I was honored to be offered the opportunity to share my story in front of over 140 people as part of Stockton University's Disordered Eating Awareness Month. It was a humbling experience to stand in front of a room over flowing with faces, ready to share the most vulnerable part about me. I am extremely grateful for all the work that Stockton has done in regards to challenging the stigma of Mental Health and starting the conversation of Eating Disorders. If you missed my speech but would like to read what was said I attached it below! Take part in my journey, so that you and others can be aware of how serious eating disorders are and learn the importance of taking care of yourself. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when my eating disorder began, because it wasn’t born in an instant. It took it’s time, manifesting over years of my life.
A majority of my illness was built off the foundation that nothing I ever did was good enough. I was always striving for more. No matter what I achieved was ever good enough for me, I wanted more, I need more to feel good enough in the eyes of others. Senior year of high school was a very trying time for me, as it is for pretty much everybody. There are many things happening all at once, deadlines, important life decisions, it was the end of an era. All of a sudden many different areas of my life seemed to be crumbling all around me, I was in a really vulnerable state, my family life started to fall apart which is where a lot of this began, I was in a toxic relationship which made me question my value, and I had no idea where my life was going. But instead of allowing those to affect me, I chose to devote all my time and energy into my running, because at the time, that’s what mattered most to me and by doing so, I could pretend like maybe all of this other stuff wasn’t happening. Running D1 had been a dream of mine, ever since I learned what it meant. Running had been a huge part of my life since as long as I can remember. I attached my identity to it. It wasn't just something I did, it was who I was. In my head, I had the perfect idea of what a D1 runner was supposed to look like, and I told myself that I had to be exactly that to (get what I wanted) and be successful. I compared myself to others around me, picking out every single aspect or flaw of myself that was holding me back from reaching this goal. This was when my “diet” began. It started off very innocently, I only wanted to drop a pound or two. However it quickly started to spiral. At that time losing weight became the only thing in my life that I could control. I could control what was going in my body, I could control how many miles I ran, and in the beginning I could control my weight. I couldn’t control my family life, my relationships, my college acceptances. It became obsessive, numbers on scales and numbers on the track began to correlate. As I was losing weight I was also getting faster, my plan was working. Yet, the only thing that didn’t change was how I felt about myself. Even after hitting all these times, winning races, getting straight A’s, and losing weight, I still felt like there was more I could improve. I was never satisfied with myself. I still wasn’t good enough. I was hungry, chasing after something I couldn't understand. College rolled around, and I did get a scholarship to run D1 at a school in Florida. You’d think I’d be proud of myself, but I wasn’t. With college came new trials. Loneliness, not fitting in, and heartbreak. My body began underperforming. I could no longer continue the streak I was on. I couldn’t run those fast times, let alone find the energy to walk to class. And having attached my identity to running, my self-esteem started to drop with it. My weight loss plateaued, so my way to fix that was eat even less. Cutting calories turned into cutting meals, running outside of practice, replacing dinner with a 5 mile run. This is when the bingeing factor took over. My body couldn’t sustain this malnutrition if I wanted to keep living. So for reasons I couldn't understand at the time, I loss control of my body and I would start to binge. I’d eat uncontrollably. I ate everything in sight, no matter if I wanted it, if it tasted good or not. I ate things that were expired just because they were in front of me. I ate until it hurt and I wanted to cry, but even then I couldn't stop myself. And what’s worse is the whole time, I would be screaming inside, begging myself to stop, telling myself I was a worthless human being, that I was a piece of trash, for eating this all food but I just couldn’t find the will. It sounds so bizzare to say that I lost the ability to regulate my own body, but I did, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t control it and I hated myself even more because of it. The best way I can describe it is like being possessed, it’s like an out of body experience. I could see my hands moving but it wasn’t me who was moving them, it was something else. I was just a prisoner inside myself. And after I’d “wake up” from this bingeing episode. The shame and guilt would rush in. I spent many nights crying because of the amount of food that I consumed and I just really couldn’t understand why this was happening to me. I then felt the need to correct this episode with even stricter restricting and I’d not eat the next couple of days and make sure to run extra in order to reverse the damage that I had done, but as you can imagine, this just turned into an ongoing cycle of restriction and binging. I was afraid of being alone with myself because I hated the person I had become. My own thoughts terrorized me and I was making rash decisions that not only hurt me, but hurt others I cared about. I had such low self worth, I thought the only part that mattered about me was my body. How I looked determined the kind of person I was. And through the eyes of my disorder, all I saw was the ugliness that was rotting inside me. The only time I felt good about myself was when I was starving because that meant I was doing something right for once. And anytime I overate or ate anything that wouldn't help me lose weight, I would tell myself that I was a worthless piece of trash and hearing those thoughts repeated one hundred times a day, I started to