**** Sorry, it’s been weeks since my last Weekend ED post! Thing have been busy and I’ve basically sort of been stuck in a writer’s block because it takes a lot of remembering and thought-organization to write an ED post. I guess I’ve just been running around so much with my new internship and all, so I haven’t really had the time to calm down and think. But I’ve had a 12-hour sleep last night, dreaming really silly dreams and I feel the urge to use my brain for more…productive ways. Ha.
By the way, loving my new internship. I always look forward to it the night before, even if it takes me a total of 3 hours of traffic to get back and forth the Beverly Hills office.
Hope everyone is having a great weekend! ****
The last time I left off my Weekend ED series, I had had a blessed time at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was on my way to Singapore. My heart was ready to recover, and I was really looking forward to having a productive time in Singapore, recovery-wise. But more than that, I just…wanted to be back home.
It had been about 7 years since I lived in Singapore when I visited it again in 2008 (but more than 10 years now), but I remembered all the randomest details of the place: the way people stood to the right on escalators, the number of the bus I always took to secondary school, the Singlish slang and curse words, the red altars and the fat lazy cats at hawker centers. It was such great fun recalling all the little pieces, but it was definitely with a twinge of melancholy as I realized even if I want to consider Singapore “home,” I’ve become an outsider, a nostalgic foreigner.
Because the plan was that I would stay in Singapore for about a month more than my parents, I stayed at the home of a deacon married couple from our Singapore church, Life Church & Missions.
Their names were Wengang and Liwen. It was slightly awkward being their house guest at first because even while I was living in Singapore, I didn’t get the chance to talk to them much (I was a little brat and in a phase where I rebelled against my dad for forcing me out of the Korean church I grew up in to go to his Chinese church).
But they were so incredibly welcoming and pleasant to me. I was to be their guest for a whole month, so they asked me to treat their home like mine. And I think that’s where the stumble started. I got way too comfortable at Wengang and Liwen’s house.
When I was in Kuala Lumpur making all the plans and lists of the stuff I’m going to eat and do (or not do), I had imagined myself as sort of an adventurous conqueror. I would march out to the scary world of outdoor eateries and food vendors, conquering my fear of carbs, fried food, sugar, etc., etc., and just…DO it. Eat it. Then eat again. And it would be scary of course, but it would be fun and glorious.
But I’d forgotten–or ignored– the fact that I would be staying in a home with a kitchen. A beautiful, airy, well-stocked kitchen, I might add. Wengang and Liwen rarely cooked, but they knew how to maintain a kitchen.
That threw my plans in disarray. It was so much easier to walk out and eat a fear food if I didn’t have the other easier option of staying home and cooking something safe and comfortable. In fact, for at least the first couple weeks, my determination to challenge myself each day pretty much dissolved.
Gain weight or lose weight, I guess diets are all the same. You always come up with an excuse, saying “Well, I’ll start tomorrow.”
Today, it’s too hot to walk outside to eat fried food (even though it wasn’t too hot to go out to walk for 2 hours and burn calories).
Today, I can’t eat something new because I have to finish the bag of sweet potatoes I just bought.
Today, I can’t again because the cottage cheese is on SALE! I HAVE to get it, in fact, I should get five cartons of them!
Today, obviously I have to finish the five cartons of cottage cheese before they expire.
Today, I really really really crave oatmeal. I mean, I should honor my cravings, right? Isn’t that part of recovery, to listen to my body? Oats is what my body wants.
Today, I’m just feeling unmotivated. Maybe I’ll cut myself some slack and the motivation will come back tomorrow.
Today. Uh, well. As long as there’s a tomorrow, it’s okay, right?
Well, that “tomorrow” still didn’t come two weeks into my stay in Singapore. It was so incredibly hard to just do something unfamiliar and frightening when I had so many other choices!
But at the same time, God kept sending me pokes and nudges to highlight the fact that I was NOT happy. I may be doing something comfortable and safe, but I was just simply not happy. I had no peace, and I felt so stuck. I felt like I could never ever get peace. If I challenged myself, I had to deal with this inner freak-outs that persisted for hours. But if I didn’t, I still had to deal with the pangs of guilt and anxiety that I’m prolonging this life-sucking limbo.
My first few weeks at Singapore was bittersweet at best. I absolutely did enjoy many moments. The people at Life Church & Missions were amazing to me. None of them really understood my struggles, but they were nonjudgemental, and they showed me nothing but love and care. Wengang and Liwen, though observing my disordered acts and listening to my excuses, didn’t try to push me beyond my limitations. In fact, they treated me like a little sister– someone to take care of, but as an equal, a person who deserved to be heard and respected as a family member and individual.
