MY Story
"Running wasn't something i did, it was who i was." |
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 ever satisfied 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, as it is for pretty much everybody. There are many things happening all at once, deadlines, important life decisions, and the ending and beginning of life as I knew it. 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, energy, and focus into my running career, because at the time, that’s what mattered most to me and by doing so, I could put blinders on and pretend like maybe all of this other stuff wasn’t happening. Running D1 had always been a dream of mine. Running has been a huge part of my life for 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 fit that mold in order to get the attention of a collegiate coach. I started comparing myself to other athletes around me, picking out every single aspect or flaw of myself that was holding me back from reaching this goal. Unsurprisingly, things quickly started to spiral. An innocent attempt at losing weight became the only thing in my life that I could control. I could control what was going in my body and I could control how many miles I ran. I couldn’t control my family life, my relationships, or 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 those times, winning races, getting straight A’s, and losing weight, I still felt like there was more that I could improve. I still wasn’t good enough. 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. Yet, instead of taking a step back and admitting the huge emotional toll that I had been avoiding, I blamed it all on my weight. I took restriction and excessive exercise to an extreme. Thinking that I could make this better and fix everything that was falling apart. However, 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 lost 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 to stop. It sounds so bizarre 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. It became a brutally relentless cycle of restriction and binging and mental self-depreciation. 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. My eating disorder began to take over my life. I didn’t just feel uncomfortable in my skin, I despised it, it disgusted me. When my own inner dialogue felt like my worst enemy out to destroy me, it’s hard to stay sane. It’s hard to not want to shut everyone out and stay in and hide from both the world and myself. 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 to 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 body made me that sick. 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, but this wasn’t how my life had always been. I remembered a time when my every decision I made wasn’t calculated, when I didn’t feel like my instincts were plotting against me, and the sight of my body didn’t make me nauseous, and I was desperate to have that back. It wasn’t until I had a mental breakdown in the middle of a track 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 that I chose not to deal with, my eating disorder was just 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 insidious 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 and anger that I had pushed down for years all 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 rip 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 then, you know that you no longer have to be a victim in your own life when you can choose to fight back. 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 superficial 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 that it’s not just a quick fix. 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 am 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. It’s 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just want to say that I wrote the majority of this speech two years ago when a lot of the trauma from my disorder was so fresh in my mind. I had the intention to rewrite the whole thing but when I read this back I was shocked at how much stuff I didn’t remember! It was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I was the one who had experienced all this pain. And I’m so glad that I used writing as one of my outlets during recovery because the rawness of my experience felt like a foreign language to me. It’s hard to realize how far you’ve come when you feel like you’re only taking baby steps forward. But reading this back helped me recognize just how high I have climbed. I’m going to use a hiking analogy because if you know me, you know I love a good hike, but this whole journey for me has been like a hike up a mountain. When you’re driving into the parking lot of a new trail and you see the summit of the mountain literally thousands of feet above you, you’re like damn how am I ever going to climb that. But you start small, with one foot in front of the other, and whether it takes you a few hours, a day, or a few days, you get up that damn mountain. And when you’re standing at its peak, looking down at the land below you, you can see your tiny car and all the tiny ant people below and realize that you just did that. You hiked all that and you’re immediately filled with this overwhelming sense of power and admiration for yourself that you might burst. That. That moment and that feeling is what this journey has been for me. So thank you Active Minds for giving me this opportunity to come back and speak again and help me reignite this admiration that I have for myself. And wherever you are in this. If you’re in the parking lot looking up at the mountain, halfway up it, or haven’t even gotten in your car yet, know that this isn’t the end for you. 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. |