It’s always easier not to talk.
By: Chloé Vidoni
Tags: Mental Health, Harrassment, Life Experience, Strength, Eating Disorders

It’s always easier not to talk. It’s easier to shut off the door on everyone who’s trying to help. It’s easier to act like everything’s fine. The truth is, accepting you’re doing bad is harder than fighting your deepest demons. We all have an incredible strength within ourselves: the life instinct. The difficulty sits more in accepting you have to go to the battle.

And maybe that’s exactly why it’s so hard to overcome eating disorders. It’s a constant fight between your death pulsion and your life instinct. It’s a war that rose from the need to stay in control when everything was falling in your life.

But pretty soon, and without noticing, you lose every bits of control toward yourself. You find yourself irrationally crying at the supermarket because zero-calorie food doesn’t exist. You find yourself irrationally purging yourself after eating a 33 calories cherry tomatoes. You find yourself disgusted (and when I say disgusted, i mean: the feeling you’re going to throw up right now) at the idea of having a baby one day just because it obviously means taking some weight. Let’s be real, that’s scary. It’s scary to experience, but it’s even more scary to admit all those crazy and dark feelings. And for those who haven’t experienced mental disorder, it’s almost impossible to understand.

My loved ones asked me so many times « I don’t understand why are you doing this, you have everything for yourself ». Why? Because, once again, it’s easier to die on the inside rather than going to war with yourself.

In September 2020, I got diagnosed with eating disorder (« TCA » in French). But to be honest, it was no Breaking News.

It all started with bulimia in high school, because I made the mistake of sharing a picture of my breasts to my first boyfriend, who, I learnt a year later, sent the picture to one of his friend. And pretty soon, everyone in my high school had the picture on their phone.

Apart from the harassment I was experiencing on a daily basis for over a year, I needed to deal with another feeling: the feeling of my body being stolen from me. So at first, I lost complete control over my body and started binge eating before purging myself. But I quickly got disgusted with myself and of the weight I was taking. So I decided to start a diet. To gain control again. This diet basically consisted in eating.. the less possible/purging myself. But luckily for me, as I hadn’t got really rid of the bulimia, I would still binge eat from time to time when so hungry, which helped me hiding my eating disorders for years.

I still could eat & drink when with friends and I never had an anorexia « look ». I was simply super skinny. And when getting questions about my weight, I simply replied that it was my morphology. It wasn’t. It was all my brain.

While doing my first therapy in 2014, my shrink told me that I was neither bulimic, neither anorexic, meaning I was simply a capricious and egocentric person. Her explanation? An anorexic doesn’t eat, a bulimic binge eat and purge him/herself. But I wasn’t completely not eating, as I would eat and purge myself. And I wasn’t purging myself everyday, as some days I wouldn’t eat.

For the following sessions, she never asked about this again and I was afraid of speaking about it too. I told her that I wouldn’t come back again a few weeks later. I felt ashamed. Ashamed of having complained about an issue that felt « fake », even though it was real. At this time, fortunately for me I was in love. And I was on a break with that person for the obvious reason that I was emotionally unstable. Remission was the only way to winning him back. So that’s the road I went for, or the road I « faked » going for.

For years I wouldn’t go back to therapy, feeling like a scam. But it wouldn’t help me from hurting myself.

Obviously, in almost ten years, I had a lot of remission phases. I had high ups and high downs. At some point in 2017, I lost 15 pounds within less than two months which I gained back six months later. I even remember saying in 2019 « I am a 100% over it, eating disorders are past me ». But I wasn’t honest with myself. While I was « enjoying » myself, eating and partying, the guilt was becoming bigger and bigger. The hate I had for my body was at a bursting point. I needed to escape Paris.

Then came 2020.

After a weight gain of 15 pounds (7kilos) during my last Parisian years, I felt so bad about myself, that I started a « diet » once again, adding a killer ingredient: intense & very long workouts. I pushed myself to the point where I would pass out, falling unaware on the floor. My parents would tell me to stop working out that way. My parents would tell me a few months later that if I didn’t stop with all that nonsense, they would seek the necessary help to take me care of. They felt powerless and I could feel it in my bones.