Even though I had stumbled once again, I realized that there was something different going on in me. It was a different sort of state I was in. I used to be able to stay in limbo and be absolutely fine with it. Of course there were brief moments when I hated the state I was in, but those moments of self-awareness was short and rare. I could tolerate my limbo state, and I didn’t even seem to mind that this might be me–forever.
But in Singapore, I just wasn’t okay with it at all. I found myself in deeper anguish and pain, but it was actually a good struggle, because that meant inside me, I just couldn’t stand ED anymore. The manifestations of ED actions and speech sickened me, and I found myself increasingly losing my temper at ED…and that almost never happened before! Most of the time, if I was angry about something related to ED, it was directed at myself, at my parents, at God, whoever and whatever I could blame…everyone, that is, except ED.
That “Holy shit, F**K you, ED” moment I had when I saw myself in Ted was now not a sudden revelation but a constant awareness. And it was driving me crazy. I had to do something about it.
The emotion was aggravated by all the other incidents that happened while I was in Singapore. I had a meet up with my old secondary school buddies. The plan was to meet my two secondary school best friends for dinner, but somehow before I knew it, it turned into a big gathering. I used to be in a gymnastics team at school, which is how my friends and I met. We got super close because of the long hours of practices together, and now my friends had invited all the former gymnastic team members to join us in our dinner. Why not? It sounded like a good idea. Sophia’s here. We might as well have a big reunion!
And so we did, over a steamboat buffet. Not everyone could attend, but my two previous crushes did.
It sucked as hell. Who wants to meet a former crush looking the way I did, half-bald with sunken cheeks? They couldn’t recognize me. One of them actually stuck his hand out to shake mine, saying, “Hello, my name is xxx. What’s yours?”
…..Awkward silence…..
“Ai, it’s Sophia lah,” my friend exclaimed. And she turned to me and apologized profusely. “Sorry, I didn’t tell him…that…you got very skinny…”
You mean about my anorexia. Great.
I remembered that the last time I was here in Singapore in 2006, I had lied to my two friends that I was “sick” from gastrointestinal problems, not eating disorder. We went on a bathroom trip, in which I revealed to them that my emaciation was from a psychological disease, not a physical one. They had suspected that all along, of course.
“Take care of yourself, Sophia,” one of my friends told me. “You know, you should eat more. You didn’t eat much today.”
What?! I kind of stared at her, flabbergasted. Oh yes I did! In fact, I’m pretty sure I ingested too much food because I feel like a fat cow right now with my tummy expanded!
“Oh don’t worry,” I told her. “I eat five to six times a day. I can’t eat too much at a time because my stomach shrunk so much.” Which was kind of true.
But on my way back home, I knew my friend was right. By now I had a very messed up idea of what “eating a lot” meant. Plus, I knew my friends noticed that I avoided all the carby foods and only ate the vegetables and some low fat proteins. I had just basically stuffed myself with fibrous vegetables and random pieces of fish and meat. And for too long, I had considered that a meal.
But here’s another more positive incident: I met my primary school best friend, Jingwen.
We met at the Orchard MRT station, and instantly our previous connection sparkled. Jingwen is one of the oldest and bestest friend. In fact, she was the first friend I led to accept Christ. Jingwen is not someone who skips around the subject and accepts bullshit (which is one of the reasons why we became fast friends). The moment she saw me, she screamed, “Aiyo!!!! You’re so skinny!” and then said, “I feel like crying.”
When a friend like Jingwen says something so outright to you like that…it actually is quite comforting and in a way, heartwarming. We talked. A lot. With Jingwen, I could talk about everything openly, from spiritual matters to trivial gossip.
It felt…so spiriting and enlivening to finally have a friend my age again. Although I’ve had so many great people around me, I had few friends within my generation with whom I could just be a regular 20-year-old. Because I dropped out of college, and all my previous friends were in college (and not to mention the fact that I pretty much pushed them all away), most of the time my only companions were my parents and the 40-something sisters and brothers in church. Of course they were great to me, but I still needed someone my age with whom I can just act my age and have fun.
Despite the initial stumbles, it became clear to me that I was in a different place right now, and not just because I was in Singapore. But time flew way too fast. Before I knew it, I had only a month left before I had to return home to northern Virginia. Spring semester college awaited (I had deferred my admission to USC for a semester for obvious reasons). And honestly, I wasn’t ready.
I had to stay in Singapore. Just for a bit more. Somehow…it just felt right here. Somehow…I knew something good will happen here.
Questions to Ponder:
1) What excuses do you make to push off your recovery to “tomorrow”? What do you think you can do to counteract those excuses?
