CW/TW for eating disorder, self-harm, Anorexia, Anorexia-Restrictive subtype, and minor Emetophobia (the fear of vomit, puking, and nausea), and one brief graphic injury description (I vaguely, nonchalantly mention minorly dislocating my jaw, then readjusting it back into place on my own)
This post has taken a shape that’s a bit more stream of consciousness than I’d like for it to be, but I think that it’s more important for me to just put this out into the world already instead of constantly agonizing over rewriting and editing this half to death. I’ve talked about my eating disorder over the years intermittently with best friends, roommates, my Mommy, medical workers, past romantic partners, and sometimes publicly online. There’s lots of bits and pieces of it strewn into sad little stories and updates that I’ve told various people privately over the years, even some occasional public Twitter confessions of feeling horrified when an eating disorder relapse spun out of control, and yet all of it remains disjointed, which is entirely on purpose.
I’m almost infamously super private, but privacy is where this thing has thrived to the point that it’s largely taken over my life, and I think that talking about this publicly once and for all is going to not only set the record straight, but hopefully this will stop someone else from having to walk down the same path alone- especially because the only thing that has ever helped me has been people choosing to reach out in kindness and love, who have tried to understand even when they could not.
My Anorexia took first took shape when I was a literal child of just 7 or 8. It took me many repeated tries to figure out where and when exactly this started, especially because my eating disorder makes the simple acts of thinking and remembering extremely difficult. I walk around in a constant daze, forever pretending to be perfectly fine, trying to focus on walking in a straight line when I am absolutely not okay at all. My perpetual mask of normality might be the worst and most endlessly exhausting part of this- the constantly pretending to be okay and not mentioning things like, “I think I might pass out if I don’t sit down soon,” or “I’m way too anxious to eat in public, so I’m just going to pretend like I’m not actually hungry right now.”
What I have is something that I lacked an exact name for and didn’t even know existed until recently. My family doctor diagnosed with me with Anorexia when I was 12, after waffling about whether or not to diagnose me for years, but apparently he hadn’t been specific enough when he diagnosed me. I was looking up medical journal articles to try to find reliable relief for my endless list of ongoing eating disorder side effects and symptoms, when I came across a list that divided up Anorexia into two categories.
What I have a subtype of Anorexia called “Anorexia- Restrictive” where I don’t binge and purge, I simply restrict. What this means is that I don’t eat large or normal amounts of food and then expel it from my body in an attempt to get rid of the calories, such as puking (especially because I have Emetophobia, an intense fear of vomit and puking) or laxative abuse, like the tummy teas of 2016- I simply do not eat or barely eat in the first place.
Doing something like this to yourself comes with an extremely high level of self-discipline, rigidity, and dedication. Logically, it makes sense- digestion begins the moment food enters your mouth, when your body starts breaking down food and absorbing nutrients. If there’s nothing inside of you (or barely anything) in the first place, then there’s also nothing to worry about throwing up or otherwise removing from your body later. But it takes quite a toll on you in every possible way. I’ve been doing this for so long, I casually told Skull Bestie the other day that “I swear to God that eating disorders take a toll on your very soul.” Maybe that’s not actually true, but the insidiousness of my Anorexia has poisoned every aspect of my life the entire time that I’ve had it.
People are the most unpredictable thing in the universe, and I rarely tell people “oh hey, by the way- I’m Anorexic” unless I feel a compelling reason to. But Restrictive Anorexia is something that is almost impossible to hide, or at least it is for me. It could also be that it’s simply impossible for me, personally, to hide it, what with my being the kind of person who involuntarily rolls her eyes, and cannot stop my actual emotions from flashing across my face for a split second. It’s also extremely difficult to attempt to hide that you’re largely not eating, or drinking, and rapidly losing weight around people who see you all the time- the kind of people who are always present at mealtimes.
My immediate family, of course, has always known about it. They’ve tried to intervene several times, and eventually largely gave up. We rarely talk about it directly, but my mother, who has absolutely zero fear, little to no respect for boundaries, and is the bravest person I’ve ever met, regularly talks about it subtly or will suddenly scream at me her outrage over things like “it’s 8 o’clock, and you haven’t eaten yet [8PM, to be clear]!??” I don’t have a problem with eating on holidays and at events anymore if I have advanced notice of their existence, but I often show up late or eat last, or walk around nursing some bubbly, overly sweetened drink (classic Anorexic behavior, I’ve learned), then eat alone when everyone else has gone. I never eat around other people anymore unless we’re close, or I’m stuck in some situation where eating has become entirely unavoidable- more so because I feel faint than social expectations.