believe it. My eating disorder began to take over my life. I didn’t just feel uncomfortable in my skin, I despised it, it disgusted me. These thoughts traveled with me wherever I went and as my eating disorder grew stronger and I became weaker, I couldn’t distinguish its thoughts from my own. I didn’t know what it was like to sit down for a meal and not be terrified of what was on my plate and what it would do to my body, or what an apple looked like besides its calories, or what it felt like to not look into a mirror and want to scream. I couldn't hang out with my friends without being terrified of anyone taking a picture of me or losing control over dinner. It eventually got a point where I postponed taking showers because I hated the sight of my naked body. I couldn't even expose it to myself. I would shut off all the lights, hiding myself from the bathroom mirrors, close my eyes and rush in and rush out with soap still in my hair because the sight of my naked body made me that sick. I hated myself that much. It drove me mad. It affected every part of my life and I couldn't tell you the exact moment it transformed into something that destructive. It was just like a time bomb, ticking away, until I finally exploded. I knew there was something wrong with me I just didn’t know what. I didn’t think I had an eating disorder because I didn’t follow the exact rules of what I knew them to be. I wasn’t throwing up and I wasn’t starving myself all the time, but this wasn’t how my life had been. I remembered a time when my life was carefree and the sight of my body didn’t make me nauseous, and I wanted that back. It wasn’t until I had mental breakdown in the middle of a workout at practice that I was forced to face the reality of the personal hell I created for myself. I went back to my dorm and called my mom and just started crying. I was just like mom, I can’t do this anymore, it literally feels like there is a devil inside of me and I really need help. My mom being the saint she is dropped everything she was doing and drove 15 hours round trip to come and get me. I admitted myself into a residential place after that….. Eating disorders are a lonely illness. I hid inside my secret for years. I didn’t want anyone to know what was going on in fear that they’d see me as weak or force me to gain weight. So instead of reaching out, I chose to fight this battle all on my own, until it broke me. What I learned in treatment was that your eating disorder acts as a coping mechanism for the pain you hold inside. Senior year was like my perfect storm. All these different factors that were happening to me, that I couldn't control and I chose not to deal with, my eating disorder was trying to take control of that messy situation. What started off innocently, as a diet the only aspect of my life that I felt I had control over, spiraled into something extremely dangerous. My trampled down mind that only wanted to feel accepted was the perfect feeding ground for this illness to flourish. While in treatment I was forced to be vulnerable and go head to head with all the demons that caused my disorder to begin. It was terrifying facing so much pain at once. When before I had just run from it, literally. It’s like standing in a room full of a thousand people screaming at you, listening to them rup every aspect of yourself apart and choosing not to walk out. It’s doing this over and over and over again until their screams become whispers and even then, you know that you no longer have to be a victim when you can be a fighter. When I got out of treatment, I was afraid of running because I knew it had such a detrimental effect on me, and I knew that it had been one of the things to almost put me there. But without it, I felt robbed and I lost myself yet again. It took many months of sad pity party's on the couch, a lot of deep self exploration, but I have come to realize that there is more to me than just being the runner girl. Yes, running is something I do, but it’s not who I am. It’s not the end all and be all of my existence. I have so much more to offer the world than just those transient things. And I wouldn’t have been able to see that without going through this journey. But at the same time, what you need to understand about eating disorders is it’s not something that comes and goes. It builds its roots in you so deep that even when you think you’ve pulled all the ugly weeds out, it sometimes still manages to grow back. It’s something that can last with a person their entire life, never truly dying, you just learn to live with it. Just because someone is eating food doesn’t mean they’re better, Recovery doesn’t mean I’ve won, it just means I’m fighting back. I still hear those voices every day, I just choose to ignore them now and I know that my worth isn’t attached to their hate. I still struggle even to this very day, in this very moment, but there is a difference in my struggle. I’m no longer powerless to it. I cling to the things I can hold my faith in, they are now the places where I build my value from. My faith in the Lord, my faith in the family and friends who I know support me and love me for who I am, and my new found undying faith in myself. Without these things, I really don’t know where I would be, I just know it wouldn’t be good. I like the woman I am after my eating disorder. It’s humbling to see, how much stronger I have become because of it. It’s filled my life with purpose, something I didn’t think I had. Its opened my mind, made me stand firmer in my faith, something I was on the verge of losing. I am able to handle things that I wouldn’t have been able to with more grace and more security in myself. I am a huge believer in everything happens for a reason. People and battles are put into your life to learn and grow from and without going through all of this I wouldn’t have discovered all the adversity, courage, and strength that was in me all along. I was always good enough, the only person that needed it proven to was myself. I can see now that this illness was a blessing in spite of itself. Life becomes a truly beautiful thing when you can recognize your worth. - sometimes we are assigned these mountains to show others that they can be moved.
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