Anorexia Uncovered

Anorexia is thought to be about losing weight - the anorexic is obsessed with pounds melting away, desiring to be "bikini ready." But it's more than that. It's your ghost staring at you in the mirror, after you've passed out on the ground, after allowing yourself a single apple afterwards, hating yourself for that transgression. The ghost looks hollow, and there's nothing you can do to yourself that's going to fill the void of trauma that led you to this moment.

Anorexia is a public disease. People will stare at you while you walk down the street. They will ask you (this happened): how did you lose so much weight? Are you sick?

The answer is yes, always yes.

But that's not answering your question. What was my body telling me?

My body was begging to be fed. It was bones you could see visibly in my back. It was sleepless nights; I didn't have enough body fat to be comfortable falling asleep.

I refer to anorexia as a "disease." Like depression or anxiety, it is at its core mental. The body merely feels the effects. It's about wanting to disappear, waste away - not even in a physical way, not after a while, but psychically. If I could kill my mind, my character, my soul, not eating was just a means to an end.

I didn't want to die, my subconscious mind did.

The body is resilient. It fights back. Eventually, I caved - this time, not passing out because I hadn't eaten, but because I ate an entire birthday cake in one sitting, after not eating for weeks. I threw up in the shower, unsure if I had to energy to get out of it. Eventually, I did, in one fell swoop, throwing up again as I stepped over the edge.

Anorexia is not glamourous. It is hiding food in couch cushions in front of TV dinner nights. It is lying about what you've eaten. It is bones, bones, bones. It is people crying because of "what you've done to yourself." It is people pointing fingers. It is people who do not understand that anorexia is a mental disease, not a desire to be thin. That desire had disappeared like my body fat, a long time ago.

Anorexia is felt in the body. But it is purely mental; a disease that the sufferer conquers alone, if they conquer it at all.