Meet My Quarantine Buddy, Anorexia
By: Madeline Knight
Tags: Eating, Eating Disorders, Anorexia, Body Image, Mental Health

My relationship with food has always been….fraught, to say the least. I’ve spent the better part of the past decade constantly obsessing over what to eat, when to eat, how much I’ve eaten, you name it. The eating issues — as my therapist likes to diplomatically phrase it — have always been my Mr. Big. Or for a more recent analogy, that one Tinder match (Chris? Mike? Andrew? Insert generic name here) you’ve hooked up with on and off for years. Sometimes you try dating seriously, but for the most part it’s just a casual “thing”. Always there when you need it, even more so when you don’t.

There have been a couple of inflection points throughout the years when the issues took a more serious turn and I sought professional help. For instance, when I was a college sophomore there came a point where I essentially stopped eating altogether. Thanks to a perceptive roommate and my lack of talent for lying I soon ended up at the school health center, where the doctors wasted no time putting a plan in place to get me “back on track”.

I spent the next few weeks in and out of the health center meeting with a therapist, a nutritionist, and getting my vitals checked weekly. Eventually I began consuming a more normal range of calories, gained a little weight back, and they sent me on my merry way with a referral for a longer term therapist whom I’ve now been seeing for over five years. All tied up in a nice neat bow.

I always told myself that I had recovered and that part of my life was long gone….until 2020 came along, of course. The year that everything fell apart; the “unprecedented times” that wreaked havoc on our collective mental health and triggered all kinds of issues for millions across the globe. As my eating issues reared their ugly head I could have earned a gold metal in the high jump for how quickly I leapt to blame this god awful year.

The truth is, it’s not fair to blame 2020 or this pandemic for a resurgence of my disordered eating. Not because these past few months haven’t been sad or scary or stressful, which they absolutely have (I believe dumpster fire is what the kids are calling it these days?}. But they didn’t cause my eating issues to resurface after laying dormant for years. They simply revealed what has always been true: I have an eating disorder called anorexia, and I struggle with it every day.

For years it’s been easy to lie to myself and those around me about my eating disorder. Most days I manage to eat the recommended number of calories and maintain a “healthy” weight, which helps fend off any concerns about my physical appearance. What people don’t see is the obsessive thoughts and constant emotional turmoil that plague my daily existence. The elaborate starvation plans I concoct as I fall asleep at night. The panic that ensues upon hearing the dreaded question, “what do you feel like eating?” The tears that are shed in restaurant bathrooms after a particularly hearty meal. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I spend nearly every waking minute thinking about food and eating.

Fortunately I’ve learned how to keep myself busy and manage these thoughts so that I can continue living a functional life. But then 2020 happened. As the pandemic came barreling into our lives and the world retreated into quarantine, I was unceremoniously stripped of all my usual distractions. Suddenly I was left alone with my eating disorder in a way I’d never been before, and it was terrifying. That voice in the back of my head, the one that creeps up to whisper daily reminders of all the food I’ve eaten and offer stern warnings about getting fat, seemed to get louder and louder by the minute. Even worse? There was nothing around to help drown it out.

Without the familiar distractions of work and friends and other city-dwelling endeavors, I’ve been left with the one other constant in my life: my eating disorder. It is both my mortal enemy and my best friend, which is probably why I can never quite seem to shake it. Over these past few months I’ve watched my friends (both of the actual and imaginary influencer variety) learn how to spend quality time, either with themselves or roommates or a significant other. For my part I am learning how to spend time with my eating disorder, in all its toxic, manipulative glory.

For a long time I believed eating disorders were a curable type of disease, one that goes away entirely with the right treatment. I still hope that’s true, and I won’t purport to have any medical knowledge of how these illnesses function. What I have learned about my own disorder, though, is that it is with me for the long haul. There is no magic cure to get rid of my obsessive thoughts or quiet that voice in the back of my head. The best I can do right now is know thy enemy and learn to live with it as happily and healthily as I can.

To be clear, this is not me waving my white flag. Anyone who knows me will know that I am not one to give in easily….or at all, really. I just have to build some new weapons for battle.