PrettyThin

Maybe I was born this way...

My mother told me that even as a baby I would stop eating if things were stressful.   I was about five years old when I first started restricting what I ate for multiple days in a row. My parents noticed when I seemed stressed, that I lost my appetite. At that time my step father was in the process of adopting me so there were multiple home visits and trips to speak with the judge. While I understood that being adopted was a positive thing, at the time I was afraid the court would decide that I was flawed and therefore not eligible to be adopted.  This behavior continued throughout my childhood. My mother and I are very close and I have always been very honest with her. Even at that young age when she asked why I wasn’t eating, the answer was that my stomach hurt and I wasn’t hungry, it was never about my weight.


Originally our family doctor said it was simply my version of a coping mechanism and that I would out grow it. As I entered junior high, I became more aware of the girls around me and the changes in their bodies. Other girls were developing and I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like I belonged physically or emotionally and I began to think of myself as an outcast.  Some of my classmates would shove me in my locker and then leave me there. I was placed in trashcans and I was often called small fry. Sitting at lunch was uncomfortable so I would sit and hide in the bathroom.  I wasn’t even conscious of the fact I wasn’t eating lunch but simply happy to be away from everyone else.


 I was very small and I had always been much smaller than the other girls in my class. My small stature led me to start gymnastics. The sport did not cause an eating disorder. Quite the opposite, I finally found a place where I thought I belonged. I moved up quickly and entered into team and began training more hours per week and I made the school cheerleading squad around the same time.  Because of the hours that I was training, I would leave school and go to practice where I would remain until around 8 at night. From gym I would need to do my homework and then go to bed. Again it wasn’t a conscious plan but it was easy to not eat breakfast because my parents were at work and we would carpool. I would skip lunch and then straight to practice. When asked if I ate on the way to practice, I would say I had a big lunch and didn’t need a snack. From practice home, I would lie and say I had a snack on the way to gym. No one noticed because the carpool was different to each place.  I was able to maintain this for about two years and I only ate when I felt I had to, like a family dinner or if it seemed like someone was catching on.


I started to develop a lot of injuries and I was sick all of the time, I missed a ridiculous amount of school.  Going into the summer of my freshmen year of high school, I stopped gymnastics and went to stay with my grandparents in Florida. I went from about 90 lbs of solid muscle and being built like a boy to 120 lb woman with hips and C cup breasts. It was hard to adjust from being one of the smallest girls in my class to looking like everyone else. I missed being tiny, I missed being small fry- it was how I identified with myself. I was not prepared for the changes my body went through and neither were my classmates. I came back from Florida and my friends joked that I had gotten breast implants. While they acted jealous of how I developed, they didn’t know that I hated my body.  It was foreign to me and I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I stopped eating again in an attempt to get my body back to what was familiar. I began restricting everything I ate and I would fill myself up with bottles of water.  My friends started to notice that I wasn’t eating and I was caught at a crossroads. I knew girls who purged and used laxatives so I decided to try it.

I was surprised how easy it was to hide the fact I was purging at first. I never had to use my finger or a tooth brush to purge. Just thinking about the fat on my body was enough. The idea of getting bigger, the site of what I thought was my grotesque body was enough. I would eat, typically picking at my plate but eating just enough that people wouldn’t notice and then head straight to the bathroom. I thought no one had noticed but my family did. Again I was taken to the doctor, this time my mom was told it was normal behavior and that is what teenage girls do. I was a healthy weight; in fact I could even loose a few pounds and be okay. This started my love/hate relationship with the body mass index. My BMI said I could lose weight, why not take more laxatives. My BMI is normal; therefore, I am a fat pig and do not deserve to be happy. I still hate the BMI but I will go into that later.


At this point my brain was starving. I was an irrational and emotional mess. I was paranoid of getting fat, I thought everyone was staring at me and judging me. I was convinced that I would never be loved and that I didn’t deserve love. I was struggling to concentrate and to remember things. I still had good grades in school but it was very difficult. Although I wasn’t in gymnastics, I was still doing cheerleading and my body was riddled with stress fractures. I developed ulcers in my stomach and my esophagus that would double me over in pain. I became laxative dependent and it caused damage to my intestines.  I would fight with my parents and I was convinced that they hated me and wanted to ruin my life (which is normal for teenagers) but I also thought my teachers and coaches hated me too. I became withdrawn and I didn’t want to hang out with my friends anymore. I also became numb to the world. Purging became like a drug, it was the only thing that would make me feel better, and the only thing that made me feel at all.