I confirmed to my former college roommates about my being Anorexic in an offhand way when they had tried to stage an intervention. I felt confused at their shock when they confronted me, and in response, I simply said that I already knew I had a problem, that I was completely unwilling to change, that this intervention was not going to save me, and then turned my rude little teenage ass back to C-SPAN or Gossip Girl or whatever interchangeable Tom Cruise film I was watching (I was eighteen at the time). They were floored and understandably offended by my abrupt dismissal of their sincere attempt to help me, but you genuinely cannot help someone who doesn’t give a fuck about the consequences of their own self-harm.
Romantic partners have always been so much more unpredictable than anyone else to reveal my eating disorder to. Besties are almost always initially shocked, deeply saddened, asking permission to hug me, and then we cry together in a tangle of tears and hugs, and endless love and support. True Girlie Pops and theys will support you to the very end, but men are so wildly inconsistent, that I find the whole process of telling romantic partners and prospects exhausting. But I always go through with it anyways, because what if it turns out well?
One of them was a very charming, devil-may-care type of man who inexplicably started yelling at me “NO!!!! NONE OF THAT!!! YOU WILL SIMPLY NOT BE DOING THAT ANYMORE!!!!” I rolled my eyes and asked him “I’m sorry- who do you think you’re talking to, and what makes you think you can control me? Do you think I would choose to be this way if I could simply stop it on my own?? And what gives you the right to suddenly yell at me about this??” He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when I made a slashing motion with my arm and glared at him. “If you ever want to talk to me ever again, you need to stop, and lower your voice, and apologize to me right now.” I watched shame suddenly take over his face as he quietly apologized to me, asked if he could hug me, and then murmured hushed apologies to me while explaining that my Anorexia scared him, because he knew someone else who had nearly died from it.
“I’m not going to die from this,” I insisted from inside of his arms. He held me tighter and sadly said into my ear, “Nobody knows what the future holds, my dear- and I’m going to be so sad without you, and so will everybody else who knows you if you’re gone.” “I’m going to be fine,” I insisted again. He didn’t speak about my problem again, but asked if I wanted him to let go of me because I was clearly angry. “No, I want you to stay here- I just need a few minutes to calm down.” I said in a strained voice. He silently hugged me in response until I finally relaxed into his arms and hugged him back.
Another man told me he “thought I’d been exaggerating” when I had told him exactly how little I ate and been open about my condition from the beginning. Then he attempted to bestow upon me his express permission to eat. I simply sat there and stared at him in uncharacteristic silence until he had the sudden sense and self-awareness to hastily change the subject. It was obviously not ideal, but I think that he just simply didn’t know how to react- most people who have never had an eating disorder or known someone who was willing to talk about it don’t know what to say. And how could anybody possibly know what to say next to someone openly engaging in self-harm, with little to no regard for the very real possibility of all of this ending in the worst way possible? You simply cannot order or attempt to reason your way into someone else’s situation that’s marked by irrationality, especially if they’re not even willing to hear you at all. And I absolutely wasn’t willing to even entertain the notion of me magically “stopping” my eating disorder somehow, because I already knew that I wasn’t at all willing to even try at the time.
One of reasons why I always still choose to tell romantic partners about my Restrictive Anorexia when I think things are actually going to go somewhere is that first of all, because of the nature of romantic relationships, I literally cannot hide how little I actually eat and drink, especially because you simply spend so much time together- it comes out in hoarse voice notes and phone calls where I sound like a dying child instead of myself, in restaurant dates where I squirm in my chair and drink endless amounts of San Pellegrino while not actually eating anything (if I’m even willing to eat at a restaurant at all); in impromptu drives where he eats and drinks like a normal person, while I blatantly refuse to do more than suddenly eat small amounts of cake; in birthday parties where I drink liquids and eat straight up frosting, but don’t actually eat substantial amounts of food or acknowledge that I’m hungry until afterwards.
On some level, it’s easier to avoid people noticing that you’re not actually eating if you’re very busy having an intense, animated conversation with someone, hanging off his arm and crooning about how much you adore him while also lightly mocking him. But it’s harder if you’re with someone who suddenly asks you directly if you’ve eaten yet in front of other people, or if your partner suddenly pulls you aside to try to convince you to eat something. It’s also difficult to hide that something is wrong if someone else overhears your boyfriend saying, “I’m so proud of you” after you eat a small plate of food, then sees you both quietly exchanging little smiles over tiny steps of progress.
