We have a guest blogger here today– Lily, known as @lily_qi on Instagram– sharing her story and talking about the myth that eating disorders are merely phases that will pass when in actuality they are serious illnesses that take time and treatment and healing to move on from. 

The phrase “it’s just a phase” is too commonly thrown around when referring to eating disorders. They are not a choice, nor are they with the intent to be attention seeking.  Eating disorders of every type and level of severity are serious mental illnesses.  Eating disorders are however, very difficult to understand.

“From the outside looking in you can’t understaned it. From the inside looking out, you can’t explain it.”-Life Without Ed*

Early intervention is essential to beginning to the recovery process.  Without proper and necessary treatment eating disorders have been known to claim the lives of many individuals every year.  Support from family, friends, and loved ones is crucial for the suffering individual.  This process is just as confusing and terrifying for the supporters as it is for the individual.

Hi, my name is Lily.  I’m a seventeen year old (soon to be eighteen year old) senior in high school.  I have been struggling with Anorexia for about four years now.  Perhaps I need to go back in time a bit.

In 2009 a life-changing event took place.  My family adopted a five year old child from China.  In a way, this news kind of came out of nowhere.  My family had started the adoption process when I was seven years old.  The process of waiting went from a year and dragged on to five years. To say I was surprised when we got that letter in the mail five years later is understatement.  I wasn’t ready for a new sister, because up until that point in my life I grew up as an only child.  I was in the early stages of puberty and confused enough with my life.  Adding a five year old little girl into my life was not exactly what I was anticipating. So in September of 2009, my family took the fourteen hour flight to China to get her.  We named her Jillian. (I chose the name actually.) The three weeks we spent in China are honestly a bit of a blur.  The following weeks and months were hectic.  Suddenly there was a small child in my house, who did not speak a word of English, had meltdowns multiple times a day every day, and changed the family dynamic.  I had always known that having a sister would mean having to share my parents.  My younger self was not aware of how greatly things would change though.

My sister received the greater portion of my parents’ attention.  I had never expected that my relationship with my parents would change so much though, and I did not like it one bit.  Frankly, I felt like a second choice.  I know that sounds selfish of me to say, but I was so unprepared and caught off guard.  I drifted from my family, and threw myself into my schoolwork.  I no longer shared the “100” on my test, or told my mom about my day when she’d come to pick me up, and it was because I felt like it didn’t matter.  It took second precedent to my sister at the time.

All of these shifts in the dynamics within my family frustrated me. There were times that I would lie in bed and just wish that time could go backwards.  I feared I was losing them, and I felt as if I was no longer their “little girl” or “number one.”  It pained me to be at home and feel as though I was on the outside looking in on everything.  I felt so withdrawn and started to dread the idea of being at home, because it meant being alone, or at least feeling alone.

Along with the struggles I was experiencing at home with my parents and new sister, things were worsening at school.  Throughout my 7^th and 8^th grade years of middle school I was bullied by a few of my peers relentlessly. I told my parents very little about it, as I felt there wasn’t anything they could do about and I didn’t want to make matters worse.  However, when I look back on it now I really think it was more-so that I didn’t feel like it was “important enough,” or that it even mattered.

I stuffed all of my emotions down so deep because I had no idea what else to do with them.  I spent each day sitting in class having my eyes brimming with tears, and 500 thoughts racing through my head.  I hated how helpless I felt, and I was frustrated that I felt like I couldn’t control the hectic factors in my life.  That’s probably because in reality I really couldn’t do much to change what was happening around me. However, I knew I could shift my control from trying to manage everything in my life, to controlling myself.  With everything in my life feeling like it was spinning out of control; I looked for a constant in my life.  What was it? Food.  It seemed so simple at the time. I could control the quantity of how much and what I ate, and that little bit of control was enough for me at the time. It was my means of control, my way of coping. It’s ironic how the thing that I controlled eventually ended up controlling me.

