Summer foods and eating disorders

Can you hear it? The sound of the ocean, the singing of the seagulls, the sun beating down on your skin making you feel like you are glowing. Like you are on top of the world even. Can you feel the cliché? To some, summer is one of the best times of the year, no school, total freedom to binge on food, travel the world, do whatever your heart desires. And for me it used to be. Until I turned 15, until wanting to binge on food made my stomach sick. For a few years I had been developing an eating disorder. But when I turned 15 something in me clicked. A part of me just really changed from hating the way I saw my body to loathing the way I saw my body. I stopped eating, I worked out too much, and I felt like I was on the verge of passing out almost 24/7. The hardest part about my eating disorder was the fact that I had always loved to eat. So when I stopped eating I finally realized something was incredibly not ok. Yet I tried to hide my eating disorder from everyone for as long as I could. Until one morning I woke up at six am extremely nauseous. For a good hour I was sitting next to my toilet wanting to throw up the nothingness that was my stomach. At that moment I finally asked for help. And that's what I got during the summer when I was 15. This summer, I am 15. I asked for help about a month ago and it has been insanely hard. About a week ago, I told my therapist about my love of food along with my giant sweet tooth. She challenged me so that the next time I eat something sweet to finish the dessert instead of eating half of it. My nutritionist challenged me to find safe foods. I had listed to her fruits, smoothies, and salads because they were low calories, they were what my eating disorder wanted me to say, to eat. But the part of me that asked for help, that is trying to fight away the disorder, knew I had lied straight through my teeth. My comfort food was not fruit or salads. It was ice cream, a cliché summer food but still, the ultimate summer food.

This is one of the only sweet treats I can stand eating. The way ice cream takes away the pain of the heat, gives joy to friends and lovers. It is timeless, a substance built to cure people when they go down their darkest rabbit holes they call their mind. Ice cream is the sun to my ocean, the warm light to the cold, blue of my eating disorder. It is described as light and smooth, descriptions my eating disorder likes. But to the other part of me there is nothing light about ice cream. For me ice cream was the upper hand, the power move. Instead of using it to wallow away my sorrows I used it to defy the voice that has been building up in my mind for the past two years. I let ice cream speak for me, saying I am more than my eating disorder. In other words I was trying to tell myself I am more than the calories or the weight. I had the power and I was not about to give it away.

I know this story isn't the conventional happy summer food story but it is my story. I think it appeals to all people. To those who want to be happy they can take away that summer tastes like the cure of ice cream. To those who struggle like me they can take away that there is power in summer and in the things their disorders say are wrong. Lastly, to those who just want to take away what my favorite summer food is, they can learn that for some people the topic of food is not so simple. For me the topic of food means pain, love, and power. My ultimate summer food is ice cream, my power.