My Fast

        This past week, cross country has been one of the only things on my mind. On Friday, we had our league championship. I was feeling a lot of pressure, not only to do well but to somehow cherish every second of my last painful race in golden gate park.

        On Thursday, Mary Cain (a former member of the Nike Oregon Project and an elite middle distance runner) released a statement about her experiences with Alberto Salazar and the Oregon Project. I have watched her video at least ten times. Although I recommend everyone watch it for themselves to hear her story, here is some of what happened: Cain was emotionally and physically abused by her coaches and was coerced into maintaining a specific (and very unhealthy) body weight to “enhance” her performance. Without access to a proper sports psychologist or nutritionist, and without any other female athletes or coaches looking out for her, Cain became severely ill, both mentally and physically. When she began to harm herself, she was finally able to take the brave step to quit the team and go back home to her parents. It is safe to say that the abusive environment she was put in robbed her of her peak years of running and, temporarily and more devastatingly, of her happiness and self-worth. Her story is an example of the abuse endorsed by companies (like Nike) in order to make a profit, and of the harrowing nature of distance running and elite athletics in general.

        Although what happened to Cain is an extreme example of what can happen to distance runners in the world of competing, her story brought up a lot of feelings about my personal experience with cross country. I really felt like I could relate to the idea of running being such positive yet such a destructive force in my life. Although my four years of cross country have been filled with ups and downs, it is hard not to ask myself the same questions over and over again now that my career is coming to an end. Did cross country give me an eating disorder? And if it did, was it really worth it?

        To me, this seems like a loaded question. If I look at it from an extreme point, I feel like it is the same thing as asking: did running ruin my life? Getting an ED took away my privilege— and my right I think— to eat without thinking. Now, every meal I eat is a calculation, even if the final product is positive. When I motivate to go to practice every afternoon, a small part of that motivation is tied to working off my breakfast and lunch before dinner (although I hate to admit it). Even the night before my race on Friday, I weighed myself and wondered if it would be the right move to have an ice cream sandwich or not, or if I should have a big or small breakfast the next day. Eating, and food, has become such a focal point in my life that sometimes, when things are really bad, everything else blurs into obscurity.

        If I look at it from a more objective perspective, then I think yes, running did give me an eating disorder. Although I was already inclined to have habits such as restricting, or staring at my body for too long in the mirror, running provided the platform for my ED to take off. Running became my excuse for restricting, my excuse for abusing myself, and simultaneously my reward for doing all those things. When my times got fast at the end of freshman year, nothing else mattered. Friends didn’t matter. Family didn’t even matter as much. Just the number on the scale and the time on the clock that I thought it was correlated to. Maybe if I had decided to play another sport, or stay out of athletics entirely, none of this would’ve happened.

        It is a hard pill for me to swallow, the idea that running could have such a negative impact on my life. It then brings me to the question of if any of it was worth it. It makes me wonder if I should miss it or not, or feel sad that it is coming to an end. I have been battling with this all weekend, but have ultimately come to the conclusion that it was worth it. Watching Cain’s video again and again helped me. Despite what happened to her, she clearly still loves to run, and says she intends to keep doing so for as long as she can. She was brave enough to come forward with her story in the hopes to make distance running a safer place. I think that was the most important thing: the fact that she told her story almost as a warning to the running community, and as an opportunity for us to work to make things better and healthier for everyone. I truly believe running is a special sport in terms of the community it forms: running creates a place where people can look out for one another and celebrate each other’s hard work. Running creates a community where people like Cain feel inclined to help better and support it, even if it means sacrificing some of their own privacy and being vulnerable. I will miss cross country, and I believe my experience was so worth it, because of this community, which I have known was there for four years, but which Cain’s video really helped me see.

        Running gave me the community that empowered me to write this blog. Running gave me the community empowered me to start my club. Running gave me the community I could look to when my eating disorder really took off, and when I was unsure whether or not I could ever truly recover. It gave me the friends that supported me the most when I was feeling afraid, and alone, and dissatisfied with myself. I see that community on the starting line, when my team screams our cheer together. I see it when people come up to me and say something to me about my blog after a race. I see it when I can look to other female coaches and runners as role models, and see that they value me and my experience and my struggle. I see it when I am laughing around the dinner table with my teammates, not even thinking about the food on my plate. I see it when I think about how my four years of running has brought me some of the most important people in my life. Without running, and to be honest, without the experience of my eating disorder, I do not think I would have been able to really find this community in the way that I have. I am grateful for four years of learning about myself, and about getting to really see and value my strength and hard work. Running has put me through some of the greatest and most painful battles of my life, but has also shown me what it feels like to come out on top, the people I love by my side.

Ever since school started, I have been losing weight, and I can’t seem to do anything about it. I have been trying to eat more at meals, to eat more snacks, and to do everything else I am told, but nothing is working. Sometimes I am just not hungry, or I am too sad to eat.

