Ana/Mia be Gone: Getting Out of the Grip of Eating Disorders
After over five years living with eating disorders, she finally decided to embark on the difficult process to be well again.
I can never remember myself being skinny enough to fit society’s standard, or just simply healthy enough to carry myself confidently. I was never the girl with a healthy physique, and, in fact, I have always had problems with my look. In the last few days of 2019, I realized that I had been dealing with this issue for over five years.
I first suffocated myself with the idea that I was “fat” and “disgusting” after being mocked by own family did while still in junior high school. At 155cm and nearly 80kg then, I was called “fat” and an “elephant” by my own family. I knew I was never the slimmest and I could care less about what other people thought of me, but when the insult came from my own family, it hurt.
So there I was, crawling the internet and found “ana/mia” (a code name for anorexia and bulimia) sites. These are sites telling myself that I am fat, that I don’t deserve any food, and that I am trash because of my weight. They told me to purge. In less than five months I lost 20kg.
For the next five years I went through different methods of eating disorders , stopping for a while in 2018 when I decided to make a better choice for myself. But in the second half of 2019, I started to live inside my head, dove into depression and picked up again the worst habit that anyone could ever do themselves.
As each month passed, my internal problems escalated and I shoved myself with more food to supress them before purging, thinking that it would somehow help me solve them. It didn’t. Instead, it made me worse. It led me to the worst eating disorder meltdown I’ve ever had in my life.
Also read: How My Mom (and Others) Unintentionally Body Shames Me
There was a constant voice inside my brain telling me that I wasn’t good enough, and that I’d never be unless I ate, purged, and lost weight. The voices told me to feel guilty about the food I ate, and that I did not deserve to enjoy life with food. I was constantly driven by the urge to fill my stomach with food, and then to purge everything until my stomach felt empty.
The eating disorder has affected both my physical and mental health. I can never socialize in a normal and acceptable manner. It has created a toxic bubble for myself and turned me into a toxic person to people around me.
It has never been an easy battle, this fight against eating disorders. I failed many times and it’s not easy for me to open up about this. I am writing this knowing that there are a lot of young teenagers battling their inner demons themselves. Talking about having an eating disorders is something that I never thought I could ever do, but somehow it helps me cope with it. Focusing on yoga and meditation also helps me in a lot of way I could ever imagine.
With this writing I want those who are battling the same demons to know that they are not alone. It may seem hard to survive when there’s a constant negative voice inside your brain that takes control of your life. But everyone deserves all the happiness that the world could offer, and nothing matters more than your health and happiness.
