My Downward Spiral: My Anorexia Story

A little insight into the downward spiral I call my senior year of high school...

An eating disorder is something you will never truly understand until you've experienced one, but I think it's about time that I share what one of the hardest times in my life really looked like from the inside.

"I love you, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies." - Psalm 18:1-3 ESV

"The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me." - Psalm 18:4-5 ESV

It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school (almost 9 years ago). The love of my 16 year old self and I had broken up, my best friend EVER had gone off to college, and I had two major surgeries within a few weeks of each other that didn’t allow me to eat much or do much of anything for about a month.

Needless to say, as a teenager entering into my senior year of high school, this was a lot for me to handle all at once. Now looking back on it all, it seems silly in comparison to what most people face on a daily basis these days, but as a teenager, this just really sucked.

I was used to seeing my best friend three to four days a week at all of my dance practices and rehearsals, gossiping about life, boys, and being there for each other through everything; and now she just wasn’t there anymore. Yes, she might have only been about 3 hours away, but at that time, it seemed like she had moved to Mars, and I could already feel us drifting apart.

On top of that, the guy I thought was the love of my life was now in alternative school for bringing alcohol to band camp that summer (a total cliché, I know), and I didn’t know when I would see him again or even how I felt about him anymore. I felt alone, friendless, and I was scared.

After two consecutive surgeries that summer (wisdom teeth removal and a hernia repair), I consequently lost about 10 pounds or so just from not being able to eat much of anything. People began to make random comments about how good I was looking and kept asking if I had lost weight. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those kind and harmless comments were having a bigger effect on me mentally than I would have ever imagined...

I began to eat just a little less than normal at first, nothing too noticeable to my parents and friends, especially after my diet being so little anyways after my surgeries. In my mind, it was the “not eating” that had caused me to lose weight in the first place and as a result people were taking notice. To me, this was something I could actually control amongst everything else in my life that was overwhelming me.

Now it is true that people had just made nice comments about my weight loss because to most people what female doesn’t want to hear about how great they look, especially after losing weight, right? They were just being nice. But at that time in my life when everything close to me seemed to be falling apart, that little bit of kindness was like a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds. It was just enough for me to cling to and just enough to send my mind spiraling down a path I never imagined it going.

What I want you to understand first and foremost is that an eating disorder is a mental illness, just like being bipolar or schizophrenic. Your mind makes you believe things and see things that aren’t true and aren’t there, and you have no way of stopping it on your own. It’s one of those things that if you’ve never experienced it, you will never be able to fully understand the extent of what all it entails. Everything you are doing seems logical and what you see in the mirror is what you truly believe you look like. The eating disorder takes over your mind, and before long you find yourself grasping for even a semblance of your life before the eating disorder took over. It’s something you never “get over” or “out grow,” but something that once it takes root, you have to struggle against for the rest of your life; especially if you do not get the help that you need.

Before this chain of events led me to such a low point in my life, I loved food, I loved to eat, and I would have never thought I would be the one to be diagnosed with an eating disorder. I never thought twice about eating anything unless it was chocolate. Yes, I have always hated chocolate (insert your gasps and raised eyebrows here). Honestly, you never expect to find yourself in that severe of a mindset, but just a few consistent negative thoughts and a lack of foundational truth to ground yourself to, and before long, Ed (which became my code name for the eating disorder) introduces himself, and you are never truly the same again.

Well moving along in my story, my ex-boyfriend, let’s call him Sam, came back from alternative school in September and by then I had lost another 5 pounds. He wanted to get “back together” and kept telling me how great I looked. However, by this point, I was already losing myself to the thoughts in my mind, and I no longer had any desire to be with this guy that I had once considered the love of my life. I had already lost so many of my friends since the beginning of the school year, and I knew something was wrong with me, but I had no desire to fix either of these problems. Instead, I continued to cut off the few people that I did still have in my life, and began to focus solely on myself and what my mind was telling me. “You don’t need them.” “You are perfectly fine.” “You look so good, focus on that!”

I sat alone in classes and didn’t talk to anyone. People that I had once considered my friends started spreading rumors about me. They would say that I was starving myself for attention or that I could stop anytime I wanted to just by eating again. No matter how much this hurt me to hear their comments, I still couldn’t shake the control Ed had over my thoughts to care enough to stop anything.