But the biggest reason why I always tell romantic interests and partners at the very beginning is because of the first man I told, whom I really should’ve told sooner. I literally waited until we were having ✨THE✨ conversation where we became official and exclusive to suddenly tell him, solely because it literally had not occurred to me at all to tell him earlier. The horror and heartbreak and absolute devastation on his face when I told him, and as he started piecing it together in front of me, is something that I literally cannot erase from my mind.
“I’ve never seen you eat an actual meal,” he suddenly realized out loud. “I’ve known you for years, and I’ve never seen you eat an actual meal!” I watched him silently reeling for a moment, giving him space to feel his feelings until his head snapped back over to me, panic snatching away his usual calm collectiveness. “I just ate a pastel cookie in front of you like twenty minutes ago- I literally cutely posed with it for you and your imaginary camera,” I pointed out, gesturing to the plate of assorted random snack food he’d joked about “hunting and gathering for you” that I’d placed on my lap. It was early days, and he was trying to figure out “what I liked to eat” when I had felt compelled to tell him exactly how bad my eating disorder was.
He waved a hand dismissively at my cookie comment and made a face. “Baby, that’s not real food- we’re going to get some actual food into you soon, honey.” He declared. “Good luck with that,” I told him.
He stared at me. “Wouldn’t you eat some actual food if I got it for you?” he asked incredulously. “Maybe,” I said. We silently stared down at the plate he’d handed me that I’d barely eaten from. He started eating from his side again, where I’d pushed away all the things I didn’t like and would never eat, or at least refused g to eat exactly then. He frowned down at his section and quietly told me he was concerned that it was so much bigger than my side. “I know,” I said quietly.
“[S]… don’t you ever worry about dying from not eating or drinking anything??” He asked me gently. I picked up his water bottle from my lap and shook it at him pointedly as the contents of his mostly empty bottle sloshed around noisily. “‘DO YA HEAR THE EMPTY SPACES??’” I smirked at him. “Honey- I drank most of that,” he said slowly. “No I took two drinks,” I insisted. “Baby, two gulps and then a longer one when you think I’m not watching you doesn’t count,” he said softly. “Who told you to watch me?? That’s a little creepy,” I retorted. “Well I guess you can watch me now, since you’re here.” I tried to take another long drink, but his water bottle quickly emptied. He quietly held out his hand to take it from me, and promised to refill it after our conversation. “SOMEONE has got to watch out for you, and that someone is now me.” He said very seriously as he screwed the lid back on. “Not necessarily,” I said. He froze until I reassuringly squeezed his forearm to show him I wasn’t upset and smiled weakly up at him as he intensely stared at me, then watched my arm retract as I let go of him.
He started to protest against my comment, so I held up a single stale chip in front of his chest, which amused him. “Is that supposed to be like a stop sign?” He asked me, lips twitching as he tried not to laugh. “It’s a sign from God that you’re maybe making a mistake and getting ahead of yourself.” I told him. “You need to go home and think about this first, and then you can tell me a week from now if you still want us to be together or not.” I took a deep breath and moved my eyes up from the chip to his serious expression. He hugged me intensely but carefully, so as not to squash the stale chip against his chest. He let go and watched me set my jaw in a hard line, still convinced that maybe he should walk away instead of being with me. I was about to tell him.
He understood this immediately and started to protest again. “HONEY-“ “NO, NO- the stale chip has spoken!” I exclaimed, holding the chip farther out to him as I stared at it. “You need to seriously think about this before you see me again, and consider whether or not you want to get involved with somebody like me, okay? Because I am not going to get better anytime soon. And if you can’t accept that, then we need to end this.” I glanced up at him and tried very hard not to cry. I couldn’t let go of him, but I also
couldn’t stop my eating disorder.
He hugged me again and said, “I promise you’re not alone in this for as long as I’m here,” then fell quiet for a long moment. “Do you have anything else to say?” He asked softly. “No- the stale chip and I have spoken,” I said with stiff finality. “Okay. Well I’m going to eat the stale chip now to show you just how serious I am about this, and about us.” I pulled back and stared at him. “No, you can’t do that- because it’s literally a stale chip. Like I’m not just saying that.” He stared me down, plucked the stale chip out of my fingers, and popped it into his mouth. “NO BABY, NOOOOOOOO” I screamed dramatically as he made a disgusted face and quickly walked away to spit it out into a trash can.
