The Master of Illusion

When people talk about eating disorder recovery, they usually paint it as a linear story with a triumphant finish line. There is the "before" picture with hollowed out eyes and frail body, and the "after" picture, where the person is smiling, holding a balanced meal, and deemed "cured."

Society looks at me right now and thinks I’m one of the victorious ones. Because of severe chronic health battles (27 kidney stones, wrecked kidneys, and a damaged liver) my weight fluctuates constantly. Lately, I’ve gained some weight back. The very same family members who used to dissect my body now smile and tell me I look "cute and chubby." They look at my changing shape and assume the war is over.

Can’t relate.

What no one tells you about eating disorder recovery is that the finish line is a myth. They think once you look healthy, the monster in your head starves to death. But it doesn’t. Almost every single night, I go to sleep having to actively convince myself to stay in bed and not go throw up my dinner. The battle never stopped.

I was not a teenager who caught a trend. I was a toddler who was taught that food was a battlefield.

Before I ever even started school, my mom told people I was "underweight." She started forcing me to drink Ovaltine chocolate milk twice a day on top of eating three full meals consisting of whatever leftovers we had in the fridge. Food was an obligation and something that needed to be eaten, never wasted. Wasting food was the biggest no-no in our house.

I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I wasn't even in kindergarten yet the day the blueprint locked into my brain. My sisters were at school, and my mom was forcing me to eat a lunch I didn't want. It was a plate of white rice, reheated chicken, and peas. Three things I still refuse to look at to this day. I kept telling her my stomach hurt. She told me I couldn't leave the table until I finished because it was "good food." My gag reflex kept kicking in until, inevitably, I threw up right there at the table. I got yelled at for that, too.

But as I sat there crying, a heavy realization settled into my child brain, "I can get rid of the food." If they force it in, I can force it out. If you think kids are too young or too dumb to think like that, you're wrong. I did.

From that moment on, my body became public property for my family to comment on.

When I was 10, I remember dancing in the kitchen to Mariah Carey, completely happy, until my oldest sister looked at me and asked if I "wanted some butter to go with the rolls on my tummy." When I was 11, I fell asleep on the couch while my mom was out at the bar. I woke up to everyone laughing because my mom was tickling my nose with a Jack in the Box taco wrapper. "Girl can smell food from a mile away," she laughed. It wasn't the smell that woke me up... it was the paper scratching my nose but the narrative was already set. I was greedy. I was obsessed. I was a fatty.

By 13, my other sister was telling me I was fat, boasting that guys liked her because she was skinny, and that guys only liked me for my big boobs. I was thirteen years old. I barely even knew why guys would want to look at boobs.

At 14, my dad sent me two gift cards for my birthday and Christmas, totaling $50. My mom asked me to use it to buy groceries for the house, and I agreed. In the store, alongside her items, I added a box of Cheez-Its. When we got home, I opened them and took out a single handful. My mom looked at me and said, "If I had known you were just gonna eat all the groceries, I wouldn't have asked you to buy them."

The next day, I made a package of ramen noodles. She told me to take the dog out. I said I would as soon as I finished eating. She blew up at me and said she’d do it herself, because all I cared about was food to feed my fat stomach.

I threw the noodles in the trash. I went to the bathroom and threw up the few bites I had taken. Those things was the first thing I had eaten in two days. After that, I went two more days with nothing. It became a twisted game. How long can I go? My record back then was three days, six hours, and twenty three minutes.

By 15, I moved out to escape an abusive household, only to land in a new kind of hell with a 470-pound man I met online. He spent years telling me how much "hotter" I would be if I just lost weight. "You have a great build and great tits, you just need to lose the fat everywhere else."

So, I threw up everything. Because in my mind, the smaller I was, the more I was worth. When his mother finally noticed my drastic weight loss and complimented it, his insecurity flared. He became terrified I would leave him if I got too thin, so he began practically stuffing fast food down my throat, threatening to institutionalize me if I didn’t eat. Nobody knew I was purging. By the time I escaped that seven-year nightmare, the stress and abuse had ballooned my weight to 205 pounds.

I wanted to get my life together. I moved back into my mom's house (because I had no where else to go) and started walking and eating healthy. The first week, I dropped five pounds. I was so excited to be doing it the "right" way.

But the moment the weight started coming off, the comments returned. My mom started bringing home massive amounts of fast food, telling me I was a bad person for "wasting her money" by refusing to eat it. She told me I couldn't survive on fruits, veggies, and protein. She said that I needed real food, like McDonald's. If I didn't eat it, I was a piece of shit. She never said "piece of shit", just would make me feel like one. "You're really gonna let my money go to waste?" "Sara! Eat it! I spent all this money!"