Contrasting to what they thought, I couldn’t “just stop.” Even though I was losing all of my friends, even though I felt unbelievably alone and scared, and even though I was starting to lose myself, I couldn’t “just stop.” Ed was telling me that I was more beautiful now that I was skinnier, that everything I was doing was “right,” and that I was still not skinny enough yet. I told you, an eating disorder is a mental illness, and once Ed takes over the mind, you can’t defeat him alone, no matter how easy “just eating more food” sounds to most people.

As the voice in my head continued to taunt me, I began eating even less and hiding things from my parents. By October, I had lost yet another 5 pounds and my parents started to not only take notice, but started to worry.

Let me clarify, losing 20 lbs when you are a dancer, most of your weight is purely muscle, and weigh only 130 lbs to begin with was not a good thing. I was no longer getting the “you look great” comments, but instead the “are you okay?” questions started rolling in.

My dance instructors started to get concerned and my mom finally took me to one of the many counselors that I would see over the next few months in hopes of finding out what was going on with me.

Everyone was concerned for me, but at this point Ed was in complete control and I didn’t want to eat, I only wanted to work out and lose more weight. I had complete knowledge of what I was doing, but Ed was telling me this was all right and this was good for me. Nothing anyone said was going to change my mind. I knew I had an eating disorder, but my mind would not allow me to fend off the lies it wanted me to believe.

Over the next two months, I saw about 4 or so more counselors, but nothing was working. I can’t even explain the feeling of being stuck inside your own head. Like I said, I knew something was wrong and that I needed to stop, but I physically couldn’t make myself eat anything. And if I did eat anything, I was on the elliptical the very next moment working it all off and more. I was counting my calories so much so that I made sure I was only eating 600 calories a day and burning 1,000 or so off through exercising. Even when I ate less, I still made sure to burn those 1,000 calories every day, even if that meant getting creative with how I did so, like working out on the elliptical we owned at 1:00 in the morning (CRAZY!). I became a pro at tricking my parents and everyone around me into thinking I had eaten something when I didn’t. I knew how to hide uneaten food in the trashcan so that no one would ever know I hadn’t eaten it.

Now as a dancer, I had always been known for my leg muscles and leg strength, but by the time that December rolled around, my muscles and bones were all you could see sticking out beneath my skin. I was slowly fading away.

My parents stopped allowing me to dance because I just really didn’t have the energy or even the ability to do it anymore. Nothing made me happy anymore, nothing felt worth it anymore, and nothing felt like it would ever be better again.

At this point, one of my dance teachers began speaking scripture to me, and praying over me before and after classes (that I still had to go and sit through). Though I did believe in God at the time, my mind had such a strong grip on me that I had trouble accepting what I was hearing.

I had been raised Catholic, and for me, it just never allowed me to fully grasp who this God character was and what He could do for me if I let Him in. Reluctantly, and with a confused heart, I continued to allow my dance teacher to pray over me in class and I listened when she spoke to me about a God that loved me more than anything, but I just wasn’t in a place yet to really let any of what she was saying sink in.

Looking back at those moments now, I can notice a spark that got lit somewhere inside buried very deep through those talks with my dance teacher. However, at that point in my life I didn’t even know what a true relationship with Christ could actually look like, so how was I supposed to know that I needed it or even how to seek that relationship or fight for it. All I did know was that He was supposed to take care of me, and at that moment in time I was being told something was wrong with me, so how could He really be taking that great of care of me. I constantly look back and see that He was trying to reach me through my dance teacher all those years ago, but, as I mentioned, I was in no place at the time to listen to anything He had to say. So instead, I choose to believe that He just let that initial spark simmer.

New Year’s Eve 2010 became my breaking point. I had lost almost 40 pounds and 10 pant sizes at that point, which put my weight at right under 100 pounds on a good day and even a size 00 was too big on me. I was skin and bones, and had large dark circles around my eyes. I felt cold all of the time and my once extremely thick hair was now thinning, falling out, and looked very frail. My nails broke all of the time and all I wanted to do was sleep every chance I got. To top it all off, my “women’s biological system” was shutting itself down, and no one knew how permanent that damage would end up being [see this post to hear about that journey]. And yet, with all of this going on, I still didn’t think it was enough. The only reason I still weighed as much as I did is because of the muscle I had stored away from dance, but even that was beginning to fade away now.

