It's A Need For Control.

It’s not about the food. It’s not about the food!?! What do you meeean it’s not about the food!?!? I hear this almost every day. And it’s true, to an extent... it’s. not. about. the. food. I still have an awfully difficult time understanding this because I believe it started because of vanity and in some sorts, it is holding on to vanity. I hate what I see every day that I look in the mirror. I can pick out a million and one things that I hate about my body and nothing I actually like. I believe through my life I have needed to align myself in ED’s presence. I just don’t believe I would have been able to face my life and all that has happened without having ED to turn to. When I couldn’t bare the world for another second, I curled up in ED’s warmth and just cried. ED was safe, ED was reliable, ED was always there for me... just like he promised. So maybe this is why it’s so hard to be done with him. He’s all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever needed, and when times were tough, ED really was there for me assuring me that things would get better once I lost weight. So where did this all begin? I can’t honestly think of a time when I wasn’t pre occupied with how I looked... or how everyone around me perceived me. I’ve always judged how I look compared to others and have remembered every insult and not a single compliment. So maybe it started when I was three and all I ever wanted to wear was pretty dresses. Maybe when people would stop on the street to pet my head and tell my mother how adorable I was. Or maybe it was when a family member told me I was gaining weight when I was eight, or when I went into gym class in grade nine wearing shorts for the first time... and the last and a girl told me I had fat calves, or possibly when a boy I really liked told me that my collar bones didn’t stick out enough, and as much as he said he wanted to be with me, I vowed from that moment on that I would never be good enough for him. In high school people use to tell me I was fat. Not because I was but because calling a thin girl fat isn’t an insult, it’s a joke. Guys use to grab at me and grope me down the halls treating me as if I was only there to look at and take advantage of. The words slut, easy and bitch were all a part of a frequent vocabulary used against me. I wasn’t in any way any of these things but girls like to talk, guys are assholes and if I was a bitch it’s because kids are bullies. I’ve grown up with nicknames such as tiny and little one and have strived to live up to these names in the most literal of terms. As time has gone on when guys tell me they are interested in me and I ask why and the first reason is because they think I’m good looking or I have a great body, I turn the other way, I don’t want to be liked for that. I’ve worked with men who said they love the look of “anorexic” girls and others who would only date women if their thighs don’t touch when they walk. I’ve been told that since I’m short that I need to be thin. Not to mention every time I leave my house there is some monster billboard telling you that you have to be all the thin you can be, magazines telling you how to lose ten pounds in three days, TV endorsing show’s that glorify eating disorders and mental illness and ad’s every which way filled with unrealistic people who I am incessantly comparing myself to and using as a goal. I’m bombarded constantly with statistics about how obese North America is and how many people die a year from being overweight. ED gets louder with every runway show, ever Supersize vs Super Skinny episode and every new Vogue that comes out. You can’t go anywhere without the media, or the general public putting so much emphasis on how thin you are and how beautiful you need to be to accomplish greatness in life. The topic of most peoples conversation is food, how they shouldn’t eat something because they will get fat, or how they completely pigged out and need to starve themselves for the next two days. So if everyone is doing it...I must have to as well. This is all where vanity comes in to play in my life, and where I don’t entirely believe that it has NOTHING to do with the body or with food. I can however, see the other side of things. I’ve turned to ED when I haven’t been able to control anything else in my life. I’ve starved myself in hopes to completely fade away into nothing, I purge so I can purge out all of my feelings along with it, and I binge because I starve myself for so long that my body just can’t handle it anymore. I control it though, it’s mine, and no one can take it away from me. We moved around a ton when I was little and I always found it very hard to fit in. Going from school to school, different cities, countries, houses, people. Everything was constantly changing. I needed something I could control. When my Dad passed away, everything completely fell apart. My life that was securely built for me, that I was safe in, as I knew it was over, and I tumbled down a hill that I am just now trying to crawl my way back up. My family didn’t know how to deal, we just broke and each went our separate ways in the only ways we knew how to deal at that moment. Each of us found our own toxic addictions and mine happened to be hanging on to ED even tighter. Losing a parent at sixteen isn’t easy. I was quietly falling to pieces and everyone else that was once a very large part of my world, just continued on with their lives. The world doesn’t stop for your pain. Friends look at you differently at that age, no one knows how to help you, and teachers did not give a shit that my Dad passed away. I missed two months of school and failed most of grade twelve... Amazing. My Mother married an uber douche bag and I learned an entirely new meaning to the word hate. She had her own struggles that she had to deal with so I was completely left to face life’s challenges by myself at 18. To describe the last fifteen years of my life would be to unfairly divulge other peoples lives, which I’m not willing to put out there. If you can think of it though, it’s probably happened to me. I’ve faced extreme loss, abandonment, heartbreak, abuse of every kind, judgement, ridicule, addiction of many kinds, ultimate hatred for myself, betrayal, and self harm in more ways than I am describing here. Falling farther and farther into ED’s loving arms, I wanted to die every single day, I woke up every morning hoping it had all just been a dream and went to bed every single night hoping I didn’t wake up. My eating disorder has been a thing of comfort and security for me. I think it has almost now just turned into a disgusting habit. I can’t bare the feeling of food inside of my body. I can feel the fat building up on my body and it throws me into super panic mode. I want to be done with this. I want to be done with it so bad, and every time I choose to purge or choose not to eat, I’m failing. I wish I could go back to a time where I was so completely lost in ED’s being that I didn’t see I had a problem. Now that I know, now that I know I have a choice, I’m constantly choosing the wrong path. I want to go back to pleading ignorant so I can just grab ED’s hand and skip down the road together as if everything in life is wonderful. I’m grateful for the endless support I have around me, even when on some days I say I don’t have a problem, or when I truly think I would rather die from this than try to fight it anymore. I have no one to blame for my eating disorder. Through all that I have faced, I can’t say that it is anyone’s fault. It just... sorta... happened. I mostly blame myself and am slowly learning that it’s not my fault. I’ve forgiven 90%, but forgotten nothing. The only thing I would truly truly change if I had the option was to still have my Dad here. Everything has made me the person I am becoming and I don’t think thats so bad. At this point, I am the sickest I have ever been but in a twisted way I am the happiest I have ever been. I haven’t laughed more than I have in the last two weeks, I find myself smiling at the most random things and thinking more positive about the future. I’ve found a love for Yoga, a want to live, and a dream for things to come. These are the times that make me think that I can live a happy life with an eating disorder. I’m reminded though, by those who love me very much, that I can’t live a happy life with it, that I’m not really happy, and if I think I am it is only a matter of time where I go back to hoping I don’t wake up when I go to bed at night.