I never expected for that small coping mechanism, as I like to think of it, to escalate into something more dangerous.  Until May of 2011 the behaviors were progressively getting worse.  The act of restricting the quantity of my meals turned into skipping meals in their entirety.  I began purging in attempt to feel some relief from the fullness I felt.  The fullness I felt was not always physical, but emotional, and sometimes both.  I longed to feel “empty,” because that’s the only time I forgot about the fear and pain I was feeling.   My weight kept dropping and eventually hit its all-time low, but that did not mean a thing to me, it just never seemed like anything satisfied me or was ever “enough.”  I went from the straight- “A’s” student to failing tests and nearly falling asleep in classes.  I could no longer sit in classes and concentrate on what was being taught.  The only things I could focus on were all things associated with food, how poorly I felt about my body, and how miserable I felt.

In 2011 on the Friday in May before Labor Day, my life felt as if it had been turned upside-down.  A teacher of my mine had notified my guidance counselor of my change in mood and behavior at the time.   That day at lunch I was pulled for a meeting with my counselor to just “talk,” as she had put it.  Unsure of why I was there, she told me the concern that my teacher had express.  Immediately I had felt panicked and betrayed that I had been ‘told on.’ The questions she continued to rattle out for the next 10 minutes changed everything.  I confessed to the disordered behaviors I’d been engaging in over the past months, and not even a half an hour later I found my mom sitting with my vice principle.  I will never forget the look on her face; she was hysterical and looked at me, already having heard the whole story.
I remember the car ride home that day.  It was tense and uncomfortable.  The occasional sniffle could be heard.  We didn’t leave the parking lot for a good five minutes, and she confronted me with a “Why?” I didn’t even have the words to respond.  I did not know exactly why, all I know is that I was trying to make the pain stop somehow.

“It,” which is pretty much what my eating disorder was referred to as at the time, was like the elephant in the room while I was at home.  Everyone knew it was there, but nobody wanted to talk about it.  Quite frankly, I couldn’t blame them; I didn’t want to talk about it either.

I’ll skip over the summer and move onto my freshman year of high school.  My parents and I talked little of it over the summer, as they assumed it was like a cold and would just “go way” in time.  That is the furthest thing from what actually happened.  I was only two weeks into my freshman year when the day came that I finally broke under the weight of everything.  I had arrived home on the bus before my mom had come home.  I sat at my dining room table with my head in my hands and hysterically crying.  My mom came upstairs to find me with tears streaming down my face.  I couldn’t find the words to say.  I just kept crying over and over saying that I couldn’t do “it,” anymore.  I’m not sure what I even meant by “it,” at the time.  Struggling with the wrath of an eating disorder? Feeling so alone?  Fighting on my own?  I’m not sure, you can fill in the blank with any.

By the end of September 2011, I was taking part in an intensive outpatient program three nights a week.  Despite being in a treatment program and being diagnosed, my parents were still in great denial, and I think it would be naïve of me to say that they aren’t still in denial at times even today. I spent four weeks going through the motions, but I wasn’t really even going anywhere.  I began to slip further into the grasp of anorexia.  I was moved up to a higher level of care and began a day treatment program through the same center.  I did “alright” for a short period of time, and once they stepped me back down I began to lapse again.  So of course the logical thing seemed to be stepping me back up.  This cycle is how I spent the next few months.  In and out of school, up and down with treatment levels, and feeling extremely flustered with it all.

Eventually day treatment began to not be of much help at all.  I wasn’t complying with the program.  Refusing to participate in groups, failing to complete meals and finish supplements, and engaging in the unhealthy symptoms/behaviors at home.  My treatment team at the time felt that, from a professional standpoint, it was not right to keep me there anymore.  And before I knew it, I was going to be admitted to a residential treatment facility in Pennsylvania.  I’m not sure who was in more denial at the time—my parents, or me.  It was probably my parents, because I was fully aware that I was in need of more help but refusing to advocate for it. My eating disorder wanted to keep me sick.

