What opening up has done for me:
In the midst of the darkest parts of my disorder, I didn’t want to admit the truth to myself. Deep down, I knew what I was doing was wrong, but instead of stepping up and facing it, I chose to ignore it and make up excuses for myself. It was easier than attempting to fight back because at that point in my life, I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to win. However, even after finally accepting the life I was living was flawed and needed to change, I still couldn’t admit this to anyone else. I needed others to see my life as perfect and as bright as possible. I didn’t want anyone to know that instead of happy thoughts and positive aura, I was swimming in the trenches of hell. So, when I left to pursue treatment, I didn’t tell a soul. I left school without saying goodbye to my friends and teammates because I was too embarrassed to tell them the truth. I didn’t tell my best friends where I was going and why I couldn’t be in contact with them. I simply vanished off the face of the earth, because again, it was easier than having to face the hard truth. I was so caught up in how others viewed me that I disregarded other’s feelings in order to keep my ego intact. On top of everything that my disorder had made be become, it made me selfish and cruel to the people I loved. I was so focused on my conceited view of how my life would change in their eyes, that I overlooked the fact of how much they could help me heal. I was also scared about what the affects of opening up would have on my life. I was scared about how people would see me, and treat me differently. I didn’t want anyone to think I was weak and fragile, because that’s what I thought of myself. I didn’t want people to think I was weird or mentally unstable; and I certainly did not want people to think I was crazy and not believe anything I was saying. I was afraid of the people who wouldn’t understand, and so that fear caused me to hide within my disorder for even longer. What I failed to take into account throughout this period of my life was just how compassionate humans are. I had been focusing on everything that could go wrong instead of everything that could go right. It turns out people are more beautifully sympathetic than I could have ever imagined. Who would have thought? When I finally took the leap to start reaching out to people in my life, yes, I was terrified but I was met with such love and compassion, that I forget why I had ever been afraid in the first place. I was welcomed with open arms and hearts ready to mend me back together. People told me, I was strong and brave, and although at the time I couldn’t see it yet, their words were the pillars in which I began to build back my strength. Opening up has been a blessing and because of it, has allowed me to forge stronger and more beautiful relationships with people than I ever could have imagined. Although not all feedback was positive, such is life, but I learned how to accept it and not let it change how I viewed myself or my worth. When people tell me, I’m strong I can finally start to believe them. The sun does in fact shine brighter and life has indeed become sweeter. So I encourage all, whatever you are hiding behind, do not let that destroy you. We all carry burdens but we do not have to carry them alone. Vulnerability is what makes us human. Although we may not believe it at times, we are surrounded by people who love us and only want the best for us; and by opening up and sharing your struggles you’d be surprised at how strong you can become.
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I wrote this speech for my team. I felt the need to share my story as a way to open up the conversation to eating disorders and to help others who might be struggling as well. Much of it is written in terms of how I would speak and not really grammatically correct, so just bear with me a little bit....... Everyone pretty much understands that track is a just as much, maybe even more of a mentally demanding sport as it is physical. You can train all you want, be in the best shape of your life, but if your mind isn’t at the same level, you won’t get very far. Many people don’t like to focus on this aspect, they think of it as secondary or not an important component to training whatsoever, but facing it is the real challenge and once you do your limitations become endless. Your mental wellness as an athlete should be taken equally as seriously as any other part of your training. Now this can refer to a very broad range of areas. It can refer to your attitude at practice (how you feel/view your training, how you show up to practice each day), it can refer to your confidence in your skillset (how much self-esteem do you hold) etc, and how you view yourself and your abilities, both as a runner and an individual. So this is where I’m going to jump into my story a little bit. I was always a very goal driven person. I knew what I wanted and I went after it. My parents and coaches would too often have to tell me that I set impossible standards for myself but up until my senior year of high school it had never caused a problem for me, because I had pretty much attained whatever I set myself after. Running D1 had been a dream of mine for some time. To me, it meant that I succeeded, not only as a runner but basically just at life. So as soon as I started showing potential as a freshman in high school, I had it set in my head that this was exactly what I was going to do and I was not going to take no for an answer. Fast forward to the summer going into senior year of high school, I hadn’t really met what I thought was my potential yet. It felt like every season something had gone wrong, which caused me to miss my target goals and times that I believed I should be hitting. However, now I was almost out of time, college coaches were making their decisions, and I had to catch their attention. I basically only had one maybe two at the most seasons to prove that I could still make it to D1 and meet my standards of successful. That summer I went hard. I worked my butt off. I knew I had to get in perfect shape for that. I had the perfect image of the D1 runner in my head and told myself I needed to look exactly like that in order to achieve what I wanted. 