High School Memory Lane
This entire series of posts consists of the diaries I kept throughout the duration of my eating disorder. Some were written on the pages of notebooks, other on a word document, some half-formed emotion-filled scrawls of teenage angst, and others a bit more subtly written. All of them here have been read, re-read, and largely rewritten. Not so much fixing grammar and poor handwriting, but to expose the thoughts and feelings and inner workings of my anorexia-manipulated mind at the time of writing. While the language, names, and certain situations have been modified, altered, or completely obliterated, the essence of the entry remains.
For those of you reading this with any kind of active eating disorder, or disordered thoughts about food or body, please note this comes with a big trigger warning, as these entries contain detailed descriptions, numbers and ED behaviours. DO NOT READ FURTHER if this describes your current mindset.
If this is not you, please read on. And I hope you take something away from these very personal and very real moments of my journey. And know that the girl depicted in these chronicles is not the same woman who is now posting them here. She is just a part of the story that is now who I am and how I exist in this world.
In the words of Lewis Carrol,
“"I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then." - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
I can no longer retreat to the inner world of anorexia, even if I wanted to. I am here in the healthy world of late night drunk food and lazy sunday mornings, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.
October 2018
Drove by my old high school today. It must have been close to lunchtime. Students were crossing the street to the little fast food plaza that we used to get Regino’s pizza and greasy boxes of chinese food when we were in school. Even eight years out I could tell who was who.
The quiet girls, in groups of two or three wearing the proper uniform, darting quickly, efficiently across the street, who would make it on time for class. The hoarde of boys with hair like the singers of a boyband, taking their time sauntering across the road, even as the light counted down to zero, calling out at the girls ahead or behind them some mocking comment that got them some squeal or shrieking response in return.
They looked so young. I wondered, how old did I look to them?
Did I look like some old lady they would barely register, or would they be confused why I was out driving a car in the middle of the day and not in class like them?
I don’t feel like high school was that long ago at all… and now I sound like my mother.
I’m fascinated by the food they return carrying. Girls with slices of cheesy, oil oozing pizza larger than their textbooks, bucket-like boxes of fries topped with hunks of saucy deep fried meat, making the cardboard soggy with oil, and Styrofoam takeaway boxes of Chinese food, that I remember contained a seemingly endless mountain of rice, deep fried veggies and tofu in heart-attack-sized pools of grease, with a couple spring rolls tossed in for good measure. It wasn’t just the food that shocked me. It was the time. 11:30 in the morning. I hadn’t eaten a meal before this time of day in years. And these kids were already on their second.
When I was that grade 10 girl, crossing the street with her friends, I was just the same, laughing and joking around, streaking across the road before the light changed, a bag of greasy Chinese food swinging from my hand. I wasn’t always able to finish it, but I know I very well would have had the size of my stomach allowed. Now, I might allow myself some of the vegetables if I attacked them with a paper towel, but even that would be uncomfortable. By grade 12, I was eating salads with no dressing, and hiding bits of a bagel in napkins.
How do I go back to being that girl who bought greasy Chinese food at 11 on a Tuesday to eat with her friends in the cafeteria? The girl who so easily finished off that lunch with two double chocolate cookies when they were available. The girl who could also eat just one or none or both cookies depending on how she was feeling, never second guessing or obsessing over that decision. The girl who flowed like water.
With pages of calorie counts and meal logs, I cannot fathom how that girl and I could have ever been the same person. this morning I brought a muffin to school. But not to eat it, simply to have as a prop leaving the house and to sit on my desk during lecture. I'll probably give it away later to some tall skinny dude with an overactive metabolism who slept through his alarm. At least that might count as an act of kindness.
I’ve ruined food for myself, reducing it to numbers and judgements and labels. Like a cardboard advent calendar with each of its chocolates pried out before Christmas, it's flaps hanging open and emptied of all potential joy. I wish I could go back and simply close the flaps, but I can't unsee the numbers. The counts remain etched on the backs of my eyelids.
I wish I had that innocence again, where food was food and nothing more.