MINTZ: Saying goodbye to my eating disorder

When I first was told I would be writing for the annual Dining Out issue, I was so excited. The first thing I thought of was to write about eating disorders, because a discussion about food wouldn’t be complete without a discussion of those who don’t eat it. Plus, writing about eating disorders is kind of my thing: it was writing about my eating disorder that got me a column in the first place. My writing sample was about my eating disorder, as was my first column, as were two other columns I wrote the first semester of my freshman year. No sweat, right? It’s my gig.

However, as I went to sit down and write, I was stumped. I couldn’t put pen to paper (or, more accurately, fingers to keys). I didn’t know what I could write about food, or lack thereof, that I haven’t already written about.

Freshman year, it was still fresh. I was still barely recovered from my eating disorder, which had me in its hold since I was nine years old, on and off. At that point, I had been in and out of treatment for nearly 10 years, and the effects of such a long-term starvation were still wracking my body. I’d still wake up some days and just not want to eat, and I’d still look in the mirror and imagine myself with more prominent hipbones or a wider thigh gap.

But I haven’t done that in a while. I haven’t restricted my diet in over two years now — not even one meal. My body has settled at its natural weight, and I don’t hate it anymore. I know that I won’t wake up in the morning and suddenly feel like I have gained 20 pounds. I know that I am finally recovered.

So this is my swan song: this will be my last column about eating disorders. Specifically, my eating disorder. I can’t promise I won’t write about them in general, but I’m done discussing mine. It has been laid to rest. It is over. I am done. I don’t want it to be a part of me anymore.

I’m writing this to say that the worst is over. There were times when I thought that it would never be over and that I’d have the eating habits of a severely anorexic teenager forever. I thought I’d never be able to be at peace with my thighs, but I’m okay with them now. I even like the two long scars on the backs of them that I got from surgery over the summer (that’s a column for another day).

But I can’t lie to you and say that there aren’t still remnants of a past when I’d have nightmares about people trying to feed me. Recovering from my eating disorder was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Because I was so young when it first hit me, I didn’t just have to re-learn how to eat — I had to learn how to eat, period.

There will always be moments when the little voice in my head yells at me to stop eating. I will always question getting a salad over pasta when what I really want is pasta. And I will probably always half-dread and half-crave the moments when someone tells me I’m small.

But doesn’t this sound like every girl (and probably those of all genders, though I can only speak for my own)? Doesn’t it sound like you?

And this is what I want to talk about: not my personal experience with an eating disorder, but the pervasiveness of a culture of disordered eating and negative body image.

We’ve created, over the years, a culture where it’s normal to be dissatisfied with your body. I would go so far as to say that it’s preferred, even, because if you don’t hate your body, what will you even find to talk about? If you display too much self-confidence, what will other people think? Will they call you vain or conceited or self-obsessed? Everyone is insecure nowadays, and most people are insecure about the amount of space their bodies take up.

This culture of disordered eating and self-hate is so commonplace that I know people who don’t even know they have eating disorders. Take, for example, the girl who restricts herself to 700 calories a day (below starvation levels) because she wants to stay thin, or the boy who makes himself throw up after he’s eaten so that he can eat more. Take the constant talk of “I shouldn’t eat that” or “I feel so guilty that I ate that” or “I need to work that off.” Take me, at nine years old, Googling “my thighs are fat” and finding 7.5 million results.

Take a second to watch others and listen to yourself the next time you have a conversation. How long does it take for food or diets to come up? We are obsessed with it, and obsession often leads to disorder.

I’m not saying I know what to do with this information. I’m not saying I can change this, or that it’s even possible to change. But I no longer want to make my eating disorder interesting fare to write about, because eating disorders don’t always end in bylines printed in newspapers. Sometimes they end in lifetimes, etched on tombstones.