On New Year’s Eve Day, my parents informed me that they were going to be taking me to an outpatient treatment center that next week, and I just about lost it. I threw one of the biggest fits I had ever thrown in all my years as a kid, and trust me when I tell you that is saying something. I absolutely refused to eat anything they put in front of me that day. Every word that came out of my mouth was yelling. I ran out the front door just wanting to run away and be anywhere but there, and then came back home after I realized I had nowhere to go. I kept screaming at God, “WHY?!” and asking Him to just take me right then and there because I didn’t want to live any longer. I locked myself in my bathroom just wanting to die. I can still picture myself locked in my bathroom curled up in a ball on the floor rubbing this prayer stone someone had given me asking God to end my life. I never thought that I would ever get to the point of feeling so lost, scared, and pointless that I would just want to end my life altogether, but there I was. I can honestly say that I have never felt so utterly hopeless in all of my life as I did that very day lying on my bathroom floor.

As I was crying and trying to figure out why all of this was happening to me, and in the midst of one of our hundreds of verbal battles that day between my dad and me, he said a few words that I can still hear as clear as day all these years later. My dad looked directly at me and yelled, “I don’t know who you are anymore, I want my daughter back.” And all I can say is that with those words it was like a switch went off, that’s the only way I know how to describe it. It was completely surreal. To this day, I can feel the change that took place in me instantaneously for no other reason I can think of, but God saying “that’s enough!” I will never be able to fully explain the change in my heart that took place in that instant, but it was surreal to say the least.

Now trust me, this was far from the end of the road in my story (as it would be a continuous scary battle for the next 2 years with anorexia), but this was definitely my first step back towards actually WANTING to get rid of Ed. I wanted my dad to be proud to call me his daughter again. Now not only did I not have dance, which had always been a safe haven for me, but now I also didn’t feel like I had my dad anymore because he “didn’t want” who I had become over the past few months.

For the first time since I began this horrible downward spiral, I began to take note of all that I was losing because of Ed. Up until then, I had honestly just not cared at all, but now it was like reality had struck. I had lost so many friends and the respect and trust of my parents. Not to mention, after sitting and watching so many classes and after being taken out of all of my dances to prepare for competitions that I would no longer be a part of, I wanted to dance again. It was such a big part of me, and I really missed it. Also, dance was the one area I knew I could always make my daddy proud. I would do anything it took to get back on that stage and to make my daddy proud to call me his daughter again.

Now I'll be honest, as I already mentioned, the road I was on didn't just end there in that instant of clarity, I did still lie sometimes when talking to the nutritionist about what I had eaten, and I still drank lots of water some days right before my weigh in, but I also had moments of really trying to get better. I gained about 15 pounds back within the first month by eating more food than I think most people would consider healthy for any average person to eat in a day. But it’s food that my body desperately needed after being starved for so long in order for it to just to look somewhat normal again.

My parents finally decided to let me dance again after encouragement from my counselor, and a few months later, I was released from the outpatient program with a clean bill of health. Though it was still a struggle every day, I was able to keep that weight on at least . through dance nationals in June.

That summer before I started college, my parents took me to get my first tattoo (I needed parental consent because I was only 17 at the time) on the back of my neck of my own doodle of a ballerina. This was intended as a reminder then and will forever be a reminder to me of that horrible moment in my life where I almost lost everything, including my life. A moment where, in the end, dance seemed to have been one of the only things that saved me and brought me back.

Yes, at the time, it seemed like my love of dance and my want to keep dancing to make my dad proud was what made me put the weight back on. However, little did I know, I was actually being protected by a very powerful Man that I had yet to fully meet. Actually one of my very favorite things about looking back at this moment in my life is the fact that I can now see how evidently God was pursuing me, shaping me, and preparing me for what was to come. I just simply had no idea at the time.

Let me leave you with this... NO MATTER WHERE you are at right now, please know that God is there with you too. Whether you know Him or you don't, whether you are pursing Him or not, He is right there with you, pursuing you and preparing you in ways you could never imagine. Even during the lowest points of your life, when you feel like nothing could get worse and God has to be no where in site, He is right there waiting for you to reach out a hand, all the while, doing an amazing work in you every step of the way.

What's your testimony look like?

Have you been brave enough to share your story?

No matter how dark it may look.