I lost it. I had worked too hard to lose those 20 pounds. So, I played the part. I ate the food, smiled, and then announced I was going to take a shower. I turned the water on to drown out the sound, and I purged every single bite she had guilted me into swallowing. I became really good at throwing up quietly. I learned how to manipulate the stream of whatever I had eaten so it wouldn't even splash in the water.

I became THE master of illusion. I joined Pro-Ana and Pro-Mia (pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia) online support groups, and I became an expert at hiding in plain sight.

I learned that if I cut my food into microscopic pieces and smeared them around, the plate looked messy, but the majority of the food was just crumbs. I didn't have to eat crumbs. I was already a talented makeup artist, easily covering the red, raw tears at the corners of my mouth from the stomach acid, passing them off as "makeup stains."

I moved out, got married, and got pregnant. Suddenly, the stakes were different. I refused to hurt my baby. But the disorder didn't just vanish... it started to negotiate.

During my pregnancy, I was hit with a cancer diagnosis. Amidst that terror, a nurse kept pressuring me about gaining weight too fast (even though I was barely eating once a day) and pushing for an abortion so I could start cancer treatments. I refused. We would deal with the cancer after the birth. But the weight comment triggered panic.

I remembered a movie my mom used to watch when I was a kid (she watched so many movies about eating disorders, which is ironically one way I learned how to perfect my craft.) In one movie, a pregnant girl ate a healthy meal for her baby, followed it with carrots, and then ate whatever she actually wanted. She would purge until the carrots came up, signaling that the baby’s food was safe in her stomach, but the extra calories were gone.

So, I did that. I kept my baby safe, I delivered a perfect daughter, and we successfully beat the cancer afterward.

Postpartum, the weight fell off. Breastfeeding burned through calories, and I started doing Shaun T- T25 workouts twice a day, 6 days a week. I felt confident.

I stopped throwing up because, for the first time, my husband and baby gave me a sense of security I had never known.

Then came Facebook. I posted pictures of my little family, and the commentary track of my life started playing again.

"YOU NEED TO EAT A WHOLE TURKEY AND A PIE."

"YOU'RE TOO THIN."

"YOU NEED A CHEESEBURGER."

Family members talked shit behind my back, and some were coming to me in private to tell me that everyone was saying, "She thinks she looks so good, but she looks disgusting." On the phone, they’d laugh, "I see you always trying to show off your skinniness."

My brain wanted to explode.

But it was funny, right? It's just "a joke." I'm just "too sensitive."

A joke... that started as calling me too fat my whole life and would eventually cause my arms to look like this. Which would also be joked about and ridiculed.

Eventually, I realized, no one was coming to save me. No one was fixing the break. I had to learn to save myself. I kept posting, but I switched it up to fitness quotes and healthy meals. I ignored the comments, or I replied with body-positive quotes and backhanded memes. I grew a shield around me.

Two more pregnancies followed, alongside the devastating physical toll of my chronic kidney disease. Now, because of the water weight and the damage to my body, I carry extra weight. And the irony isn't lost on me that the exact same people who called me "disgusting" when I was thin now tell me I look "cute" with a little meat on my bones.

They think I’m better. They think I won.

But they don't know about the voice. If I eat something "bad," the voice in my head screams, "WHY DID YOU EAT THAT? Go throw it up right now. You do not deserve that cookie, you fat bitch."

Even when I'm eating a fraction of what an average adult eats, it still feels like too much. Food sits in my stomach like a heavy, alien rock that doesn't belong there. I only feel safe when I feel the hollow growl of hunger. My personal record for fasting is nine days, eleven hours, and fourteen minutes. And every time I feel overwhelmed, that voice whispers, "Could we beat it this time? Could we go ten days? Eleven?"

I still hate mirrors. I hate pictures. I love making music videos, but I dread the editing process because I hate looking at myself. Every time I share a photo, I find myself wanting to call myself fat publicly before someone else can beat me to it. I preemptively insult my own body to take the ammunition away from the world.

So, is this a story about conquering an eating disorder?

No.

It's a story about a war where the battlefield just keeps changing. I haven't wiped out the enemy, and I don't know if I ever will. But every night that I stay in bed, every day that I choose to feed my kids and feed myself, and every time I post a video despite the terror of being judged, I'm choosing to fight back.