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. I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. Even though I had many other distractions and stresses of senior year classes, home life, relationships, I set everything aside and poured all my energy and focus into my running because at that point, that was what mattered most to me. And you know what, it worked, (at least for a little while. ) I had the most successful cross country season in school history. I broke every single record that I ran, I basically PRd every race, and on one of the happiest days of my life, I got offered a scholarship to run at a D1 in Florida, everything I could have every asked for. I got to live the remainder of my senior year with the sense that I had made it, I had done everything right, my life was complete. Unfortunately, that success was very short lived. Although I had reached my goals, I hadn’t necessarily reached them the healthiest/safest/proper way. All the unrealistic and unattainable standards that I had set for myself eventually came crashing down on me. Without understanding why, my performance levels in practice were not where they used to be. Workouts that used to be easy for me, I’d end up having to sit out on because I couldn’t complete them. My body was sore and ached all the time. I was angry and irritable all the time and would lash out, exhaustion became my best friend, walking to classes proved to be much more of an effort than it should have. I used every excuse in the book to try to explain to myself why this was happening to me, except for confronting the obvious one that was staring me in the face. However, I could no longer hide behind my excuses…. In March of 2016, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. Now although this might sound a little stupid, I did not see this coming at all. I was diagnosed with the eating disorder bulimia non-purging type. Now what exactly that means is I would severely restrict my caloric intake, often to only 700 calories per day, while running 7+ miles per day, but then I would get so hungry that my body went into starvation mode because it didn’t know when I would be getting food again. I would binge and eat uncontrollably until it hurt and even then I couldn’t get myself to stop eating. The best way I can describe this is, I’d go into this trance, where my mind would shut down and my body took over, basically trying to survive. I know it’s hard to understand if you’ve never experienced it and seems kind of trivial or silly but it was something I just couldn’t control and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t control it, which caused me to hate myself even more. But in the end it was just my instincts were kicking in, in order to keep me alive. And you may be wondering, Caitlin how could you have not realized that this was messed up, clearly something is wrong there. You were only eating 700 calories obviously that’s a red flag. And I could go on and on about how messed up and fogged my mind had become from lack of nutrition, but I also had never heard of this disorder. Much like everyone else I thought that there was just the two basic eating disorders that everyone knows, anorexia where you starve yourself and don’t eat, and bulimia where you throw up or purge. Now since I defiantly was eating at times, and wasn’t throwing up, I told myself that I didn’t fit into either one of these categories so what I was doing must not be that bad. And up until very late in the game, I didn’t even believe in eating disorders, because I was just plain naiive and uneducated. I considered people who had them as weak. Now the most important thing I want you all to understand is, my eating disorder was not all about the food. Yes, it started out that way, and on the outside looking in, that’s what it seems but the real root of the problem manifested itself far deeper. My cycles of restricting and binging, and over exercising would be majorly fueled by poor self-esteem, poor body image, and extremely low self-worth. I would tell myself that “I was too fat to be a runner”, “that my running failures would be caused by any perceived weight-gain”, that “I was trash, worthless, and disgusting, for eating what I did and some of the things I was engaging in during this period. The pain that I was feeling from starving, I convinced myself that I deserved because I was too fat or not worthy to be a runner. I would tell myself that this pain I was feeling now was because I deserved it. My college coach at my last school, would often make comments regarding our caloric intake per day, he would not allow us to consume too many carbs, like having the bread at the dinner table. He would walk over our plates at meals to make sure what we were eating met his criteria of “healthy”. He made comments to myself and others about our weights and was a strong believer and promoter of the frail and skinny distance runner. Now since I was already previously struggling with my mental health and body image it only added on the extreme pressure and impossible standards that I was holding for myself. On top of all this, I was living in a broken home, inside a mentally abusive relationship, and fighting depression. All of these were the most influencing factors fueling my bulimic cycle. However, up until this point I had been putting all these emotions on the back burner. I was able to avoid these emotions during my senior year and hide behind the success of my running. I chose not to face any of these problems, convincing myself that I had it all together because I was running so well. However, once I got to college and my body could no longer take on the stress that I was putting on myself it began to deteriorate and with that my success in running began to deteriorate as well. Now I could no longer hide behind my running and was forced to face all these issues at once that I had been avoiding for so long. And I couldn’t handle it. They completely broke me. I was feeling so overwhelmed by all the pressures I was putting on myself, and all the brokenness, loneliness around me that I couldn’t properly handle or face the emotions that were in front of me. I used my eating disorder as a coping mechanism to hide behind fact that my life was falling apart. I used my bulimic cycle to fill in the emptiness that I was feeling inside. What might have started out as an obsession with weight and food turned into something much more powerful, that not even I could understand yet. In march of 2016, during one of my worst breakdowns, I called my mom, finally told her the truth, and decided to pack all my bags, leave school a month before finals, and seek the treatment I needed while also not telling a single soul because I was too embarrassed. I finally came to terms with what I was doing wasn’t healthy and I didn’t want to live this way anymore. I admitted myself into a rehab facility