Beyond the Commons: Issue 4

CULTURE Stay woke.

How My Eating Disorder Still Haunts Me By: Delaney Davidson When I was a young child, my grandmother would pick me up after school every day. Our routine was almost always the same; we would go into town, have a snack, and then do homework. Every day after I had my snack, I would be pulled onto the scale to be weighed. It was an embarrassing, and at times, humiliating practice. After stepping off the scale, I would be lectured about the dangers of overeating and getting fat. Horrible and hurtful phrases such as “no man wants to date a fat girl,” and “you won’t have any friends if you’re fat,” were often thrown around with little regard for my feelings. One of the more disturbing facts about this is that this was happening to me from the ages of five and ten. I ended up spending most of my childhood overly concerned about how I looked and what I weighed. These obsessive habits continued to develop and grow until it was something I could no longer control.

As a direct result of my childhood, I became anorexic around age 11. I continued to battle with my eating disorder until I was 18; even now it still pops its head up every once in a while. Around age 16, at the height of my eating disorder, my hair was falling out, I didn’t get my period, and I could barely look in the mirror. When puberty finally hit me freshman year of high school, it was horrible. Everything I knew about my body totally shifted. Being anorexic made me feel in control of my own body, and this sudden change in my appearance radically altered that. As a result of this change, I became very depressed and started using unhealthy coping mechanisms. To escape reality, I would fantasize about what it would be like to be in my 20s and live in New York City. In these fantasies, I was always successful, skinny, in love, and famous. These delusions put too much hope and emphasis on the future. I am now in my 20s and live in New York City, but the things I dreamed about, the things that