When you have an eating disorder, it’s never enough.
estimates that at least 30 million Americans suffer from an eating disorder; it’s difficult to know the exact number, though, because it’s an incredibly private disease.
When I go to dinner with friends, I feel shame looking over the menu.
It’s as though the others can read the desire for a cheese board and brownie sundae on my face, and I am instantly ashamed.
A common myth about eating disorders is that they’re just part of a phase or diet.
“It’s just an eating disorder, it’s not that serious,” is a sentence I‘ve heard all too frequently. So serious, in fact, that the reports that the mortality rate due to eating disorders is the highest of any mental illness.
He knows I am sick; he has sat with me after an anxiety attack sent me to the bathroom during Christmas dinner, rubbed my arm when I cried how I will never be good enough.
He tells me every day that I am beautiful, and even though I need it, I never believe him. This is the hardest meal because despite waking up hungry, I don’t want to let go of that feeling of lightness, of an empty stomach, of control.
When I was at my most ill, I refused to go out into the common area of my college apartment when anyone was there; I waited in my room, stomach empty and bladder full until everyone left or went to bed.
I canceled plans, left parties early, and made excuses to be alone with my disease.
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