and then went under heavy treatment for the next 3 months. When I was released, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I loved running but it was also one of the factors that was heavily contributing to my illness. I was scared if I started running again what would happen. I didn’t want to fall back into old habits and undergo everything all over again. Running had always been what I centered my life around, and how I described myself as a person. Now that I was considering moving away from it, who was I without it? I found myself really lost and without an identity. I didn’t know who I was without it because I had never separated myself from it. I chose to put running before my mental health and ignore problems that needed to be faced and because of that, I suffered even more. I spent the next few weeks throwing one giant pity party for myself before finally waking up and realizing that this wasn’t getting me anywhere. I decided that I didn’t want running to be fueled by my eating disorder anymore but for others. I started using my motivation for others that could no longer run, either due to permanent injury or their passing. Whatever the reason, I would blog about it and use it as my reason to get out the door each day, not to lose weight or burn calories. I feel that it is very important to understand this. Running should not be the be all and end all of your being. It’s perfectly okay to love the sport and everything that it adds to your life, but at the end of the day you should be able to separate yourself from your running identity and recognize who you are without it. At the end of this I don’t want any of you to look at me or treat me any differently or feel that I came up here to ask for your pity or gain attention. I came up here to share my story because I know for a fact that there are others who are struggling too and some of them are right under your nose. You really have no idea what people are going through behind closed doors. So if you all can take something away from today is just take care of each other.
I’ve thought about writing this article for a while now. I was very unsure if I wanted to share this experience with others, partly because I didn’t think people would understand and partly because I just didn’t like thinking about it that much. When I hear the word “rehab” the first words that come to my mind associating with it are “failure, loser, and weak” (side note: I really don’t want to offend anyone at any point in this article, these are just 100% my true feelings and obviously now I’ve learned otherwise). I mean you can’t really blame me for thinking these things. The way social media portrays teens or individual in rehab isn’t pretty or flattering in anyway. People that are in rehab are at the lowest of the low points in their lives and I always thought that I would never be a part of that group. I just didn’t. Obviously that all changed.
It took me two years to wake up from my daydream. Two years to come to a full realization that I was in some serious shit. Up until that moment I was in complete denial about my mental state. No way did I have an eating disorder. I didn’t throw up my food and I was certainly not anorexic, because I perceived myself on the heavier side of “running girls”, I wasn’t incredibly skinny. I just really liked food but I also really wanted to be skinny; to the point where that’s all I ever thought about, being skinny, eating, and losing weight. Even when I was having a conversation with someone or hanging out with my friends my body was there but my mind wasn’t. I’d be thinking about the last meal I ate, how many calories it had in it, how many calories I had to burn off to subtract that difference, and then what I was going to eat next; always making sure that what I was eating was healthy and would help me lose weight. These thoughts consumed me 24 hours a day. For a long period of time I would not let myself consume more than 800-900 calories per day while also running 7+ miles each day. I would hold this pattern throughout the school week, distracting myself with homework, but on the weekends when I had more time on my hands I’d completely fall apart. My mind would lose control of my body and I’d just eat everything that was in sight. No matter if it tasted good, if I wanted it or not. I was so hungry by this point that I would eat until it hurt. Until the point where I’d want to cry. During these binging episodes it was like I was no longer me anymore. Similar to being drunk, or high, anytime in which all your intuitions just drop. I literally would become a monster. Some people witnessed the beginnings of these episodes, but the majority of the time I would do it in private. I would wait until I was alone and then have a free for all. Then I’d feel so utterly ashamed of myself that I’d not allow myself to have any food the next day or severely restrict and start the whole process over again. I’d even run outside of practice, convincing myself it was for the athlete in me rather than the “ED” eating me. So cut back to March of 2016 when I finally came to terms with my demons. I realized what I was doing wasn’t right and I didn’t want to be living in this personal hell I created for myself. I wanted to actually enjoy being with my friends without thinking about my weight, I wanted to be able to go through a single meal without thinking about how many damn calories I was consuming, and I wanted to see running as something other than weightless. I lost who I was through my eating disorder. It literally ate away the person I once was. I wanted her back. So in my lowest of lows I admitted myself to rehab. I requested full 24 hour stay because I wanted to get better as soon as possible and I just didn’t trust myself with less hourly care. I didn’t want to live with the devil inside of me anymore. But boy oh boy did I not know what I was in for. The first day was honestly one of the worst days of my life. I’m sitting in the lobby waiting to be shown to my room and am just stunned to see the amount of sick girls that are there- like really sick, like you can see their bones and everything sick- and immediately I was like “oh god I’m in the wrong place, I’m not sick enough to be here”. Within 5 minutes of sitting there I see one girl in a fetal position lying on the ground with her head tucked between her knees, but the most shocking part is everyone just walks on passed her, like this is nothing new and she obviously doesn’t need any help. A minute later a girl sits next to me wrapped in a blanket, looking not older than 15 (I later find