I set down my plate and hurried over to him. “OMG, I made it a mythological-adjacent figure because it wasn’t suitable for eating- didn’t the name tell you that?? And my dramatic little speech, and the name ‘STALE CHIP’ ???” I asked him. He coughed. “Yeah- we’re going to have to work on me better understanding when you’re being dramatic, and when you’re being serious, and when exactly you’re being literal,” he said. “The name was a warning!” I chided him. “It’s like if someone named a snake ‘Known Poisonous Snake!’” He turned back to me and smiled. “I think that only you would name a poisonous snake ‘Poisonous Snake,’” he said adoringly. “Also, just so that you’re aware, honey- snakes are usually venomous, not poisonous.” He smiled at me before he walked away to drink from a water fountain and refill his bottle.
I scoffed dismissively, staring at the ceiling while I waited for him to finish walking back over to me. I held up a hand in front of his chest when I felt him nearing me like a homing pigeon, which he proceeded to not notice until he’d accidentally walked into it, because I am barely 5’1, and he is a normal-sized human being. He held my hand tenderly and kissed it apologetically as he wound his other arm around my back and slowly walked us backwards together towards our things. “Okay, IRREGARDLESS-“ I deadpanned. He sighed at my word choice because I knew it annoyed him (“Honey, that’s not actually a real word- it’s a mistake that people have attempted to turn into a word.” “Gretchen Weiners would never lie to me! And I don’t believe that she’s wrong about this, because she’s just not. And TV would never lie to me.”), and smiled down at me while I smirked up at him. He made sure I was watching him, rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, and broke out into a grin while I laughed, then abruptly kissed me for a moment.
“Do you wanna hold a funeral for the chip?” he asked me after pulling us apart. “YES- the services begin right now. I hope you brought appropriate mourning attire,” I said to him, nodding once curtly, pulling on his lapel and smoothing it out, then ducked under his arm to walk back over the the trash. “I just have this,” he deadpanned, gesturing to his pressed suit as he picked up all of our things. “Well I’m appropriately dressed,” I said, flipping my hair over my shoulder and making a sweeping gesture to my mostly grey and black outfit. “Your cardigan,” he began, gesturing to my bejeweled collar beige cardigan. “If you slay, then they’ll let you stay,” I said solemnly, and gestured to my snakeprint heels.
He grinned and walked over to me, laughing as I admitted that I don’t actually know what anybody says at funerals. “Can you just please say something for the chip you just killed??” I asked him, bumping his side with my hip as I clung to him. He silently wrapped his arms around me and tenderly tucked me into his side. “You’re responsible for a whole chip murder now- what are we gonna do if Frito-Lay sues us??” He laughed, kissed my hair, and hugged me tightly. “Okay- give me a minute to do the responsible thing here.” He looked up “last rites” and “funeral rites” on his phone and spoke them over the stale chip for me in a resolute, somber tone while I periodically chimed in with “A-MEN” when I thought he was done. Then he did the sign of the cross over the trash can as I tried to mirror him and got it completely wrong, to his absolute delight. He came to my house the next day and said that he would be honored to have me and all the stale chips I wanted in his life every day. I said no to the stale chips, and yes to him. I also insisted he still take the whole week to think about it, but he didn’t change his mind at all. No other partner since him has ever been as horrified, sympathetic, or openly willing to speak about my eating disorder, devoid of judgment, anger, and blame, as he was.
Even people who already know me can sometimes have the most bizarre reactions to my Anorexia. I’d vaguely mentioned the existence of my eating disorder to a now-former friend, and sent her a new selfie I’d taken a few hours before, offhandedly mentioning that I’d just grid-posted it. “Are you posting this because you think you look good, or for eating disorder awareness?” She texted back, as if those were the only two possible reasons I could ever post a new photo of myself. Forget the aesthetic of the photo, or my jokey caption about how unsettlingly, disarmingly young I looked, especially cast in a dreamy glow of sunlight streaming in from behind me in slanted rays of light. Some people genuinely think that anything I do or say must inherently be firmly rooted in my eating disorder, as if it’s impossible for me to exist at all outside of it. The people who are usually the loudest about how bizarrely opposed they are to my eating disorder, as if they get a say in it, or there’s some imaginary “side” to take, are also the most unsupportive. It’s both incredibly self-centered and wildly unhelpful for people to take ✨MY✨ eating disorder, and solely define me by what their limited knowledge of it amounts to inside of their brains. I am not defined by some ignorant asshole’s assigned role of who they’ve already decided I allegedly am the second they hear the word “Anorexia.”
