In my view, everything becomes wrapped up in the numbers on the scale and not eating. Counting and writing fown every calorie, trying to stay under 500, or 200. Hitting the treadmill until your knees can't take anymore. If you ate to much your day was ruined and you were so angry with yourself if you didn't you wanted to just take it all back and throw it up. You look in the mirror, you are happy with the extreme weightl loss but you want more. Keep telling yourself 5 or 10 more pounds and then you will be happy. But 5 or 10 pounds is never enough, and you are never any happier.
Or at least thats how I felt when I got REALLY bad..
^
Ocean I know where you're coming from but EDs are so much more than that. Its such a complex twist of emotion and thought that it really can't be properly understood by a person who thinks about food rationally.
Overcoming an ED like anorexia and bulemia is more than telling yourself you're being silly and that you're great the way you are. There are so many more factors involved.
Sometimes the empty feeling in your stomach makes you so giddy and proud its like a hit of your drug of choice and just as addictive and damaging. The intense rollercoaster of highs and lows on a daily basis is painful but sometimes welcomed at the same time. Like playing with a sore tooth, pushing harder and harder against it even tho you know its doing you damage and will eventually snap but you just can't stop. It won't let you stop.
Bit of a rant there for my first post in here but I just wanted to try and explain that its not that simple.
I agree with the above posts. I have tried to explain what anorexia is to me 4564 times, I wrote a novella about it, I have countless essays and journal entries… but I’ve never been able to get someone who doesn’t have one, or isn’t a psychologist/counselor who’s been treating people with EDs for a LONG time (and even most of the time they don’t really get it) to understand why EDs are so powerful… and why you can’t just snap out of it…
I guess in response to your post Ocean I would say it’s not about being beautiful, or being more beautiful than anyone else. Like Pillthrill said, it’s less about the way you look and more about the numbers. For me, my eating disorder brings a sense of meaning to my life. It may sound pathetic and sad, but the ED stops me from thinking about the things in my life that I hate by focusing on food. It’s the same way people get high, just a distraction from the rest of your life, and a way to bring some happiness into it. I once told my friend when we were talking about how we had both relapsed “and now I’m going back to the food, because it’s so much simpler.” And it is. It’s an easy way to feel like you’ve accomplished something, it’s tangible and dependent on you and no one else, and it brings meaning and fill up your life.
The importance surrounding the numbers is not linked to being prettier or more attractive in some way, but to so many misconceptions you have. You’ll think, if I lose ten pounds, things with my boyfriend will work out better/I’ll get a boyfriend. If I lose ten pounds, my parents will be nicer to me. If I lose ten pounds, I will get better friends. If I lose then pounds, my grades will improve. Your weight becomes linked to everything in your life (even though they have nothing to do with it) and you just think if I lose X I will be happier, but that never happens, because none of these things are linked to the weight, and so you just keep losing, and losing, and losing, and it’s never enough.
On top of that, the weight carries such importance that achieving that number becomes the thing that brings you the most pride, that shows you you are a strong and successful person. Losing a few pounds is equivalent to the best heroin high you could possibly have. And this how the disorder becomes debilitating… when you gain weight or eat something out of the plan, it’s like you got a F in a class that was supposed to be your best subject, your boyfriend broke up with you because he said you hurt him… but these things times 45734879653874. You’ll become so depressed and guilty that you won’t want to get out of bed and function, you’ll sit in a corner and cry because of what you ate… because it makes you feel like your are horrible, undisciplined, disgusting person, and you will never be able to achieve that goal of being happy.
However, all of the above is totally unconscious… you don’t realize you’re placing this importance on food in areas that are unrelated, while you’re in the ED, you just think being thin is all it’s about and being fat is the most terrifying and horrible thing you could possibly think of. But of course, in reality it has nothing to do with weight, but how you think/feel about yourself.
On top of that, nobody with an ED ever knows what they ACTUALLY look like. The image we see in the mirror is completely distorted, and that often never goes away, even after you’ve been in recovery for years.
It all becomes some rooted in your brain though that you may know all of this but feel powerless to change it. Literally, that is why girls die from this disorder... it had the highest death rate of any mental disorder (can't cite a source for that, but I've heard it from several doctors). Most that have an ED never fully recover, just figure out a way to function for the rest of their lives, but never have a normal relationship with food or their bodies.
I have too much bad ED poetry… haha but I came across that one randomly, weird the things you write : (