out she’s 24) asks me about myself. I think, “finally someone is here to make me feel better”, but then she goes on talking about how she’s been in 5 different hospitals, telling me in-def. about her horrible experiences at each one and how horrible the staff treated her there, but she assured me this place was top of the line. Then before I can even process what she just said, another girl comes and sits across from us and just starts sobbing hysterically. At that moment, not even 15 minutes into my stay, I was ready to leave. Lol girl, you still have 30 more days of this to go. The next couple hours were filled with nonstop tears and discomfort. I had to watch as they went through all my bags taking away anything sharp that I could use to harm myself or others. I was only allowed to get my shaver, tweezers, etc twice a week at 6am-7:15am. They took away my laptop, my cellphone, anything I could use to communicate with the outside world. They even freaking took away my pimple medication because it contained alcohol as an ingredient and people could use that to do I don’t know what, get drunk or something I don’t know have a blast. Meal times were just as bad. I was given a tray with my food wrapped up. I had to raise my hand for a counselor to come watch me unwrap my food, hand her my garbage before I could eat. They then watched us like hawks throughout the whole meal making sure we weren’t hiding food in our pockets or throwing it on the ground or I don’t even know what. They repeated the same process when we were leaving; picking up our plates, shaking our cups, unraveling our napkins to make sure we finished 100% of our meal and weren’t hiding it anywhere. Multiple times, I was instructed to lick my knife clean of the smudge of peanut butter or eat the one remaining piece of lettuce on my plate because that was seen as an incompletion. A freaking piece of lettuce people. If we didn’t finish, you were forced to drink an ENSURE supplement, and if you refused even that you would eventually be put on a feeding tube. The tube was inserted through your naval cavity and stretched to your stomach. It was attached to a long pole that you had to carry around with you everywhere, similar to what you see with people in the hospital who have an IV. I also was stripped of my privileges to exercise, at all, period, none whatsoever. They watched how much I walked each day and if I went over the normal amount it was deemed as “over-exercising” and I could get even more privileges taken away from me. A basic day at rehab was similar to taking classes at school. I attended multiple seminars discussing our emotional and physical discomforts. They were designed to help us overcome the demons living inside of us. I was assigned a therapist, psychologist, and nutritionist, who were all a part of my team and were focused to getting me better. I saw each of them roughly 1-2 per week depending on need. As with everything else they closely monitored our weights and vitals. Every morning they would make us get up at 4AM to get weighed, get our vitals checked, and occasionally receive a blood test. If our pulse or blood pressure was deemed too low they would force us to drink a full Gatorade, wait 10 minutes and then repeat the process. This happened to me every morning, because being an athlete my pulse has always been low, but what I was unaware of until now is that is also a side effect of eating disorders. So every morning I would get up at 4, down a miracle 16oz Gatorade as they referred it, and then get back to sleep roughly around 4:45 if I was lucky, only to be waken again at 8am for breakfast and repeat the whole cycle over again. We were only granted phone privileges at certain hours of the day, in which we had to use a phone card to make any outgoing calls. We had to be in our rooms by 11pm. People that were diagnosed with bulimia weren’t even allowed bathroom privileges. The bathroom in their room was locked and the only way they could access it was if a counselor kept their foot in the door while they were doing their business. Rehab was draining. I was so emotionally tired that even my body began to feel physical effects. They wanted us to find the root of the disorder which was inside of us. We were constantly asked to dig into the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves revealing our worst demons. Bringing to life the things that brought us the most pain. Exactly the opposite of what any of us wanted to think about let alone share with others. They wanted us to come face to face with our monsters and fight them every single damn hour of every single damn day. Can you understand why this was exhausting? On top of it all, it would bring many of us to tears multiple times a day because the pain was too strong and we didn’t feel like we could put up a fight anymore. It broke so many of us. I watched my friends as they suffered within themselves, feeling so incredibly hopeless because I could not help them win this fight. This was something they had to overcome on their own. The things I witnessed in there are things that will stick with me my entire life. I won’t even mention half the things that I experienced just out of common courtesy of people’s privacy. They’re just not my stories to share. All I can share with you is what I went through in there. Every single day I was forced to face my worst demons. I struggled through every meal, every session, every hour. It was hell. I didn’t tell anybody where I was. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t think anyone would understand. I didn’t want people to think of me this way, as in “weak” or a “failure”. People always told me I was strong. Even there, the girls all told me how strong I was because they never saw me cry that was because I saved all my tears for moments when I knew I was alone. I did not feel strong. I felt so incredibly weak, I didn’t feel that I could ever overcome this. Even weeks after I was released, I still felt the same feelings of despair and hopelessness. And if I’m going to be totally honest with you, I still experience some of those same feelings even today, months after my release. It will always be an uphill battle. It’s never going to be easy, but I sure as hell am not giving up anytime soon. "ED was the bully and Caitlin was the bystander. Caitlin became the bystander to her own life." One of my favorite sayings to relate to eating disorders, although it is slightly ironic, is “You’re not you when you’re hungry”, from the Snickers commercial. This statement is spot on, with science behind it to back it up.