I recently overheard a loved one on the phone describing me to someone else with a word in Punjabi that would translate into English as “frail”, “gaunt”, or maybe even “emaciated.” It’s not like have a protruding spine or any visible ribs, so I genuinely believe that I’m relatively fine. But I think that watching from the sidelines in real time as my current eating disorder relapse has gotten worse must be a difficult, terrifying thing for someone else to witness. Still, I confronted them about it directly, as those of us with zero chill are wont to do, and asked if I look “too skinny” to them now. “No, you actually look okay right now- you look small, but not too skinny,” they told me. I couldn’t stop my momentary outrage and disgust from flashing furiously across my face. “You’re going to get better,” they told me gently. I scoffed and stared down at the small plate of food on my lap that I’d barely touched. After a while, we exchanged apologetic small smiles right before I kept attempting to eat.
For the record, I have lost a very noticeable amount of weight over the last few months, but that was also after a horrific yearlong period of getting The Rona, dislocating my jaw (and then casually shoving it back into place on my own with my bare hands, because I am nothing if not thoroughly practical and at least slightly delusional) twice, having the flu, and getting the mysterious illness that was circulating the globe all winter. My current relapse was prompted by something I would much rather die than discuss here, but I’m so endlessly grateful for my closest friends, who know exactly what’s going on, and have given me a safe, closed space to be able to grieve and mourn and try to heal privately, without judgement. My relapse is simply me reacting to what’s happening in my life right now. It’s like, the most cursed coping mechanism I’ve ever adopted.
I went to a funeral service last month [please do not direct prayers and condolences to me, but to the family of the deceased- the service was for a family friend I recall only from my childhood that I attended with my Amiji], where I ran into some old acquaintances I didn’t actually speak to, because I hate them (irrelevant long story). I still remember their shocked, horrified faces and open-mouthed gasps when they first saw me next to my Mom. I didn’t think I looked quite that bad running on an hour and a half of sleep and straight up anxiety, but maybe I did to them. I hadn’t seen them in years, but it’s very difficult for people to hide their initial, unfiltered reactions when they’re caught off-guard, so I assumed that their reactions to me were sincere. When I mentioned it to my Mom later, she said very seriously, “it’s because you look so scary when you don’t eat.” “I do NOT,” I bristled. “Yes you do,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I look like a normal person!” “You look like you have been very sick for a long time,” she said gently. I fumed silently. “Go be mad if you want to be mad, [S], but nothing is going to change the way you look if you don’t start eating food,” she said quietly. I sat there and continued to fume silently until the feeling faded away.
I think it would be ridiculous to act as if I don’t have a sudden new face shape and look very noticeably different now, especially after I literally chopped off seven or eight inches of my own hair last month (post-funeral), because my Anorexia had destroyed the ends of my very long hair. It’s much healthier and softer and shinier now, and already regrowing at it’s normal rate, so I’m largely unconcerned about that, but it does freak me out that I’ve lost so much weight and still have a magically wrinkless face (and that’s that on being brown 😌🫶🏾😘). I’m annoyed that my socks keep falling down my tiny bony ankles, and that I can’t quite find any pants I already own that actually fit me- but these are simply recurring Anorexia problems that keep happening to me over and over again with each mounting relapse episode. Literally none of this is anything new, except for the sudden new planes of my own face.
Skull Bestie commented to me one day, “it’s not your fault that this is your reaction to stress.” I think Bestie is right, but I am also the one who has continued to do this to myself for decades. I became Anorexic long before I ever went through puberty, and it’s followed me through adolescence, young adulthood, my entire twenties, to now in my early thirties. The research I’ve found says that the longer you’ve had it for, the less likely you will be to ever completely recover from Anorexia specifically, because it’s cemented itself into your established habits and behaviors for so long. Perhaps if some qualified medical professionals had meaningfully intervened when I was a teenager, and done more than diagnose me, use some infernal contraption to try to measure my already small bones, and make me meet with some useless dietician who compared wrist width with me and repeatedly told me to eat 12 almonds as a snack (I’m literally allergic 💀✨💀✨💀), then maybe I wouldn’t be like this now.