My parents took it hard.  Prior to residential, I had not been away from home for more than two days, and there I was being sent off to a facility in a completely different state.  My mom cried a lot, as many moms would.  My dad put up his defensive wall and went into his “fix-it” mode.  Unfortunately, “fixing it” was not as easy of a solution as patching up a hole in the way.  My parents both begged and pleaded for me not to go.  I’m sure a lot of it came from a place of worry and concern, as I’m sure it hurt them to see my struggle.  However, I don’t think my parents fully understood how necessary treatment was.  They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing better.  I was eating more, wasn’t I? In a good treatment center and being provided with support, right? It just wasn’t that simple, and that’s something they were unable to see. They couldn’t see what was going on in my head 24/7.  They didn’t know how difficult meals were for me.  They didn’t know how poorly I felt about myself.  I feel like they thought, as many people tend to do, that treatment was going to be the quick fix.  That it would somehow be the “magic cure,” and that once I had been discharged from the program it would mean I was “recovered.”  Unfortunately, things just don’t work that way.

So, I stayed for the whole month of March in residential treatment.  I spent my 15^th birthday there as well, which was probably one of the most difficult things to not be with my family for.  I probably would have stayed longer, however my insurance denied me of any more care.  So I had to go straight to an outpatient basis.  Going from having such an intense level of support, to what felt like nothing at all was a challenge.

I found myself feeling aggravated often.  Keeping up with my meal plan and appointments were difficult things to juggle. I feel that I strove for balance in my life.  I became more involved in my church youth ministry group, and I began to lean on that community for support.  I looked to God for guidance and direction.  My faith throughout my recovery process has been shaky.  There are times where I feel extremely devoted and connected with my faith and God.  Then there are others where I feel so disconnected from my faith and the world around me, and turn away from God.  I feel it’s almost shameful to admit that in times when I have been doing well, I start to neglect my faith.  When really, the Lord is my strength, my rock, and my faith.  I am still working on strengthening my relationship with God, and I make it a point to pray more frequently, and pray with good intent.

My parents weren’t exactly able to support me in the way I needed, because they simply didn’t, and still don’t, understand the majority of it.  I like to describe it as people can understand the black and white facts on paper; however understanding the mentality behind it is seemingly impossible to someone who isn’t struggling with it.  My parents still unintentionally say things that get to me.  Sometimes I feel it’s as if my parents assume that whenever I am doing well in recovery, that automatically equates to being “fully recovered.” And though that situation sounds much more ideal, that just isn’t how it works.

Recovery is a process, a journey, and each day I am fighting my inner demons and striving for health and happiness. I feel that is the optimal goal. I hope to feel content and at peace with my life.  I wish that I could tell you I am fully recovered, but I am not at that point in my life.  I’ve realized that it’s OKAY though, because slowly but surely, I am making my way there.  Sometimes recovery is making leaps, bounds and strides, and other times it’s about taking baby steps.  We do not always have to be strong.  As human beings we are built for struggle, and it’s just a natural part of life.  However, how we choose to handle and rise from the struggle is what determines the outcome.  Struggling does not make you a burden or any less of a person.  It simply is a roadblock that soon enough you find your way around.  Recovery is not a race.  It does not matter how slowly you recover, as long as you do not stop.  And there is no “right or wrong” way to recover.  What works for one person does not necessarily mean it’s what is best for someone else.  It’s not a competition of who can recover the quickest or the best.  Recovery is about gaining your life back.  Gaining back the light in your eyes, the shine of your hair, the will to live again, not merely survive.

An eating disorder is not just a “phase.” You do not simply go to bed one night and wake up and it’s gone.  An eating disorder is not about wanting protruding bones, seeking to lose a few pounds, or just not eating.  They are serious mental illnesses, and they deserve to be treated with the same love and support just as any other illness.  Eating disorders are not a choice.  One does not just decide one day that they are going to “get” an eating disorder.  It’s not something you pick out at the grocery store.   They are not about seeking attention.  If anything, that is the furthest desire.

“Eating disorders are really about excessive control, painful perfectionism, and stubborn self hatred.”-Life Without Ed*

Get in the know.

Find more of Lily over on her Instagram and on her own blog: www.flourishinginfreEDdom.wordpress.com.

*Schaefer, Jenni, and Thom Rutledge. Life without Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014. Print.