2) Having a choice is so hard in recovery. How do you ensure you make the right one each time? What do you do if you happened to make the wrong one?
3) Let’s spill it out…what embarrassing incidents have ED gotten you into?
Related posts:
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Jingwen sounds awesome
Oh the excuses! I cannot believe what a pro I was at coming up for excuses for both myself AND others in explaining why I wouldn’t touch the bread basket, why I had to soak the oil out of my vegetables…basically everything. All I can say is that I am so relieved to not have that neuroticism (sp?) about me anymore…in all honesty, it really is embarrassing since after all most people know you’re making excuses to cover up your illness.
During winter break my freshman year of college, I was home with my parents going to a IOP treatment in the day since I’d relapsed again and we ran into a neighbour at Safeway who I probably hadn’t seen for over a year and a half (so since before I initially developed anorexia)- my father and I were grocery shopping and we’d just had a fight in the car about treatment/food/somethingrather so it was a little awkward having to act chummy around the neighbour- who then just looked at me and said, “WOW you’re one lucky girl, looks like you’ve lost the freshman fifteen instead of gaining it!” and continued to make some other uneducated congratulatory comments (quite sick considering how underweight i was). Needless to say it was ridiculously awkward and when we got home that day I heard my father ranting at how pissed he was at our neighbour for being such a “imbecile.”
urgh, I had a stranger do that to me once too. She said I was “lucky” I’m so slim when I was just seriously and obviously sick. Did your dad really use that word “imbecile?” Hee hee.
Yeah he did…it was pretty funny because my dad is very adamant about not every swearing…I don’t think I’ve even ever heard him say damn or sh*t.
Off-topic, but I’m so glad you’re loving the new internship!
hi sophia, just wanted to say hello and tell you that your story just proves to show how marvelous our God is. Damn, HE works in mysterious ways and brought you sto singapore for a reason. Thank you for sharing your heart with us.
xoxo
“Having a choice in recovery is so hard.”
Exactly. I think that defines most of my recovery struggles, as given a choice, I will almost always default to what I know and what is comfortable. Then the excuses and justifications start. Yes, I might eat more than a “normal” person, but I know it’s still not enough, etc/
That’s what makes actual treatment hard–you’re in a hospital with NO choice, so you have to do what you need to do. But as soon as you get home, you’re back to having to push yourself to do what feels completely contradictory to what you think you want to do. In other words, when given the choice, you have to pick what feels wrong, even though it’s right. Anyway, great point, and I’ve found that you have to keep yourself centered and remember that it IS a choice. We sometimes have to make a hard decision–sometimes every single hour–because we know it’s what we need to do. It might not be what we want or what others have to do, but for us, we can make that healthy choice.
Good Sunday morning to you Sophia.
3 hours in traffic – auggggggggh!
Wengang and Liwen sounds like wonderful people.
All of the reasons you listed not to start – are similar to reasons I’ve used not to diet.
The sad thing? All the foods you were eating to stay skinny – they are the ones I have to start to eat to stop being fat!!!!!
200 pounds at 5’8″ is not healthy for me.
1) Haha, what DON’T I use? ‘I’m might eat something scary at dinner, I need to compensate now’ ‘I’ll have a Fortisip later and make it up’ ‘I ate loads yesterday’ ‘I’ll eat loads tomorrow’ ‘I don’t feel motivated today, I should give myself a day off’ ‘Weigh in isn’t for ages yet, it doesn’t matter’ ‘I eat enough anyway’ ‘Nothing’s wrong with me’
I’m only just grasping that I cannot keep eating less just because at some point I may possibly have to eat a little bit more.
2) I… don’t know. I found the hospital easier in a way because it was just ‘Hi! This is your dinner. Eat it.’ But at home it’s like pick meal -> change mind -> change mind back -> calculate values -> get meal -> feel guilty that I didn’t eat something lower -> feel guilty that I ate so much -> plan next meal.
3) Various fights at pubs etc, having to explain why I was in hospital to people, people messaging me, asking ‘omg are u relly annarexic?!’… various incidents with hiding food (and occasionally forgetting I had done so), hideous events caused by overuse of chewing gum or drinking too much water. Right now though, it’s college- eating in front of people who I really want to like me like I’m from another planet. They’ve commented on it a few times, but I still pick and scrape things off and nibble and take forever.
Man, that comment was long and whiny. Sorry! I mean, I’m doing way better than I used to. But making choices was the thing I always found hardest about recovery. If someone goes ‘you WILL eat this!’, I can cope. But if they go ‘it’s up to you, you can eat that if you want’… it’s harder, y’know?
