Young Women and Anorexia

The Physical and Mental Struggle to Look Thin

When you live through an eating disorder, something happens inside of you when you finally make it out alive. At least that’s the way I’ve experienced it. Today, I’m recovered, but this experience is never far from my mind.

I am healthy, they see. Oh, how I used to hate the word healthy, but now… now it’s actually what I want to be, what I hope to stay.

Grandma is visiting. She lives close by and visits regularly. I’m seven years old. I am “the healthy one.” I hear it all the time.

My sister is nicknamed “skinny minny” and alongside her I am “healthy.” Sadly, it seems that “healthy” is synonymous with “chubby”. At times, the word chubby slips out of someone’s mouth and is directed towards me. My mom always speaks out in my defense quickly, “She’s not chubby; she’s healthy.”

Body Image

I’m in my underwear, and I’m 15. I lie on my back in bed and stare at the skin scooping down between my hip bones. There’s a bigger space there now; less fat, more bone. That’s definitely what I’ve been going for - more bone. I feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Just minutes ago when I blinked open my eyes, I weighed myself. It’s become a morning ritual… wake up, take off every centimeter of my pajamas, but leave on my underwear, and jump on the scale. I’ve lost another pound. It gives me an indescribable high to know that I’ve lost yet another pound. I lie back down on my bed and run my fingers along the edge of my hipbones and my stomach rumbles; I love that sound. I get up and put on grey sweats and my favorite t-shirt worn thin, and then I bounce down the stairs. My mother glances up, eyes my baggy grey sweats and watches me as I take out the Cheerios and measure it in a cup. This is new, the way my mother watches me around food. I suppose she knows my routine by now - a cup of cereal, a half a banana, and milk.

As I’m eating, she still watches, and as usual it starts to annoy me. “What?” I say letting her know she’s bugging me. She walks over to me, and with wet dishtowel hands, she pinches my fat and says, “You’re getting too thin.” I squirm away from her, and yell, “Don’t!” I am ashamed and then angry that she’s been able to pinch anything at all, fat, skin, whatever it is, it feels absolutely disgusting to me. For some reason, I feel violated, infringed upon. How dare she!

“I am not.” I say, and I pick up my bowl of cereal and walk upstairs.

“You look sick,” she yells after me. I answer her with stomps on the stairs. I want to be thin. And if I “look sick” to my mother, then I must be getting somewhere. Something is working: the exercising, the way I’m eating, or my routine. Still, it doesn’t seem to be enough; I don’t feel thin yet, and I need to feel it.

Two hours later, I hear the lawn mower running so someone is mowing the lawn, probably my mother. I have to walk right past her. When she sees me, I can tell she’s livid. She yells at me, “Get over here and start weeding these carrots!”

Back when I was fat and lazy, and would argue more, she would come to get me and chase me out to the garden with a wooden spoon. I’ve become more obedient lately, just doing what she says, moving any direction she says. I listen to my mother, I except when it comes to food. I will have this one area that is my own now. I won’t let her tell me what to eat. When she does, I’ll be a rock, unmovable, unbending.

This makes me feel - though I would never tell my mom - amazing, powerful and strong. It’s a feeling I can’t explain, but one I want more of. My mother can tell to me when to work, when to get up, sit up, go to bed, or when to turn this way or that. She can move me to a new school, and even bring a loser stepfather into my life who will slap me on occasion, but I’ve discovered, she can’t tell me what to eat.

I don’t know why, but this pleases me a little, the fact that she’s perplexed. I’ve never seen my mother even slightly at a loss.

I arrive at the garden and my mom and I make brief eye contact. She points at the rows of green beans, while she’s absentmindedly weeding the tomatoes. “Start there,” she says. And I do.