 I started cutting for the same reason. Just so I could feel something…anything. I lost most of my good friends, because I was “too busy” for them or because I wasn’t able to be a good friend because I was so absorbed with my body and how much I hated it. I was so absorbed with my own version of hell that no one else really existed. I would forget important things like my family and friends’ birthdays or to show up for an appointment. I reached a point where I couldn’t think clearly and I could barely communicate with those around me. My thoughts were so scrambled and I couldn’t even put things into words.

  

I remember clearly the day it happened, I was a sophomore and cheering at a basketball game in February. It was a Friday evening and my chest had been hurting all day.  I felt out of breath and simply used my inhaler more than usual but it wasn’t helping. My back was sore and I was taking ibuprofen like it was candy but the pain wouldn’t go away. We preformed at half time and then the world started to go black. I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I started to panic and then an aspirin was being shoved down my throat and I was forced to lie down. My secret wasn’t so secret after all. One of the parents, who was active at the school, had caught on to what I was doing. Luckily he recognized I was having a heart attack. He took action and he saved my life. I remember being in the hospital and the doctors and nurses couldn’t understand how a sixteen year old was having a heart attack. I had an enlarged pericardium, the sack that surrounds the heart. This is a common side effect of bulimia. According to the EKG I had the heart of a 60 year old.


There was no talking my way out of this. Everyone knew, it was no longer a secret. I stopped purging that day and began therapy the following week. The therapist diagnosed me with bulimia nervosa and I had to attend weekly counseling sessions. He said that I didn’t have a healthy coping mechanism and I needed to work on developing one. He dealt with my cutting much the same way. He told me that it is common for girls with bulimia to maintain a healthy weight or to even be overweight due to swelling and bloating. No one had told me that, had someone told me that bulimia can make you swell I never would have done it (or so I told myself). I noticed as the months went by my moon face was gone. I had cheekbones again and I actually lost weight. The doctor told me I had lost my gag reflex and that when I was actually sick and needed to puke there was a chance of aspiration, the fluid could go into my lungs. My immune system was weak hence why I was sick all the time. I had bone damage but they thought the osteoporosis was caught early enough and my bones would heal.  This new healthy me lasted for about three months.

I can’t tell you why I started again. I don’t really know. Maybe it was because this is a part of me, or because I was too weak. Maybe because Mia had become such an important part of my life I didn’t know how to live without her. All I know is I woke up one day and I started again. It was like I had never stopped, the heart attack no longer mattered.  I started by restricting my eating again. I went days without food and when I did eat it was very little. When I did eat, because I was terrified someone would know I was restricting again, I used laxatives and purged. I gained weight which just reinforced my restricting and purging. It was a vicious circle, and I became paranoid again. If someone said something to me, no matter how innocent, I took it personal. I was convinced everyone was telling me how I was fat and ugly and because of that I could never be loved.


Mia and I were linked, tied together but an insurmountable force. I just accepted that she was part of me and always would be. I developed severe Mono which caused me to gain even more weight, I was barely at school my senior year because I was so sick. I survived graduation and started being honest with my therapist about the return of my behaviors.  I lived in Ohio and was attending college in Florida. Luckily my therapist was able to coordinate with an on campus therapist at school to take over my care. While I hadn’t stopped restricting and purging it had calmed down a bit. When I arrived at school I had an appointment with my new therapist the second day I was there. She recommended that I start taking Prozac in an attempt to deal with my depression. She hoped that if I wasn’t depressed that I would be able to control my urges.


I really wanted to get better; I didn’t want to feel like I was half alive anymore. I didn’t react to Prozac the way they expected. This was before they realized that Prozac could make children and young adults suicidal. The Prozac made me much worse. My behavior became more erratic and I had suicidal thoughts.  They tried changing my levels and increased my dose, this made me worse. I went home for Christmas break and my parents noticed the change. I fought with them non-stop the entire time I was home.  They were driving me to meet up with my college roommate when my dad told me he wanted to check me into a hospital. He was telling me how much he loved me and that he was afraid I was going to die, and I unbuckled my seat belt and nearly jumped out of the van on I-270. My family was trying to tell me how much they loved me, how they were worried about me, and instead of understanding I thought they were trying to ruin my life. They let me go back to school, more so because they were terrified I would kill myself if they didn’t. They called my original therapist who contacted my therapist and Florida and they took me off of the Prozac. Within a few months, I was feeling better. It was like waking up from a terrible dream.  I was still restricting and still purging but the suicidal thoughts were gone and my behavior was less erratic.

