When all this
started for me I was about 12 years old. And up until recently I thought it had
everything to do with my father, about making him notice me. When I was quite
young I would go and visit him ( I lived with my single mother) and he would
try to get me to do things that never came up living with my bohemian
free-spirited mother, things like making my bed every morning, mountain biking,
snowboarding, dressing in neat collared clothing, and thinking logically and
sensibly. At the time I was a messy, idealistic, un-focused, chubby,
awkward-looking kid with oily skin. Then at some point he just stopped trying,
stopped suggesting sports to try, stopped caring if I showed up wearing
clothing from the thrift store, and stopped trying to encourage excellence in
school. It felt worse than cruelty to me, he had just settled, given up, his chubby
passive daughter was never going to change so he gave up and settled. When I
was fifteen I moved out from my mother’s to live with my best friend and her
family on the West Coast. I was going into grade eleven. Things in my new
household were very different from anything
I’d known, and my friend’s step-father was a violent drunk, I was in shock and
all I wanted was to hear my mother’s voice on the other line of a telephone,
hear her me I was on an adventure and I was learning, growing but instead she
estranged from me, became suddenly distant. I was alone, I felt. Both my
parents had, I wasn’t entirely sure, given up? Abandoned me maybe? This is when
I started to drop weight and fast. At
first I had no idea it was happening, then people started to notice, my
friend’s mother even told my mother she was worried and my mother started
calling again. I noticed at this time as well that I was becoming pretty, quite
pretty and I’d never been pretty before. Best of all inspired. Then when I got
to 98lb my mother moved me back home, I’d only been away for six months. In
that time my 5ft 3” self-had gone from 130lb to 98lb. I thought 98lbs was a
good weight. After I moved back I only got smaller, the more my mother watched
me the more I lost.
Then something happened.
Now this is where I get lost
as to place in the world of eating disorders, I had been called and told I was
Anorexic countless times, and yes I was, and still am, Deathly Afraid of gaining weight, but I knew I had gotten a bit too
thin. Getting to my ultimate low point I was scared of my own face in the
mirror and could not shower with the light on (actually I still can’t shower
with the light on but for different reasons). I was afraid I was going to die.
I cried all the time. And so I gained weight, and it was hell. One moment desperate
to gorge myself with food, fearing death, and the next moment overtaken with
dread at the thought of gaining a pound, but gain weight I did. When I got back
up to 98lb I found joy, I really did, I was happy there at that weight which is
confusing and contradictory to the label so many people had slapped on me;
Anorexic. I have a point where I don’t want to go lower.
It is as though I am lost at lower or higher places and it
is only at this point that I am found.
So what am I then?
