Apparently I’m crazy. I didn’t know it until people started to say it behind my back in eighth grade. That pissed me off, not only because people were talking smack behind my back, but also because I wasn't insane. I’m still not. The only reason those kids in my grade thought that I was crazy is because they had never seen me eat. They saw my bones protrude from beneath my pale skin, my hair thin, and my clothes fall off my body.
When I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Even now those are hard words for me to put on paper because I still hear those nasty teenagers calling me “crazy,” but I need to tell my story so that these people will understand. The first thing that one should realize about people who suffer from anorexia is that we are not crazy—we are starving. We are beyond hungry for love, acceptance, support, and happiness.
People with eating disorders manipulate food to cope with their negative feelings. People suffering from anorexia restrict what they eat because the physical hunger eases our emotional pain. I know that anybody without disordered eating will find it hard to fully understand. When someone with anorexia such as myself is angry, he or she will restrict what he or she eats or not eat at all. We do this because it helps us cope with anger, an emotion that is no fun for anyone. People without disordered eating may yell, swear, or punch a wall when angry. People with anorexia take out their emotions not on a wall but on a sandwich. When we’re sad, we take it out on food. When we’re disappointed, we take it out on food.
This phrase I use--take it out on food—is something that I learned in therapy. (Yes, I went to therapy. Deal with it.) Instead of releasing our emotions like “normal” people, we deal with it by manipulating food. The manipulation of food includes eating it, how we eat it, and when and where we eat it.
One reason that so many people suffer from anorexia is due to the feeling of a lack of control in their lives. By controlling how much food they eat, they have power over something in their life. They can control their weight, which gives them a sense of security. Many people with anorexia use food rituals that allow them to eat food in a very particular way. Some of these rituals including taking small bites, cutting food up into tiny pieces, ripping food apart, and playing with food. This allows them to control how the food is eaten. It sounds silly, but it is a significant part of the disorder, for it is a telltale sign of disordered eating.
People have the misconception that people with anorexia do not eat at all. This is not always true. People deep into their eating disorder will most likely not eat anything at all; some even get as sick as to be afraid to drink water. (I’ve been there. It’s awful.) Most people with anorexia, however, eat very little amounts of food. The idea that people with anorexia eat nothing at all is not true because most people who develop anorexia start out on a diet which turns into an eating disorder. My “diet” started when I was twelve, and as I became more and more sick, I ate less and less until I reached the point in which I wasn’t eat anything for days. The bulk of a person’s time with their eating disorder is spent restricting what they eat, not entirely denying themselves day after day.
Reading this must get my readers pretty hungry. Imagine that hunger amplified so much that you do not even feel it anymore because you are so used to it. The hunger at first is painful, but that pain is accepted by anorexia patients because it matches the emotional pain that they feel. The aching stomach, the nausea, the acidity swishing around our abdomens is a physical representation of whatever awful emotional pain we feel. Starving ourselves is a type of self-harm. Instead of cutting or burning, we deny ourselves food and hurt our bodies so they are in as much agony as our minds. This may not be enough for anorexia patients because many still cut, burn, scratch, or force themselves to work out to the point of exhaustion. The pain that we feel inside is so intense and so unbearable that we need to inflict it on our bodies.
What is this emotional pain? This pain is loneliness, disappointment in ourselves, shame, self-hatred, feeling that we have no control, feeling unloved, and feeling like we have no support. We are anxious, angry, depressed, and suicidal. Think of every bad thing that you could possibly feel; someone with an eating disorder has felt it. We feel so awful that we need something to make us feel better. If we can’t feel better, we will accept something to distract ourselves. Starving ourselves, inflicting pain, and damaging our bodies eases the emotional pain that we feel. It sounds crazy, but when you are pushed to the extremes like I was and like my close friends that I met in treatment were, an eating disorder is the only thing that makes you feel even a little bit better.
So I’m crazy because I used to stave myself in order to cope with being bullied, feeling insignificant, and being out of control. I’m also crazy because I went to therapy. But if I didn’t go to therapy, if I did not spend seventeen weeks of my life in a treatment program, then I would never have gotten better. Either way, I’m nuts because I starved myself or because I went to therapy. Therapy is a great thing though. People think that therapy is for nut jobs, but that is not true. Therapy is really just paying a professional hundreds of dollars to listen to you bitch about your problems. Most of the time, therapy gives people a safe place to vent. It is forty-five minutes to an hour of talking and getting everything off your chest. Except for the bills that you have to pay, it is awesome.
A great deal of eating disorder patients are also “crazy” because they take psychiatric drugs. Many people with anorexia also have depression or anxiety disorders. Sometimes therapy does not get those God-awful feelings under control, and so drugs are used to ease the discomfort of those abnormalities. I took anti-anxiety medication for a few years because it helped to keep my nervousness under control while I worked on myself in therapy. I am now off the drug and am fine. I have friends that had to be on anti-depressants only for short periods of time. Drugs are used to take the edge off until the problem is under control. We are not insane; we have a problem, like a toothache, that we took the medicine that our doctors prescribed to us so that we could get over the hill. When people break a bone, they take Advil and go to physical therapy so that they heal properly. Most people with eating disorders go to therapy and take a psychiatric drug so that they can also heal.
Like any other disease, eating disorders are treatable, and it is completely possible to recover from them. I am doing fabulously now. I have one friend who is married and has the most loving, supportive husband and a daughter that is cuter than anything in the world. Several other ladies that I was in treatment with are married and have kids of their own. Others, such as myself, have pursued college educations and are kicking ass. Some are activists for eating disorder treatment and awareness. My point in saying how great my friends and I are dong is to show all of the ignorant people that anorexia or any other eating disorder is a treatable condition that is not permanent. We are not rendered crazy forever by anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or any combination of them. We are people who have suffered and we, sadly, turned to abusing food to cope with those negative emotions. We are people and we have feelings, so the next time that you think of calling anyone with an eating disorder “crazy,” you had better stop yourself. You’re only going to make yourself look ignorant. When you call someone with an eating disorder nuts, insane, etc., you’re the one who looks bad.
Terri Bulan plans on writing a book about her experience with anorexia nervosa and the recovery process.