant students begging to be let in?

My parents were present while I was reading the letter.

“What does it say?” they asked in anticipation and hope, and then became quiet when they saw the expression on my face.

I tried to act nonchalant. “They don’t want me back,” I said, my voice strangely sounding bright. “I can’t go back. Ever.”

And then I dropped the letter on the dining table, and walked out into the living room, where I promptly burst into tears.

It wasn’t a howling cry, but a choking one. I kept myself to remain silent, because somehow I didn’t think I even deserved to cry out loud. I deserved all this. I was a worthless, unwanted piece of shit. For a while, I just stood there paralyzed, tears flowing and flowing. It was like I suddenly didn’t know what to do with myself. I was lost. I literally lost the whole purpose of my life.

My dad came out into the living room after reading the letter. I quickly went up to my room and just cried and cried.

I cried for days. Literally. My eyes and cheeks were sore and swollen from crying. I never knew I could have so much salty, stinging water in my tear ducts.

I cried while I slept. I cried when I woke up and realized I would never go back to Northwestern. I cried as I still mechanically walked out the house and went for my daily run. I cried while I walked the streets to Olive Garden. I cried while I sat at Whole Foods. That’s really all I remember doing. I cried.

Even so, I still religiously carried on with the same daily routine like a machine. I couldn’t stop, because I seriously did not know what to do with myself. My dad told me he would appeal to the dean if I wanted him to. But I didn’t want him to. I suddenly realized I didn’t even want to go back to Northwestern anymore. Why would I want to, when they clearly didn’t want me? I didn’t want to ingratiate myself, or even lie anymore.

Northwestern was right. I was not recovered. I got what I deserved. I hated, abhorred, loathed myself. It was during that time that I truly wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to torture myself, I wanted to feel pain.

So after a week of continuous crying, I gradually gained back a renewed sense of purpose: to be sick again. And this time, there wouldn’t even be a denial. I would be sick again, knowing full well what I was doing to myself.

Why? Because I deserved it. I deserved to die. There was no joy in my life except to make myself utterly miserable.

When you hate yourself that much, you lose all ability to love. How can you love others, when you can’t even love or accept yourself? Thus at the same time that I was burning with boiling self-loathing, I also directed my bitterness and anger at God and my parents. Even as I blamed myself for everything, I also blamed God and my parents.

In essence, I felt betrayed. I felt like they promised me happiness and freedom with recovery, but all I got from recovery was unsightly, unwanted weight and waves of emotional turmoil. I was not happy, and I certainly was not free. In the course of “recovery” I found myself enslaved by various new food rules and habits, but primarily, I lost my self-control.

Remembering all the times I had to force myself to eat, persuade myself to embrace additional pounds and struggle to do what I thought would be pleasing to God and my parents, I felt like I got the raw end of the deal. My parents got what they wanted: I gained weight. So what the fuck did I get? A big fat fucking NEGATIVE. Not only did I not get the physical and emotional health that God and my parents told me I would, I wasn’t even a clear-cut Anorexic anymore. I was a big freaking failure all around.

I want to make it clear that I’m not justifying my plunge back into relapse. I’m just giving an honest snapshot of my thoughts and emotions at the time; I’m copy and pasting the dialogue that was running through my very messed up head four years ago.

I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous it is to let a negative thought infect your mind, and to let it fester. It’s like a cancer cell that multiplies exponentially until one day, it consumes you and shuts down all functions in your body. The cancer cell of blame, anger and bitterness had punctured my soul. From then on, it was a steep downhill.

 

Questions to Ponder:

1) Do you think that many eating disordered individuals fear recovery because they fear losing the purpose of their life (i.e., their eating disorder)? This could probably be applied to all sorts of issues other than food issues.

2) Have you ever felt a sense of disappointment at how unglamorous recovery may be? How do/did you deal with continuing on with a normal life, and did  you regain a new sense of purpose in your life?

3) Who did/do you blame most for your issues? Do you feel that sort of blame has been detrimental to you in any way?

Related posts:

1. Weekend ED Series: The 5 Holes
2. ED Weekend Series: The Black Swan
3. Weekend ED Series: The Prodigal Daughter
4. Weekend ED Series: Week before Singapore
5. Weekend ED Series: A Letter

Tagged as: eating disorders