The fact is when I left Paris, I wasn’t chubby at all. I was « slim/normal » for the first time of my life. But I wasn’t the super skinny girl anymore. A girl I was used to for obvious reasons. In 5 months, I lost 24 pounds. I went from 127 pounds (58 kilos) to 103 pounds (47 kilos). Compared to my height (173cm), and in eating disorder terms, I was in a state of undernutrition, « enough » to be diagnosed of eating disorder but « not enough » to be diagnosed of mental anorexia. Very often, you’re not taken care of and diagnosed of mental anorexia if your BMI isn’t under 15. Mine was 15.7, knowing you need to be at least 18.5 to be healthy.

To be honest, in September 2020, I was at a point where being taken care of seemed like the easiest way to move forward. I would spend a whole week by myself, crying & counting the calories I was swallowing. I wasn’t eating anymore. It felt like I was « swallowing calories ». Food had no taste, except the taste of guilt and intense pain. Food scared me: it meant spending half an hour in the bathroom, purging myself. Until my heart felt like it would explode. Until suffocation.

I went on holidays and for the whole week, going to the restaurant felt like a suicide mission. I purged myself every night, meticulously making sure my friend couldn’t hear me.

I was at a state in my life, where I wasn’t able to think clearly anymore. I became out of control… for trying too much to have control over my body. At the end of September, I wasn’t even trying to fight anymore. My body was simply rejecting food. Then the breaking point arrived. I wasn’t weighting myself anymore, too scared of the number. But I had clearly gone below the 100 pounds limit.

One day, I woke up and did a three hours at-home hard core workout. To fight hunger I was drinking from 7 to 10 coffees and smoking more than a pack of cigares at day. I didn’t ate until dinner. I was with my little brothers, with whom I always tried to act normal. But as soon as dinner was over, I told them to watch whatever movie they wanted and purged myself for an hour. That night, in my bed, my heart was beating so fast that I almost didn’t slept. I was clearly thinking that I was going to die. Maybe not tonight. Maybe tomorrow, for not eating again. Maybe the week after, fainting while exercising or driving. Maybe the year after, in an eating disorder center.

Suddenly, I saw very clearly: I had two options, life or death. Death was obviously looking way easier. Death was the easy way out to not fight the battle that was awaiting me. But I was also thinking about my immediate family and how selfish that would be to leave them. I was imagining my parents explaining my then 7 and 11yo brothers why I had left. I cried, for hours. I knew this had to stop. Hurting myself, and hurting the people I love. And then, without knowing that I would kept that promise, I promised myself that I would eat the next morning and stop working out for a while.

I did eat. I didn’t workout. I ate the day after. I didn’t workout the day after. And after. And after. At first I was counting days like an addict. Like a prisoner. Slowly, eating became « natural » again. I didn’t push myself too far, too fast. Eating pastas, pizzas or burger was still not an option at first. And I have to admit that even though I now do, it still come with some guilt. But at least, I do it, because I like it.

I started working out again three months later, once I had taken some weight again. Once I felt I could do it without feeling the guilt of not exercising for a week. Once I felt more strong. Once I spent hours in therapy. With a good therapist. I kept myself busy, I adopted a puppy.

And it obviously isn’t easy every day, it isn’t an issue I am free of. I still have days where I don’t eat a lot. I still have days where I exercise not because it makes me happy, but because I feel like it’s necessary. I still have days where I push myself too far. I still have days where the idea of having a baby one day disgust me. I still have days where I feel the pain of all this. I still cry sometimes thinking things could have been different for me if I hadn’t share that photo. I still have anxiety attack over how my body looks.

But I also have days where I think about how strong this made me. How strong I was to fight this war against myself. I also have days where I think that if had to go through all this again, the harassment, the mental disorders, the suicidal thoughts, I would. It makes me who I am. It gives me the certainty that I can overcome a lot. The psychological pain and the physical pain. I also have days where I feel invincible.

I know I’m not. No one is. The line between life and death is so small. And this is why today I am writing all this. Because you never know when it will stop. And I want to talk. For myself, for the people I love, for the people who might be struggling right now. Eating disorders, or mental disorders more generally, shouldn’t be a taboo. I don’t want to live in a society in which I am afraid to speak about what I’ve been through, what I might still go through again. Because eating disorders aren’t linear. I know I’ll still have mental breakdowns, I know I’ll still have to fight. This is the battle of a life. But a battle that is worth the pain, simply because life is worth the ride. ❤️