2/7/16: “I’m getting chubbier by the minute. However, I have made a pact to eat better and exercise more so that I can be fit. Don’t worry, I don’t have an eating disorder.”
To be honest, when I found this in my old, blue, butterfly-covered journal I was shocked. Maybe it is because so much has happened since then, but I never remembered having thoughts like this before everything happened in the second semester of freshman year.
My first reaction was to pity my eighth grade self. If only she had known. She didn’t realize. Someone go stop her. I wondered what would’ve happened if someone had found that journal, or if I had expressed those sentiments a little louder and a little clearer to my family. Is it possible that my eating disorder could’ve been stopped before it started? Or was I simply walking down a path that only had one destination, nothing to stop or divert me. Maybe I was doomed.
As I sat with my words for a little longer I began to remember more and more. I remembered how I got unusually excited when I lost ten pounds after having the flu in seventh grade, unsure of exactly why. I remembered starting to think more about when I would eat the snacks packed for me in my lunch box, and if I should give them to my friends instead so I wouldn’t be tempted. I made a lot of small weight loss attempts that never actually amounted to anything. In a way, it was like I needed to mature more before I could become really capable of hurting myself as deeply as I did in high school.
The worst part of the entry is the final line. Don’t worry, I don’t have an eating disorder. It could’ve been a reminder, or some sort of justification, or just denial. I don’t know exactly what I was thinking back then, but I do know that the sentiment of that sentence is something I carried with me for a long time after this journal was written. Don’t worry, you don’t have an eating disorder. Up until even the second of my diagnosis, I felt like a thousand worlds away from people who suffered from EDs. I never thought that could really be who I was. I never thought I could be that girl (whatever that even means). I used to think I had been telling this for the months leading up to my diagnosis, but maybe I had been telling myself this for years. Finally, someone else told me.
The journal that it’s written in sits unassumingly on the bottom row of my bookshelf. Before two nights ago, I hadn’t opened it in ages. When I went to open it, I was not even looking for that entry, or for anything like it. For four years, those scary thoughts sat forgotten, looming, maybe even trying to warn me of something. Although a lot of it is terrifying, a part of me feels proud: I have been struggling for so long, so much longer than I even realized, and I still feel like I ultimately am coming out on top. Maybe eighth grade Mira would be proud too.
My Fast 