Tuesday, July 19, 2011

So you want to have an eating disorder.... (TRIGGER WARNING)

Okay, I keep seeing these stupid people post on websites wanting advice on how to be better at being anorexic and it's driving me freaking CRAZY. If they think anorexia nervosa is just a diet, something you can just quit, they're dead wrong.

Having an eating disorder is a nightmare. A nightmare that you're addicted to. A nightmare that you're in denial about. Let's start with how an eating disorder gets into your brain.

Most likely you'll be a teenage girl, already insecure about your body image, because you're a teenage girl, and really, aren't we all at least a little insecure? You'll be worrying about your body image, and someone will come along and say the wrong thing. Someone will call you fat. Someone will say something nasty about your weight. And bam, a seed of doubt is planted in the fertile ground of your insecurity. And in some, the seed never really grows, but in others, the seed begins to sprout. An eating disorder takes its roots inside you. Slowly your thoughts begin to change. You become more critical of yourself. You start working out a little more, start dieting. You look in the mirror and get frustrated because fat clings stubbornly to your body. You start obsessing over the best ways to reduce fat and lose weight. Somewhere you'll stumble along a suggestion to reduce caloric intake. Huh. What a brilliant idea. You cut out some calories in your diet. It's probably anywhere from 100-500 at first that you cut out. You exercise more. You become very conscious of the nutrition facts, and how many calories are in certain things. The numbers on the scale mean more and more and even as they go down that image in the mirror remains the same.

So it's started. You're not eating, the numbers keep getting lower and lower, but you seem to keep getting fatter and fatter. All you can think about is food, what meals you're going to skip, how many calories you've burned, how much more you can exercise. You can just feel the fat jiggle around on your body and it's disgusting. Wanna know how disgusting? Think of a rotting corpse, with maggots crawling around in it's eye sockets. Pretty nasty, yeah? Your own body is more revolting than that. If you eat at all you feel like a failure. Like you don't deserve to live. You hate yourself and everything about you and you will do anything to be thin.

Sounds like fun, right? And wait, you want to be a BETTER anorexic. So it's probably not just skipping meals. It's probably hiding it too. Eat some toast in the morning for show and then work yourself into the ground later on while no one is paying attention. Or you can use your friends as the basis for a lie. "Oh, no, I ate a huge break-fast at so-and-so's, my stomach is ready to burst!" Or maybe lie to your friends "No, I ate before class, and that was only a hour ago... I'm really too full to eat now." "I ate an early dinner with my family because my dad had a lot of work to do.", oh, and compare that one with "I'm going to so-and-so's later, so I'll eat dinner there". You've become quite the little liar! Most likely though, those lies aren't good enough. A step forward from that is actually putting the food in your mouth, chewing it up, and when no one is looking, spitting it out. But that's a form of bulimia. Not good enough for the anorexic looking to go above and beyond. Maybe getting up in the wee hours of the morning to work yourself to death, and then staying up until midnight to work-out some more isn't enough either. You want to be able to eat and fool people, and then throw it up. Unfortunately this isn't a pleasant process. You have to put the food in your mouth and HATE yourself, and then get up the courage to run and lock yourself in the bathroom and shove your fingers down your throat. You'll probably cry and be horribly ashamed of yourself (and maybe realize you have a problem). But you need to. Because you can't be fat, not when you're so close to perfection. So you force yourself to gag until you throw up. It'll take a while, and it'll hurt. You might make your throat bleed, and you'll be hoarse for hours, and your throat will feel like you have strep. Hey, you wanted to be a better anorexic. And I am a very good anorexic, so you're getting advice from the best.

Now. You know HOW to be anorexic. Let me list for you exactly what will happen.

-Your skin will turn a pretty shade of grey. Grey is the new tan, don't you know? Oh, and by the way, forget about tanning. Ain't gonna happen with your grey skin.
-Your hair is going to fall out. You get to look forward to cleaning off your brush every two days because you can't brush out your hair because the bristles are entangled in all of the hair that you've lost. And don't look down after you've take a shower. The sheer amount of hair on the shower floor might make you cry.
-You'll be cold. All the time. So cold that going outside in any temperature under 80 degrees will make you miserable.
-Your hands will shake, until it's nearly impossible to write anything.
-Bones really hurt when they poke into your skin. I mean, really badly. Try going to sleep when your hip bone is jabbing out, or sitting down when your ribs feel like they're about to rip a hole in your side.
-Did you think you were dizzy on the tea-cup ride at disney world? That is nothing compared to how the room will spin.
-You will be so weak and so tired you'll have to sit down after taking a shower because it took too much effort to stand for that long. Walking up a flight of stairs feels like running a marathon.
-You'll miss your period. You think this won't be that big of a deal, it's annoying anyway. But your body stops absorbing and using calcium after not menstruating for 8 months. That means if you break something, it won't heal.
-Your dentist will hate you. Can you say cavities?

Oh, oh, and if that wasn't enough, if you're really lucky you'll also get to experience:
-Your friend bursting into tears in the middle of rehearsal because your hair is thinning like crazy.
-Friends begging you to eat because they don't want you to die.
-The look of disappointment in people's eyes when they realize you were stupid enough to stop eating.
-Your friend telling you that she will never trust you again because you lied to her for so long about eating.
-People screaming at you to eat.
-Your teacher crying because she suspected you were anorexic and you told her it was true.
-Being threatened into eating

And wait, there's more!!!

-You'll be so wrapped up in your image of perfection, using numbers to determine your worth as a person, and staring into fun house mirrors you won't care until it's too late and you've lost or almost lost everything.

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