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Ten Things my Anorexia Demon Tells Me
And how I get him to shut up.
I have an eating disorder. And I speak about it this way because eating disorders mess with your head. You never get over an eating disorder: you’re never cured. So my relationship with food is better now, but this is something that lurks for me. I know it’s there. I’ve beaten it back for now, but there may come a day when it breaks out of its chains and comes for me.
Eating disorders are also really hard to name and talk about. Part of this is because no person with body dysmorphia or anorexia or bulimia or any sort of binge-purge thing will either immediately understand it as a disease or think that it’s bad enough that they should get treatment. I have actually never received medical treatment for my eating disorder and at my worst my illiac crest was clearly visible and I had to pin and belt size zero clothes just to keep them on. And yeah. I was in constant pain. But I’ve heard from other people with eating disorders that they didn’t feel that they had any right seeking medical help even when they were getting devastating headaches and heart pain. One woman told me she was finally hauled in by her mother or her sister and discovered that her headaches were because her brain was atrophying because of her eating disorder. I didn’t know that could even happen. And yet she had to be hauled in because she didn’t think she…