At least where I go to school, being a senior is really, really hard. Every evening, I come home to (after a long cross country practice) hours of homework and hours of college essays. I have needed to juggle calls, appointments, trips, and a job (which always keeps me overtime). I have needed to adjust to a completely new social scene and try my hardest to find/make friends (which, for an introvert like me, is exhausting). I have needed to deal with feeling left-behind, and alone, and angry because it seems (sometimes) like everyone else has it together so much more than I do.

Of course, all this stuff is hard enough as it is, but dealing with the eating makes everything 100 times harder. I don’t know how I am expected to do what every other high school student does while also thinking about my weight every day. I have to think about what to eat at each meal, how much to eat, and ponder why I keep loosing weight despite my best efforts. I have to get nervous every Thursday before getting weighed at my therapist’s office, hoping the number won’t have gone down too much and cause any alarm.

But the worst part is that I can’t really talk to anyone about it. Every day I go to school and put on the bravest face I can muster up. I channel all my complaints/stress into “normal” things, like talking to everyone about how I had so much homework, or about how I completely bombed my calculus test. I always tell people about how tired I am, or how busy I am, or anything that feels socially acceptable. I never talk about how I lost another pound, or about how sad I am, or about how I feel so lonely all the time. I don’t want to burden anyone, or make anyone feel uncomfortable or sorry for me.

I guess that’s why I am posting here. I feel like, for the past month, I have been squeezing all my feelings into this tight little ball, and I feel like the ball is stuck in my throat, or like I am choking on it (sorry, weird). I don’t really want to show anyone what I am going through, because I feel like I can handle it on my own, and I feel like I am strong enough to pull myself through. I am trying so hard to be perfect at everything I do, and this feels like such an alarming fall from that perfection that I want.

At the same time, I just want to stand on the top of the world and scream: I AM NOT OKAY!!!!! I guess that is what this post is. I know that, eventually, all of this will pass, but eventually feels like a really long time from now.

Still sending love to whoever reads this and hoping you are doing alright,

Mira

Today marks two years since my diagnosis with anorexia nervosa. I feel quite different then I did a year ago on July 19th. On July 19th, 2018, I woke up thinking about my ED and about how far I’d come, how much I’d battled in the past year. I immediately ran to my computer to write something and get in on the blog. Today I woke up without thinking about much more than grabbing a cup of coffee, only realizing what day it was many hours later. As if my diagnosis was some forgotten holiday or anniversary. I hadn’t written on this blog since April, and I felt guilty about forgetting. I’m not sure why.

Maybe I feel like I owe it to myself to remember and celebrate this day: a marker of my strength and resilience. I should recall my diagnosis and feel proud of how far I’ve come. My struggle should not be something I just push under the rug and try to move on from. It’s a huge part of who I am and who I have been for the past two years.

Or maybe I feel like I need to remember this day because my struggle is far from over. Sometimes I wake up with a weight on my chest so heavy that it is hard to breathe. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in a dark, thick cloud and I can’t really see or feel or remember anything that makes me feel calm and happy. It’s not exactly an ED anymore, but remnants of what happened that still poison my mind and health and wellbeing. Forgetting my diagnosis is like saying nothing is wrong anymore. Not writing on my blog is like saying nothing is wrong anymore. I know that isn’t true, and I think July 19th forced me to recognize this after long periods of denial. I am not sick anymore, but recovery is a long process, and healing is a long process. These past two years have been really hard for me but very healing as well; however, I know it is going to take a lot longer for July 19th to have no meaning at all. Maybe that year will never come.

I may have tried to forget this day to prove that I am more than my ED. I have moved on. I am successful in other aspects of life. I have grown and healed enough to be a whole person again.

Although it is hard to convince myself of this, I know I don’t need to forget my ED to be all the things I want to. I can still be successful and healthy and whole while remembering everything I overcame and acknowledging everything I still need to overcome. July 19th can be a marker of my strength and a reminder of all the strength I still need to live my life every day. I am okay with that.

P.S. If you are reading this, thank you for another year of love and support.

Note: I wanted to write and publish this piece around a month ago, during Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I wasn’t able to get it out then because I just wasn’t feeling inspired to write, and I think it is important not to force these blog posts. Anyways, here it is now!

        A few weeks ago I began volunteering with San Francisco’s chapter of Project Heal, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness and funds for eating disorder treatments, services, and community healing. One of my project managers asked me to help them launch a social media campaign for Eating Disorder Awareness Week, which began on February 25th. This year’s theme was “Come As You Are,” and I was asked to help interview and write about a wide variety of people with exposure to eating disorders and body image issues. The campaign, and theme, were put in place to emphasize that there is no “typical” identity subject to eating disorders, and that it is important to value the stories of people with different relationships to food, recovery, and self-acceptance.

        In being asked to write about other people’s ideas of “come as you are,” I realized that some self-reflection on the topic might be necessary. It forced me to ask the (pretty cliche) question of “Where am I?” I had accept the fact that my answer is blurry: I don’t really know where I am in recovery, and sometimes it feels like I am not recovered at all.

        Where am I?