When you don’t eat, the organs in your body don’t receive the proper amount of fuel they need to function. Which is why there’s another saying, “food is fuel”. According to Women’s Health, “Your brain, which controls the rest of your body’s functions, does not work properly without food. You may have trouble thinking clearly or paying closer attention than normal to feelings of anxiety or sadness.” For me, when my thoughts started to get hazy, I’d like to think that is when ED, my eating disorder, steps in and acts as my “eyes” and my “voice”. A side effect or common trait of eating disorders is their increased levels of irritability and anger. Now if you think girls have bad mood swings, you should meet one with an eating disorder. I’m just going to step up to the plate now and admit that I was like the spokesperson for this. Those that were closest to me could attest to that in a heartbeat. I would randomly lash out for no apparent reason. I believe the correct term for this is, “hangry”. All my roommates in college were witnesses to this (lol). Sometime after an episode I would even be surprised by my own words. They would just come out with no preface. My parents were both victims of these wonderful episodes and I remember saying, “I’m not giving you attitude, it’s just my voice.” This may seem as an excuse to some but it really was the case. I couldn’t understand where the words were coming from or what was stirring up my anger. It was like a night a day change. At these times, when my brain was at its weakest, ED took advantage. He said and did things that the old Caitlin (before ED) couldn’t even imagine doing. However, I don’t want it to seem as if I’m putting all the blame/responsibility on this “imaginary voice” inside my head. The easiest way to explain it is: ED was the bully and Caitlin was the bystander. Caitlin became the bystander to her own life. So like all the kids that went to bullying seminars in primary school know, bystanders are just as guilty as the bully, for not taking action. It seems silly, but I let this voice in my head manipulate and brainwash me. As time progressed and my brain received less and less nutrition, it’s functioning got worse and worse. It got to a point where I had been completely brainwashed into thinking my eating disorder behaviors and symptoms were normal and anyone who challenged me was wrong. I was in complete denial about how serious this was and how sick I was getting. During this time period when I was at my worst, ED made me do things that I never could have fathomed and the worst part is, I just sat back and let it all happen. I broke all my morals, I hurt people I loved, I hurt people I didn’t even know, and I hurt myself. I became a different person. It’s hard for me to not look back and cringe at my actions. I am ashamed. I am embarrassed and disgusted with myself and who I was back then. I wish I would have been brave enough to stand up for others and myself instead of letting myself get pushed around. There are things I’d never want people to know about me. I still feel like a horrible person and because of that am living with a tremendous amount of guilt, shame, and self-hate that still makes it hard to see straight. A lot of this plays into my depression and anxiety, which then leads me into acting in on ED behaviors. And to think all of this happened because I didn’t eat my damn breakfast. Now, if you took the time to read all this, first off I would like to applaud you and thank you for your time. Second off. I’d like you to know I am not writing this for you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want that. I’m here to take full responsibility for my actions. Part of taking my life back from ED is no longer being the bystander to my own life. Yes, I wasn’t “me” because I was hungry, but I am me now, and the me now is going to do things differently. I’m taking full responsibility for the person I was during my eating disorder. This is an open apology to the people I hurt (you know who you are). The new Caitlin is changing for the better, and now that I eat my breakfast, she’s not going anywhere. |
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