I was anoerxic for almost two years in college. It started when I studied abroad in Italy and couldn't find any of the "healthy" foods I was familiar with. I was scared that if I couldn't eat the healthy food I was accostumed to I would get fat. I became obsessed with getting exactly 1200 calories a day, no more and no less...except on Saturdays and Sundays when I fasted completely. I walked for four hours a day, did push-ups and sit ups in my room and felt terrified that I was gaining all this weight and just didn't know it.
When I came home, I got on the scale first thing and realized I had quite a few pounds. Everyone commented on how disgustingly thin I was. My new obsession became with not losing more weight but keeping the weight off, so I did eat, but not enough to keep my appetite at bay. I lost a few more pounds. I always kept myself at a weight that was just low enough to be dangerous, but just high enough to be explainable. "Oh, I just haven't had enough money for groceries so I guess I'm getting a little underweight...I'll eat more when I come home" or "yea, for some reason I've had three stomach viruses this semester and it's just killing my appetite...I'm sure I'll feel better by next semester (the virus part was true, actually)" I stopped getting my periods, my friends and boyfriend were all worried about me. Then, the following spring I started eating more but working out ridiculously hard to compensate. People felt relieved that I was eating more, but I didn't gain any weight. I lost one very close friend...my best friend...because I was so "emo" all the time and constantly picking on fat people (she, herself, being overweight).
Finally, almost two years after the disorder started, I started trying to fast every day and I was frustrated because I kept "slipping up" and didn't have a scale so I could not tell whether or not I was losing weight...and as far as I could tell from looking in the mirror, I wasn't. Turns out that was not the case, I'd lost a lot more weight than I'd ever realized or intended to. After I hopped on a scale and realized this, I went to the counseling center on my campus and they sent me to a therapist off campus. She was just wierd and I couldn't tell her anything. I complained about my boyfriend to her a lot, broke up with him, and eventually started eating normally again, but I never talked to her about the disorder and she never told me one way or the other because I didn't giver her enough details for her to have any answers and I also felt like she didn't ask me enough of te right questions about it, and there's just so much I needed to get off my chest about it. It was scary, and sometimes I feel like it's coming back and then going away and coming back and going away...it's like this cycle. I almost want it to be there because i feel like this time I can make myself really sick and get the "attention I deserved"... the attention that I didn't get the first time around. Another piece of me loves my body and wants to be healthy. A third piece of me still wishes that I could go back to maintaining a very low weight and just be under the radar about, without anyone knowing or giving me much attention like it was before...because the truth is, I like the way I look better at the low weight I was maintaing. But it seems that now when I go back to feeling "anorexic" it only lasts a week or two at a time before I chicken out and go back to eating normally again.
I just lost quite a bit of weight the past two weeks. I felt like I was going right back into the disorder. This was the most sever it's been for a long time..until today when I finally ate like a normal person again...and I wonder what causes this wierd, perpetual cycle? If I'm really "recovered" then why is this still happening? And what if I don't want to stay recovered? What then? I feel like if I'd had some one to talk to about all this when I was going through it all then maybe I would have more answers and I would feel more like this chapter of my life was closed. But, right now, as it stands, it's a gaping hole with lots of confusion and unanswered questions. Why did this happen? How can I make it happen again? Or, better yet, how can I have it fully resolved so that I don't have to want it ever again? The biggest question that always haunts me is..."why didn't I let myself get sicker? If only I had, I would have gotten the attention that I deserved for it!" and this thought alone makes me feel like a sick person.