Issue 4: Culture

CULTURE

Stay woke.

How My Eating Disorder Still Haunts MeBy: 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

kept me going for so long, haven’t and most likely aren’t going to happen. In some ways I’m glad I gave myself hope, but at the same time, I wish I hadn’t cared so much about these fantasies. I wish I had been able to realize that overcoming my eating disorder would be challenging enough to live up to. When I got to college, I was so tired of having this battle within myself that I just gave up. I started eating regularly and made more of an effort to become healthier. It was still a journey learning how to accept myself and how I looked. But doing so made me a happier person overall; I could finally look in the mirror and smile. Moving forward was a big step for me and I was proud of myself for getting better.

The impact of my eating disorder has affected every aspect of my life, and will likely continue to do so until the day I die. The anxiety I developed from being anorexic has never gone away, and it holds me back from being a truly happy and healthy person. Dating is hard, going on social media is hard, talking to someone on the street is hard. All because the phrases “no man wants to date a fat girl,” and “you won’t have any friends if you’re fat,” still ring in my ears. There are moments where I struggle more than others, but these days the things that set me off are very different. When I was younger, it was as simple as looking in a mirror or getting a compliment. Now, the things that set me off are more connected to how my body feels, not how it looks. It could be when I feel a roll of fat protruding from my back, or when my jeans just come out of the dryer and are a little tight on my thighs. These are the moments where I struggle to keep my cool and remain a healthy person. And sometimes I can’t keep my cool, and I get into an overly critical and hypersensitive mindset. At times it will last only for an hour, but when it’s bad it could last for a few days. It is in those hours and days that I consider becoming anorexic again. I think about how easy it would be to just skip some meals and work out a lot. But what accompanies those thoughts are others that are much more venomous. These cruel and dark thoughts are more directed at other people than myself. If I see someone thinner than me on Instagram, I assume that they are only skinny because they do drugs, or they work out to an unhealthy extent. These kinds of thoughts are not ones to normally cross my mind; I’m aware of how unfair and cruel they are. But when

I’m in this dark and toxic place, I feel the need to berate and bring other people down; I can’t stand that I feel so low. This looming toxic energy is directly connected to my eating disorder, so in some ways, I’ll never fully shake it. Which is why it’s so important to me to treat my body kindly and accept myself so that I don’t turn into this bitter and pessimistic person. The extended impact of my anorexia is kind of terrifying. I can honestly say, that I never thought that having an eating disorder would disrupt my life for so long.

The far-reaching effects of eating disorders are frightening, which is why it is just as important to talk about the eating disorder itself. When I connected the dots and realized that I was still struggling with this issue, I was shattered. It made me question if I had even gotten better. But sometimes realizing that something is still holding you back makes you fight against it. Often times, admitting what you are feeling is half the battle. Releasing yourself from toxicity is hard, but frequently the hardest things are the best for you.

ResolutionsBy: Jamie Batres

There’s no doubt that a new year is a perfect time to curate a list of things you want to accomplish, butwhen it becomes a cycle of goal writing, attempting, and never thinking about them again, I have to ask.Is it worth it?

Every year I find myself writing down goals for the new year in the same beat up journal– how I want to get to the gym more, take pictures more, travel more. And while these all sound plausible and obtainable in the moment, the more into the year I get, the more I stray away from them. The excitement of a new year is replaced with phrases like, “better luck next time,” or “next year will be my year.”

And you know what? That’s bullshit. Look, there’s no secret that 2018 was a shitshow for a lot of us, especially for the world as a whole. But there was also a lot of good that came out of that year, and it’s not fair for the negatives to overshadow them. Late 2018, I created a 3 column list with the titles “seasons,” “lessons,” and “blessings” written across the top. What I found was that although 2018 was filled with a lot of heartache and sadness (hint: lessons), the blessings column was packed. I saw 3 of my favorite artists in concert, I went to San Francisco Pride for the first time in five years since coming out as pansexual, I hosted a cozy kickback after a concert gone wrong with 4 of my best friends, and I met some incredible people that I know I’ll be friends with for the long haul. It was a really, really rough year, but it was filled with more blessings than I was ready to admit to.

But I want 2019 to be better.

There’s no way of telling what the year will bring, but I decided that instead of starting my new year’s resolutions with “go to the gym more,” I’d stop acting like I had to completely change who I was in order to make it in the new year. Instead, I wrote down more realistic, personal goals, like watching good movies, becoming more financially literate, going to places that I’ve always wanted to visit instead of just going somewhere for the Instagram location, taking more time for myself (which doesn’t always mean forcing myself to go to the gym, and can actually be staying home with friends and cooking food together), leaving my toxic job that’s caused me multiple mental breakdowns (thank you for that, now I know what not to stand for in the future), and finally, not allowing social media to be the end-all-be-all of my happiness. See, the difference between this list and those of past years was that 1) the others focused on wanting to become the “best” version of myself so that others could recognize it and 2) it didn’t require having to change my entire persona in order for me to be able to complete them. I want 2019 to be filled with real character development, not a facade of meaningless accomplishments. It’s time to stop wasting your own time, and that you can start doing now, regardless of what time of the year it is.