Loving seeing weekend ED series back!
Thank you for the inspiring words, Sophia. It comes at a needed time for me.
I think all the excuses you gave are the ones I’ve given. Above all, we want to get away from pain, and away from anxiety. And often, the cycle of exercise, eat, and sitting ALONE amidst food leads to overwhelming anxiety. As I continue to “fight back,” I am finding more and more that I can identify a real WANT to do away with this pattern, and to overcome anxiety by getting away from a cycle of “being in recovery.” And after three years of beating around the bush, I am realizing this can only happen when recovery has already occurred. I want to feel content to SIT, watch television, or read without thinking about food, but that’s only going to happen when I no longer make my desire for control over food and diet a priority.
ED has always gotten me into many embarrassing moments, but the most awkward ones always seem to be when I see someone I have or had not seen in years. It is especially difficult when I’ve come across someone who may have been overweight, and now seems healthy and happy at an average or moderate weight. And me? Well, I am, uh, yea…
It’s especially horrible to see other guys I know who used to be skinny or scrawny, and now are jacked and more athletic than me. It’s almost like they look at me and go “what the fuck, how pathetic” (excuse my language, but it’s the language of guys). One of the worst occasions came when it had actually all just gotten started some three years ago. I was in ROTC then, and they gave a special ‘message’ after a physical training session in which they reminded us that we all “must eat to restore your body and make physical gains.” After having once been the most physically dominating cadet in our freshmen class, I had fallen off as a sophomore and was barely passing my tests, having lost some 20 pounds at that point. I always got the sense everyone knew, and now, it seems like it was an ugly prelude to the “knowing” that I’m sure my friends and family have had for the last few years.
1) What excuses do you make to push off your recovery to “tomorrow”? What do you think you can do to counteract those excuses?
I don’t have excuses so much as constant doubt. Is this really right? Is this really wrong? Do I really want to? Yes. No. Maybe.
2) Having a choice is so hard in recovery. How do you ensure you make the right one each time? What do you do if you happened to make the wrong one?
No idea. Like I just said, Constant doubt. All I can do is not look back and regret something once it is done. If it is wrong, just figure out how to do differently next time.
3) Let’s spill it out…what embarrassing incidents have ED gotten you into?
After moving to a different state then coming back for Christmas, my dad my step-mom and her family saw me in my worst state. My dad and step-mom didn’t know anything that was going on and were shocked to see how skeletal I’d become. We were at a family Christmas Eve party and it was obvious that my stepmom’s family was whispering and talking about me, telling me to gain weight and pushing food at me. My Dad and Step-mom grew angrier and angrier at them. We left the party, I was somewhat embarassed, but honestly I was so brain-dead and tired, I didn’t have enough energy to really realize how bad it was.
I’ve made sure to never act out in public as far as my eating disorder. I keep all of my emotions well hidden and simply shut down. That and rarely go out. However when I would wander out and around food places or mall food courts people would offer to buy me food almost everytime. I’d be walking down our dirt road a mile or two from home and mom’s with kids in their car would offer me a ride home which I would decline. I’m not sure if it counts as embarassment, but I can recognize that it is things most people would not normally do. I don’t really get embarassed…I just go blank. I know my Grandma finds it embarassing though, while I could careless. She would tell me she’d go and buy me clothes that fit, not ones that were big on me,baggy, old looking, worn. faded etcetera. She said it made her feel like people though she didn’t feed or clothe me properly.
Tomorrow is that special day…the day when everything is going to be okay…when you will finally be happy…when food will no longer control your life. Tomorrow is an illusion that keeps you perpetuating the same ED cycle because you always have tomorrow!
I hate choice. I wish that I couldn’t make any decisions and I had a babysitter to make sure I behaved but that’s not life nor is it realistic. But I always think that I make the wrong choice (when it comes to recovery and my eating habits) so I think I’ve become a self fulfilling prophecy because I just expect that I will make the wrong choice.
Hello, i wanted to say that i really enjoy reading your posts, as i am recovering from an ED too
But i kind of wondered…did you really weigh 23kg at your lowest?
My lowest was way bigger than that and my blood tests were pretty bad and BMI of 13, i heard that if one’s BMI is under 13 the person is dead. But you are alive and kicking!
Yes, that was my lowest and actually, my blood tests has always come out fine except for low levels in calcium, zinc and iron. I had been under BMI 13 for 2 years but still managed to gain back health. Guess science can never be precise about the miracle of the human body.
23kg is… mental. Absolutely mental. How tall are you, if you don’t mind me asking?
I know people have reached very low BMIs and survived, but I’m sure you know you’re so very lucky to do so. So inspirational too
x
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