        Some days, it feels like I never even had an eating disorder. The days where I grab ice cream at 3 pm with my friends, or when I spontaneously decide to skip track practice because I just feel too tired. I feel free on the days where I can sit down and talk at meals, and enjoy them. And when I wake up and the first thing I think about is not breakfast. When I stare at my blog and feel like there is nothing to write about anymore.

        Other days, it feels like I haven’t even been diagnosed yet. Those are the days when I weigh myself before dinner, saying it is just a “personal check-in” but knowing it is not something I have to do. Or when I make myself workout before eating lunch, or just decide not to eat lunch at all. I don’t feel recovered when I fight about food with my parents, or when I think about my meals hours in advance.

        When weighing the experiences, positive and negative, I sometimes feel alarmed and think that my eating disorder is something that will stay with me forever. To be honest, it probably will. But maybe I don’t have to be alarmed by that.

        I’ve used my experience with my eating disorder as a way to help others, and every day it tests my personal strength. I’ve started a club at my school to try and educate others on mental health, and I write this blog to share my story in hopes that someone might relate to it, or feel more comfortable with themselves after reading it. I run everyday and remind myself to eat good meals after, to prove to everyone that I can be an athlete with a mental illness. I support friends when they come to me with questions, big or small.

        Each evening before I go to bed, I can give myself a pat on the back and say “You did a good job today Mira. You fought against something so hard for so long, and are still fighting, but you are definitely coming out on top.” Every day I have to fight against something that most people do not even know is there, and I think that makes me pretty damn strong.

        Just because my eating disorder is still there does not to mean I cannot recover. I think recovery will mark a time when, every day, I can confront my old habits and act against them, without second thought. Where things that used to make me anxious have no impact on me anymore. Where I can accept my eating disorder as a part of my identity and learn from it, and not let it get in the way of living and enjoying life.

        I am definitely getting there, I know I am.

I’m not going to write much here about eating, because recently school and stress have been on my mind. And I have trouble writing about things that aren’t totally on my mind. This is more of a random share of my thoughts and ideas because I feel like I haven’t written on here recently.

The past couple weeks have been really hard, and I’m sure other people I know feel the same way. Personally, the lack of sleep, workload, and anxiety of those surrounding me has lead to multiple teary nights, irritability, and fatigue.

Last night, sitting in bed, I tired to think about something that would make me smile. Sometimes it feels like people are too productive to smile. Like sitting in a happy thought is a waste of time, because everyone is trying to move forward all the time.

I started to think about how, after each passing month of high school, I feel more distant from the person that I used to be, a person that I liked! I am usually not a fan of change, and reflecting back on how my life is different now than it was two years ago makes me feel afraid, and bummed out too. My smile had not really formed yet.

However, I was also thinking about how it is okay to celebrate aspects of yourself that you might not have anymore: this could be a characteristic, a relationship with a person, an opinion, or whatever you want. Sometimes it is nice to think, “I used to be that person, and it is alright to change. If I want, I can be that person again.” We are changing all the time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get back parts of ourselves that we feel we have lost. Think back to someone who changed your life that isn’t really in it anymore, or something you used to do that you loved but rarely have the time to get to now. Those things are beautiful, and it is ok to smile about them rather than hate yourself for not doing them/being them/seeing them anymore. Sometimes, it is nice to leave something as a happy memory and not have to want it back.

It is also okay to give yourself some credit, and think about how you have changed and grown for the better. Give yourself a moment to be proud of who you are now, because you are great. Last night, I thought about all the cool things I do now that I never did before: lead a club, write a blog (!), talk to new people. I can like the “new” me and also like who I used to be, and I can change as much as I damn want.

Sorry for the ramble. I hope you can all spend some time and sit in a happy memory or thought, and let yourselves smile for a little. I guarantee spending time feeling good about yourself is not a waste of time.

Love, Mira

        This is more of a question for you all. How do you balance self-love with accepting that it is ok to have self-doubt? Although not a typical story, sometimes I look at social media and feel weakened by the posts of women who say things like “just love yourself” or “I don’t care how I look, just how I feel.” It makes me happy to know that people have the ability to feel like that, but it also makes me feel small, because what is seemingly so easy for them is so hard for me. I want to promote body positivity while simultaneously acknowledging how hard it is to love yourself. This is so hard though, and I have no idea what to do. Wondering if any of you did.

A few days ago, I was talking to someone about my interest in psychology. Ever since my diagnosis, psych has been a field that has grabbed my attention and been of immense importance to me. I knew that, should I pursue this particular career, I would definitely focus on teenage eating disorders.

However, when this person asked me what I wanted to specialize in, I froze, stuttered, and managed a weak “I don’t know.” After the words left my mouth I was immediately taken by surprise. Talking about eating had never really been an issue for me, so why was I suddenly embarrassed to simply share my interest in it? Was it because I finally felt separated from my eating disorder? Or because there is a small part of me that is still ridiculously ashamed?

Either way, I felt compelled to write this post to prove to myself that I can still share my story, even if it makes me uncomfortable. Some days are harder than others, but I know that it is important to feel proud about what I’ve overcome, rather than ashamed of the obstacles I’ve had to face.