After my freshman year my boyfriend and I were married and I moved to be with him in Okinawa, Japan where he was stationed. It seemed like most of my restricting and purging was under control; although, I was still terrified of getting fat. My eating disorder was fairly under control, and my husband had been overseas so long that he hadn’t experienced what it was like when it was bad. For the most part we were happy and enjoying being newlyweds.  After a few months of acclimating, I decided I wanted to be happy and rather than purging I would develop a new coping mechanism…working out.  It started off innocent enough, I worked out and I felt better. I would wake up in the morning and clean the house and then head to the air base to work out at the gym for a few hours. I lost five pounds, so I decided to work out for three hours which then turned into four. The people working the gym started to comment that I was working out too much so I alternated gyms. Eventually I would work out for two hours at the gym on the air base and then drive and work out another two hours at the Marine Corps base. I then would go back and repeat in the afternoons when the staff changed.


I was restricting what I ate and working out around 8 hours a day. My husband didn’t notice because he was working twelve hour shifts. I was losing weight and at first gaining muscle so the urge to purge was gone. If I was stressed then I would work out. If I was lonely I would work out. This continued for nearly a year with no one catching on to what I was doing. Then the stress fractures came back to the point they put me on crutches. I lost my period completely and started getting really sick again.  The doctors I had in Okinawa clued in to what was happening and started using the label exercise anorexia.  I had to undergo a lot of tests and the doctors informed me that my heart was severely damaged and they did not know if I would recover and they did not believe I would ever be able to have children.  I cried that day like I have never cried before in my life.


 It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be a mom, something I wanted more than anything. I begged the doctors to help me; I was willing to do anything. They sent me to a counselor who placed me on depakote, a very strong medication typically used for manic depression. I had a worse reaction than I did to the Prozac. I didn’t have suicidal thoughts because I didn’t have thoughts. I basically lay in bed and drooled, again this is before they realized that young adults do not react like adults. I was only 20 at the time and still very petite. When my medical doctors became aware of how bad my reaction was they weaned me off the depakote.  I continued counseling and worked on developing a healthy coping mechanism that didn’t involve purging to running until my legs gave out.

It is ten years later and I am alive and fairly healthy. I have been through therapy, cognitive and behavioral. I am divorced but happier than I can remember ever being. I have been blessed with two beautiful children whom I feel are my own little miracles. I feel whole and while I still have lasting effects of a lifetime with an eating disorder I feel healthy. My last EKG was three years ago and my heart showed signs of healing. I don’t like my body but I recognize that it is much stronger than I thought. It carried and brought my children into the world. I have had two major knee surgeries due to the damage and weakening my eating disorder has caused and my doctor jokes that I will need bilateral knee replacements by the time I am 35. I have not had a heart attack since high school and there are no signs of ulcers but my digestive tract is still a mess. 


Don’t misunderstand, just because my test results are good and my body is healing does not mean that I don’t have a relationship with Mia. She is still there, every day taunting me. I have body dysmorphic disorder, so I have no idea what my body actually looks like. Whether it be looking in a mirror or looking at pictures my body looks the same even when I was nine months pregnant with my boys. I obsess over my stomach and rather than cutting I will occasionally write on myself with permanent marker. I realize this isn’t a normal behavior but it gives me a release that is not as harmful as purging or cutting. Life is about choices. I make a choice every day, I choose to eat and I choose not to purge. It doesn’t mean that I don’t want to. Trust me I want to, there are times that I fantasize about purging. The freedom in the release, it is almost like being high to have that kind of control but I remember that I want to watch my boys grow up. I want to see them become men; I want to see them as adults and to be a part of the choices they make as adults. I can’t do that if I am dead.


This is why I need Pretty Thin. I recognize that those who have never had an eating disorder will never understand but that is why it is so important to have a place where I can safely go and talk to others who do understand. I don’t look for diet tips; I don’t want other people to make the mistakes I have made. Eating disorders are not glamorous or beautiful but I need to know that there are other people in this world who understand me and the choices I have made. I need to know that when I want to purge or take a handful of laxatives that there is someone who will understand my desire to be crying in the fetal position with cramps on my bathroom floor with the sweats in an attempt not to get fat from the food I ate today. I need someone who understands and does not judge me but still tells me that I am beautiful and I deserve to be loved. I need to know that I am not alone. Doesn’t everyone want that, to know that we are flawed but we are human and we are not alone?

  

This story was added on September 29, 2011
This story is true, and submitted by Jean Marie