How My Eating Disorder Saved Me

Eating disorders are strange beasts. They come in all shapes and sizes. Mine came in the form of a huge black mass. Something indescribably dark and consuming. It sat on my chest and weighed me down. It drowned me like an anchor chained to my ankles, pulling me deeper and deeper into an ocean of pain. It bore into my soul until there was only a shadow of me left. It could have killed me.

The sad truth, though, it that when you're looking into that abyss, it calls to you. Its siren song draws you in. There were years of my life for which my eating disorder felt like my best friend. Perhaps the most toxic relationship I've ever been in. But I wanted it then, I needed it, and it needed to feed on me. With every pound of flesh I lost it grew stronger, and bigger, until it turned into the only thing I was capable of being.

I don't want to talk about numbers, the numbers that took years of my life. I don't want to talk about weight, or calories, or hours spent at the gym. I want to talk about how some of the lowest moments of my life ended up being the thing that save me.

Eating disorders, when you get right down to it, are about control above anything else. When everything in your life feels like chaos raining down around you, controling what you put into your body gives you a way to be the master of something. Keeping weight and food under the strictest control makes you feel better about everything else. While it categorically makes everything so much worse, the disordered thinking is like a blindfold that keeps you from seeing what you're really doing to yourself and everyone around you. If you can just cling to that one thing, everything else falls away. That is the most insideous part. You feel as though you are nothing without your eating disorder, you need it.

Ultimately, though, through two years of recovery, it taught me so much about myself. It taught me how to love myself, it taught me what really matters, and most of all, it taught me to see who I was. Recovery from anorexia remains to this day one of the most difficult thing I have ever done. To let go of something you've fallen so deeply in love with, but which deep down you know brings you nothing but harm, is like leaving an abusive relationship. Only, you're leaving an abusive relationship with yourself.

My disorder made me realise that it is ok to feel, and to exist unapologetically, not only for myself but for those closest to me. For the first time I started to truly see and value myself. For the first time I learned how to feel the emotions that my eating disorder had spent years pushing into the darkest corners of my mind. For the first time, I learned to just let myself be. Through all of this, I have to thank my eating disorder. Not for the years of hurt, or the myriad health issues it lead to, or destroying so much in my life. I have to thank my eating disorder for being the catalyst that showed me who I really was and the strength I truly possessed. Without it, I would not be the woman I am today. So thank you, and for the very last time, goodbye.