I Had a Choice to Make: Andrew or My Eating Disorder?
By: Ivy Staker
Tags: Relationships, Eating Disorders, Mental Health, Love, Life Lessons

I Had a Choice to Make: Andrew or My Eating Disorder?

When the most important man in your life is the one telling you not to eat too much

Photo by Maylies Lang Photography courtesy of the author

For over a decade, the most important man in my life was the one in my head who told me not to eat too much. Many people with eating disorders find it helpful to personify the disease. Mine didn’t have a name, but I felt sure it was a dude. Our relationship was a classic case of codependency. We’d been together so long, I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

I’ll call him ED. We met in high school. His voice spoke to me from my magazines, in the tips to stay svelte and the instructions on “how to eat.” My manual for womanhood. But he wasn’t entirely a stranger. I’d heard whispers of him before. At the dinner table, when I ate pasta with my dad and my brother while my mom ate salad. When my grandpa described the perfect female leg with three distinct spaces: crotch, calves, and ankles — the original thigh gap. It was clear that to be small was to be worthy. I wasn’t about to let my unruly body jeopardize that.

At 15, we were young lovers. I was clumsy, my emotions rampant, unable to sustain restriction. I’d be “good,” preparing my magazine-prescribed meal while waiting by the phone for my older boyfriend to pick me up to go swimming. I had to wear a bikini later. When he called to cancel, I’d swerve, gorging on tortilla chips, cereal, granola bars, then purging when the discomfort and guilt became unbearable. I still remember the burn and the shame. My knuckles red and raw from the acid. But I wasn’t really skinny, so it wasn’t really a problem.

By 17, though, we were going steady. I would have laughed at my earlier attempts, been embarrassed even, at the lack of self-control and the absence of effect. I went to Africa, and there, I honed my craft. I was young and scared and out of my element, but I could create a routine around what and when and how I ate.

My ED kept me safe. There was no room for fear when all I thought about was food.

When I came back, rail-thin, weighing what I had as a preteen, I finally reaped the rewards. After years of trying, I’d cracked the code. “I’d thinned out, I looked fabulous, I was wasting away, I was tiny,” people said. My parents were terrified, and I saw their fear as a marker of my success. Finally. I would not gain that weight back for a very long time.

At 20, the relationship became truly abusive. When my blood work came back with a big, red warning, I was immediately given a blood transfusion. I was poked and prodded as doctors tried to root out the cause of my anemia. Why was my iron count zero? I had a colonoscopy, and in my drugged stupor, I remember the doctor saying, “She’s so small, we’re going to have to switch to the pediatric scope.” I faded out of consciousness, completely delighted. They were trying to see if I had celiac disease (as if I ate gluten, ha). The doctor said if I had been in a car crash and lost a lot of blood, I would have died. I didn’t have a period for over a year. I was tiny. But none of those doctors ever asked if I was starving.

As my twenties went on, ED’s voice changed, a subtle shift to reflect a new trend: “Strong is the new skinny.” I had an epiphany, a reckoning with myself: “If I can’t be the smallest one, I’ll be the strongest.”

Enter boot camp. Even more obsessive exercise. Long runs followed by doubleheader hot yoga classes. The yogis called it “doing a double,” and it was celebrated. Everyone was so impressed I could sweat for an hour after a 10 kilometer and then walk home. I leaned more into orthorexia than anorexia. I did a cleanse with the yogis. I went vegan. I ate squash for breakfast. My whole life became a cleanse, and nobody at that studio ever asked if I was starving, either.

When I went to Africa the second time, for my master’s research (smart people get eating disorders, too), ED and I were on a bit of a break. But when a well-meaning Tanzanian friend gestured toward my body and said, “Ah! Our country has been treating you well! You must really like our food!” all I heard was, “You are fat now.” I blanched. The room spun. This—in a country where many face unspeakable challenges and suffer from actual starvation, not on purpose—was my worst nightmare.

I ran straight back into ED’s arms, and I made a plan. I would once again return to Canada triumphant: emaciated. I already walked everywhere in the hot sun, but now I stepped it up, doing workout videos on my concrete floor beside my fan, even if it wasn’t working because the power was cut. I counted peanuts and popcorn kernels. I picked at pieces of chapati and pushed away my rice on a six-day trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. I went on a safari and ate next to nothing and found a Belgian lover who validated me when he said something fatphobic in reference to someone else. He couldn’t possibly think I’m fat because he’s fatphobic. If I were fat, he wouldn’t be sleeping with me. I was fatphobic, too.

I was sick of choosing between controlling my body and living my life.

At 24, I was back in Canada. Extra skinny again and in the flow of restriction. It was easy to deny myself for a while. I started dating, something I’d never really done. I felt sexy. People started looking at me with envy again. I felt special. I tried Tinder and was moderately successful. I slept with some older men and felt scandalous. But I felt empty, too. I was starving in more ways than one — and hungry for a love that would sustain me when food couldn’t, because I’d never let it.