Learning to Love Me

Hi, my name is Megan, I’m 26 years old, and this is the story of me learning to love myself. When I was 15, I developed an eating disorder. It was a grueling monster that loved to take and take. My parents noticed my drastic shift in behavior early on. This prompted them to take me to my pediatrician. It sounds kind of odd if you think about it, going to your pediatrician to receive a diagnosis for an eating disorder. But my parents were at a loss. Their bright, blue-eyed, food-loving child was disappearing right in front of their eyes. I went from being bubbly and full of life, too frail and cold.

My pediatrician warned me about the potential health complications from eating disorders. I, however, was not hearing it. I swore it wouldn’t be me. I kept telling myself “I’m not bad enough yet.” My gluttonous eating disorder quickly ate away at any rational thoughts I had and replaced them with dark, maddening ones.

Soon after beginning therapy, my therapist strongly suggested I go into a partial hospitalization program to help treat my behaviors. I spent my 16th birthday in treatment, forced to talk about all the things being shuffled around in my brain. The maddening, imprisoning thoughts made me pace back and forth for hours until the counselors made me sit down.

After I completed the 3-week program, I seemed to be doing better. However, I relapsed 3 days later. The struggle continued and I hated myself more and more. I couldn’t stand my reflection. I felt lost and being inside my skin was unbearable. The things my eating disorder made me do are shameful. Some of them I still don’t talk about.

In January of 2012, I went into inpatient treatment for my eating disorder. Once again, I thought I was doing better. When I was discharged from the program completely, I remember walking out of the building swearing that was it. I was never going back there. I was done. Little did that innocent girl know, there was a monster living in her brain, waiting to unleash itself once again.

Over the next 9 years, I continued to let my eating disorder lie to me. Many times, I thought I was “in recovery.” This couldn’t have been further from the truth. The behaviors became sneakier, and I became smaller. I became smaller and smaller until I was cold, frail, and hallow. Most people with eating disorders will admit that they have a “goal size.” This “goal size” feels like a magical number, a feasible goal. I just kept telling myself, “When I hit this size, I will stop.” If that was the case, then why couldn’t I stop once I reached that size? It was never enough. I was never enough. The self-hatred encapsulated me until I had nothing left. I began searching for love from others, desperately trying to feel like I was enough. Nothing stuck and I felt like a lost soul simply trying to find a home.

The years went on, and those health complications that my pediatrician warned me about all those years ago began presenting themselves. They appeared gradually, coming up like scabs that were attempting to turn into scars. But I just kept picking away at them, wounding my body over and over again. Even when the health issues seemed too much to bear, I couldn’t stop.

When I was 22, I met who I thought was the love of my life. She spoke the language my heart craved. She promised to sew my wounds and love me back together again. She made promises she could not keep. She never quite understood my eating disorder. The bond I had formed with the monster in my mind was troubling but invisible to her. She promised to love me through it. She promised to love me so hard that all the demons would disappear. But each time she promised, her words came up empty. They were hallowing and less believable each time. Empty promises blossomed into lies. But I knew how to work with lies. I pushed through the lies in my mind daily.

Her lies went from being verbal to physical. Never with a fist, but with the lack of respect of the word “no.” After 6 drinks, the word “no” lost meaning for her. Once again, my body was a battleground. Sometimes I’m still embarrassed to say that I married her anyway. That truth comes with shame. I saw the writing on the walls and ignored the alarm bells in my head. I put on a dress and pretended they were wedding bells instead. Something in me swore that things would get better after I bound my soul to hers forever with the words “I do.” Under a flower arch with all our loved ones watching, she vowed to love away all my pain. She vowed to stop being the reason the monster walked the halls of my brain late at night. She vowed to be the light and stop locking me in the darkness.

As the months went on, I kept waiting for things to get better. But they just kept getting worse. I was smaller, colder, paler, and weaker. All the light in me was disappearing. Things were bleak and I felt alone and unloved. She just kept getting meaner and meaner. And I got smaller and smaller. Torturing my body was the only thing I knew how to do flawlessly. As sad as that sounds, I didn’t know what cherishing my body felt like.

As much as my body tried to hold on, I kept destroying it. At this point, the damage was irreversible. My colon didn’t work anymore from years of binging, purging, restricting, diet pills, and laxative abuse. My surgeon recommended a diverting loop ileostomy. I was not a good candidate for a colectomy because of some pelvic floor issues I have due to trauma. This would mean that I would not use my colon and she would create a stoma from my small bowel. This surgery would immediately alleviate all my symptoms. But it also meant that I would have to attach a plastic bag to the outside of my body. I refused. I remember thinking to myself “if I have to have a bag, I’m going to kill myself.” I left her office sobbing. The vessel I was given to walk this earth was giving out on me. And my wife was giving out on me.

After truly believing that she would never violate my boundaries again. She once again crossed a line. I could not bear the pain any longer. My entire life, people had used and abused my body without my permission and now I couldn’t even trust love. The vows under the flower arch were meaningless and empty words. But instead of the monster being ferocious, he was kind. He leaned out a hand like an old friend. He provided me comfort.

So, it’s 2020, my wife has violated my body for the second time, my colon doesn’t work, and I’m shoving diet pills down my throat just to cope. And then, the world shuts down. I am left with a wife who promises to do better, no job, and a very problematic digestive system. After months of trying to pick of the pieces of my broken marriage, my body, and my spirit, I was raw. I felt a sense of brokenness that I had not experienced before. It was as if someone had stolen all the light from my soul and left me a burnt-out, broken light bulb.

One day, I was looking at myself in the mirror and I didn’t recognize myself. I was so far from the bright, loving, sunny person that people knew me as. I didn’t even know me anymore. As I was looking at myself, I realized that I was done. I had come to a crossroads. Nothing was changing. Nothing was getting any better. So, I had two options: collapse into a ball of suffering and give in to the monster, or fight. I wake up every day thankful that I chose the latter.

I knew it was time to make a plan. I called my surgeon and told her I was ready. I was done suffering. I was done being in pain. I then started saving money and preparing to leave my marriage. On October 7, 2020, I received a diverting loop ileostomy. When I woke up after surgery, I was in extreme pain. It was a level of pain that my body could barely handle. I was at my threshold. But then, I lifted the blankets and my hospital gown to look at my new accessory. And to my surprise, I felt relief. I knew that this excruciating pain was only temporary.

Then, the months went on. My body began healing after a decade of me abusing it. I slowly started to feel like me again. And then the time came to leave my marriage. Completely terrified, I let my wife know that I could no longer hold onto our vows under the flower arch. At that point, they were merely a legal agreement. So, I left. I packed up everything I owned, threw all my clothes in my car, and went to stay with my friend, her husband, and their newborn baby. I was sleeping on a twin-sized air mattress next to a crib. But through that raw, vulnerable time, I started to heal my wounds. And not just the ones my ex-wife created, but also old wounds that healed like a bad fracture. The ones that had been calloused over. I began to transform. I had my metamorphosis.

It has now been a little over a year since my surgery and leaving my marriage and I am the truest version of myself that I have ever been. I am in eating disorder recovery and attend therapy weekly. Who would’ve thought that attaching a plastic bag to the outside of my body would push me to see the beauty in myself? When I look in the mirror, I see a genuine smile. When I look down at my bag, I see respect, gratitude, and freedom. When I look at myself, I see resilience. I see love.