My Eating Disorder Apology
Tags: Apology, Wellness, Eating Disorders, Body Image, Eating Disorder Recovery

My Eating Disorder Apology

Three years into recovery, and I can finally say I no longer feel as if I’m in the tight grips of the thing that controlled my every thought for over a decade. And as I let that sink in, I simultaneously feel proud of how far I’ve come and feel an overwhelming need to apologize.

As I get older, I realize how precious this life is. I try to be more careful with my words, more thoughtful with my actions and more intentional with my choices. Between the months spent in treatment, years in therapy and countless days in reflection, I now see that who I was in the midst of my eating disorder did not align with the type of person I strive to be.

In my teens and early 20s, I often lashed out at the people I loved the most for reasons they probably never understood. I told a lot of lies and wouldn’t let the people close to me all the way in. I looked for love and acceptance in all the wrong places and generally lived a life of secrecy and shame. I have a lot in life I am proud of, but it is those moments that I find myself feeling a lot of regret.

I am embarrassed to admit that I liked the attention I got (both the good and the bad) for shrinking my body. By the time I felt somewhat satisfied, which truthfully was really not much at all, my eating disorder had morphed and taken over in ways I never anticipated. I couldn’t turn it off in the way I thought I could. It became how I “controlled” the things happening in my life. The “shoulder” I would always turn to. Looking back, all it really did was make me a more angry, unhappy and selfish person.

So, to my friends and family, I am sorry. I am sorry for not being the loving, attentive, present, and thoughtful friend, daughter, sister and partner that you all deserved. I’m sorry I spent so many years trapped in a vicious cycle, afraid of living without the thing I saw at the time as my comfort. I know as a result I hurt you. I’m sorry for not trusting you to help and for confusing your fears and concern for disappointment and burden. This monster does crazy things to your brain, and at the time I wasn’t able to challenge it and see it for the disease it was. I am sorry I brought you on this journey with me. I know it often felt like it was only my own, but I now see the impact eating disorders have on others too.

And to myself, I am also deeply sorry. I am sorry for being reckless and not caring about what happened to you during those years. For not nourishing you in the ways I’ve since learned how to. For all the things you missed out on and for the love I never gave you. For criticizing you, picking you apart and trying to shrink you. You are full of life and deserve to take up space.

Once I started recovery and found myself in a bigger body, the pictures and memories I’d look back on used to make me envious and sad. I would convince myself it really wasn’t that bad and I could go back to that way of life and feel happier again. Spoiler alert: it never worked. Now when I see pictures from those years, I want to give myself a hug. I know how bad that girl in those photos was hurting and how much she wanted to be free from her demons. I wish I could go back and tell her it gets better.

On days I start to feel sad about all the life I missed out on during those 12 years, I remind myself that, in some ways, I am lucky. Had I never gone through that experience, both the time steeped in an eating disorder and the struggles of recovery, I wouldn’t know how to live life as fully as I do today.

Life is full of challenges, and this has certainly been one of my biggest. However, it didn’t come without some priceless lessons. Perhaps the biggest being how important vulnerability is. At some point, most of us have or will look to something to fill a void, and that can look like anything: sex, exercise, food, drugs, gambling, love, travel, shopping, technology, etc. But if we could just be vulnerable about the hard stuff and let one another in, we’d find that we all are more alike and a lot less alone than we think. Being vulnerable fuels connection. And at the end of the day, I think that’s what we are all looking for — to be heard and to feel loved.

Personally, I still have hard days, but I’ve learned how to be more open and give space to what I’m feeling. I remind myself that what’s on the other side of a secretive life, obsessing over the chocolate chips in a granola bar and crying over a number on the scale is a lot more beautiful. And that who that person is is a lot more beautiful, too.