MY EATING DISORDER STORY (PART 1)
By: Alpaca Vogue
Tags: Eating Disorder Awareness, Life Lessons, Anorexia Nervosa, Body Image, Eating Disorder Recovery

Since I was a child, I’ve always been “naturally” chubby. To be more specific, probably 10–15 kgs heavier than all of my stick-looking friends. Ok, when I said “naturally”, it was not all due to genetics. I just love fried chicken wings too damn much and Indomie (my Bruneian readers would know this is our STAPLE food growing up).

See, when you’re a kid, being chubby feels like a sense of pride. You are often being showered with compliments on how cute you are, endless cuddles, and people just can’t stop themselves from pinching your cute cheek. Also, every time you finish everything on your plate, people seem to be so proud, shower you with compliments, and just add more to your plate. Is this my fault for thinking that eating more is like winning a trophy and I feel like a Champion? I legit thought I was on the right path to success. Jeez.

As a child, you just don’t care how and what you look like. Ever. You just can’t and don’t understand anything that relates to physical vanity. Every time I was being called “fat” by my classmates and they laughed, I just can’t seem to understand that this is actually a bad thing. And not once did I ever think that anything was unusual when I started to shop from the adult section when I was 8 years old because my mom said I couldn’t fit into the kids sized jeans anymore. I thought that I just needed bigger sized jeans.

It wasn’t until I was about 12 years old after I hit puberty that I started to “get it”. The whole “You-are-chubby-and-you-are-so-cute” compliments end here. How do I come to know this? Well, maybe because the people around me seem to make it explicitly clear through a few ways such as:

Verbal Statements

- I am fat AND therefore I am ugly

- It is really a disgrace if I am fat

- I have a huge belly and it looks disturbingly ugly in pictures and also when I am wearing clothes

Comparison

- “Look at all your cousins. They are all skinny and very beautiful. But look at you”

- “Look at the difference between skinny people and fat people. Skinny people are always more beautiful and they look nice in anything they wear”

Threat

- “It is better if you don’t come to that event/gathering/party. It is a disgrace that you are fat while everyone else is looking nice”

- “No one will want to be with you or be friends with you because you’re fat”

- “No one will like you and wants to marry you” (I was 12, for fuck’s sake)

Instructions

- Eat less

- Don’t eat at night

- Don’t eat rice

- Exercise more

- Don’t eat chicken wings and Indomie anymore

- Diet! Diet! Diet!

- “If you feel hungry, just drink water”

Furthermore, that was the age when I started to come across all these “silly” Western magazines, and at that exact time, there was this one trend that was being popularized by all these Western famous celebrities and models called “The Size Zero Craze”.

For those who are clueless, let me explain briefly here. Back then when I was growing up, the media really hyped up all these stick-looking celebrities and models with just skin and bones and glamourize them Hollywood style because they are able to fit into size 0 clothes, dress, jeans, you name it. Yes. Size 0.

Size 0 was the new IN thing back then. The media seemed to make all these women look so beautiful with their tiny tiny tiny waist, thigh gap, and their collar bones protruding out. In the magazines, they just look so elegant and clothes just seem to hang on them effortlessly classy. Of course, with the help of Photoshop, even a wooden stick can look nice, isn’t it? But when you were 13, you obviously didn’t know about the Photoshop magic. Or Photoshop lies.

I read all the magazine interviews with all these frail-looking women. Some were very raw, especially models, about how they don’t really eat and they are just merely surviving on few cups of black coffee and cigarettes all day every day. They admitted that by smoking cigarettes, it suppressed their eating appetite. They also admitted that they had to remain thin because if they can’t really fit into the fashion designers’ clothes, then they won’t get the job. Well, at least they’re honest.

Unlike some celebrities who swear by eating healthily and exercising a few times a week.

So, in brief, below is the exact formula that pushed me to go on my Eating Disorder Journey:

Constant insulting remarks + constant negative pressure + media influence + being a young and naïve 13-year-old who clearly hasn’t even had the chance to figure herself out yet = Eating Disorder.

Hence, at 13, my eating disorder journey started. I had Anorexia Nervosa, to be specific.

I started eating less and less and less. It happened almost drastically, as in, within a span of a few months. Until at one point, I just started starving. It wasn’t that I hated food. It was just that I felt extremely fearful and paranoid, not towards the food, but towards whatever that I put inside my mouth/body will automatically just makes me fat. I was so so obsessed with counting calories. I was even afraid of drinking water thinking that it would make me gain weight.

I was starving myself from the age of 13 up until 17, so all throughout my high school years and college. It is not that I wasn’t eating at all. I was. But, every single day, I would have half a sandwich for breakfast, less than a handful of white rice with chicken or fish for lunch and that was it. I would skip any snacks, any tea time, dinner, chocolates, sweet drinks, fast food, candies, and even fruits!

I was literally starving my body of all the nutrition that is very much needed for my growth and development throughout all those vital developing years. Back then, I also had really long days. I would be in school from early morning up until 5.30 pm. Then at night, I would attend private tutoring classes.

I started becoming physically weak. I couldn’t even stand too long because I just didn’t have the energy. I felt like I wanted to faint all the time. I felt extremely fatigued all the time. I was also prone to lashing out and I just always felt irritated and triggered, even over nothing. Then, after a while, I started losing hair. A lot of hair. I would just be shampooing my hair in the shower and I would see all these balls and lumps of hair on my palm.

But the worst price that I had to pay was when I was 14 and my period started becoming really irregular. I would have it for one month, then it stopped for 3–6 months and the next time that my period came, it was excruciatingly painful. Every time it came, I could not physically do anything except for just lying in bed. I could not even stand for more than 10 minutes or else I would throw up. I couldn’t even take a shower. And this knotting pain that I felt inside my stomach was just unexplainable. I kept asking my mom about this pain but she just kept on insisting that it is common for women to feel pain whenever they’re having their period. This is known as period cramps. But deep down inside, I knew it wasn’t just period cramps. This irregular period cycle keeps on repeating for the next 3 years.

Despite all of the above concerning symptoms that I was having, I was still persistent in starving myself. Whenever I looked at myself in the mirror, in my eyes, I was still fat even though I had lost a lot of weight drastically. Looking back, I actually remember how pathetically thin I was yet I still hated everything that I see in the mirror. Sometimes, I even cried out of deep frustration. I always felt like my waist was not tiny enough, my stomach was not flat enough, my thighs were still too big and I really actually prayed to have a bigger thigh gap. Up to a point that I even hated looking at the mirror completely.