But the time period when “early intervention” might’ve saved me happened so long ago, that now it feels like nothing but a sad possibility of a hopeful turn that my life could’ve taken, but didn’t. I want that turn to exist for other people, but I’m not sure if it exists for me anymore. That level of uncertainty scares me, because I’m usually fiercely decisive about everything, and I can usually guess what’s most likely to happen next, but not with this. And there is nothing worse than the unknown to me.
My Anorexia was cyclical for a very long time, coming and going every two years like clockwork. It was a pattern I could break over and over again, until it came back, of course. But sometime in my early-to-mid twenties, it came back and never quite completely left. It stopped being so predictably cyclical, and I panicked, because what did this mean?? And then the last few years brought so much turmoil and heartache along with them, and suddenly, I found myself unable to pull me out of my own eating disorder at all. Things have been especially horrific since last fall, but I genuinely would not have been able to get down to this size again if it were not for all of the additional illnesses that I’ve had over the last year or so. I think about that quite often, when I’m alone and staring at myself in the mirror, or tightening the drawstring waist of my pants for the fourth time in a row, or sitting on my bed in dizzied silence.
There is something different about this time, my current replase that started last year. For some reason, I’ve felt distinctly like either I’m going to actually somehow get better this time, or that I might very possibly actually die. I cannot honestly say that I feel particularly invested in staying or being alive at all, but I am still here, which would count for something if it didn’t remind me of when I was depressed a few years back and wrote, “at the end of every day, I only go to sleep and wake up again because that is what human bodies are designed to do.” Goodness knows I’m not doing much to actually help keep my own body alive.
I only kind of vaguely want to be around to finish writing a few things, like my speculative fiction screenplay(s) about Death, the novel about the girl who finds out that her original soulmate is currently in Hell, a new short story about climate change, a poem that’s far too violent for me to post on social media and realistically expect it to stay up, a bunch of ardent love poems that sometimes make me feel sick from how utterly saccharine they are, a recent poem about insincere politicians that’s very similar to the two-faced politician’s campaign speech satirical poem that I wrote when I was 16 or 17, and that mad depressing piece about Death that I picked back up a few nights ago, watching it wildly veer off into an unintended, intriguing new direction. I kind of vaguely want to write things the same way I want to see my friends- I need it, I want it, and I also feel so hopelessly half-hearted about it. Perhaps I would feel differently if I were eating more.
I remember the other day, finally feeling my brain settle down into a remarkably lighter haze of calmness and clarity, after finally eating somewhere around a thousand calories after days and days of so much less, for far too many days to be able to actually keep count of it on my own without consulting my food diary of photos on my phone. I felt like I suddenly had room in my own brain to actually think instead of trudging through the everyday constant haze of perpetual almost sleepiness, half-forgotten memories, and half-coherent thoughts I’d become re-accustomed to stumbling through for the trillionth time. I wondered to myself if it was the carbs.
I suddenly recalled a nutrition class where our teacher had kept telling us over and over again, “your brain literally needs carbs to run,” and the way she’d always momentarily glance over at me for a fraction of a second before her eyes moved on. She had already privately confronted me after class one day over a food log assignment. “I’m just concerned because this seems like it’s just simply not enough food,” she said sadly. I explained that I’d literally done exactly what we were instructed to on My Fittness Pal (which is literally a friend to exactly no one). She stared me down, waiting for an actual answer, saying she had nowhere to be after this if I needed a minute, so I sighed heavily, watched her shift uncomfortably in momentary surprise, and decided to just tell her about my then-on-off eating disorder.
She suddenly softened and looked at me with that expression on her face that I’ve seen a million times before on so many people’s faces as I have quietly explained about my eating disorder- that familiar mix of initial shock, sudden sadness, secondhand pain, sympathy, and a fraction of the heartbreak on my pervious partner’s face when I’d first told him about my problem.
The echo of him saying “I’ve never seen you eat a full meal” in horrified shock always reverberates its way back through my memories whenever I have this moment with somebody else. Everybody is shocked, everybody feels bad, but nobody else ever looks like I just shredded their soul in front of them the way that he did after I grasped his arm and said, “I need to tell you something serious, and I understand if you change your mind about me after I tell you this.”
He was silent for a long time, studying me carefully before he suddenly tried to break the sudden tension of the moment by halfheartedly joking, “What, did you murder someone??” “No,” I answered him easily, before amending “well, maybe just ME.”
