Knowing ED

I firmly believe that one can't ever understand an eating disorder unless one gets one. ED is hell, a hell I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. I recently cried when I learned someone had an eating disorder, someone with whom I wasn't even close.

What you should know about ED is that it's not about food, body image, being thin/pretty/attractive. It's about feelings. My ED stems from my depression and my anxiety. ED helps me manage these feelings by restricting my food because it distracts and numbs how I feel. Food - or lack thereof - is like a drug for me.

I have nearly no memory of my summer before my freshman year of high school, my sickest time. I can tell you general ideas - big trips, etc. - and what I ate and thought about, but I have no specific memories. This stems from the numbness I experienced during this period. Both physically and emotionally, I was ailing.

Let's change the way we think about ED: less of a phase of skinny models and actresses and more of a disease of average men and women, predisposed to it through personality traits. Let's consider it an addiction, a serious mental and physical problem which does not go away without seemingly endless treatment, inpatient, outpatient, hospitalizations. Let's recognize that we who suffer from ED can and will survive.