The healing power of housemates in eating disorder recovery

 

As I prepare to enter my re-refreshers, I slightly sentimentally reflected on the past two years, realising that my personal experience was overwhelmingly more positive than the stories I’d heard of girls like me.

 

Like many teenage girls, I struggled with body dysmorphia and anorexia, a need for control and an urge to make myself small. I remember being sat at age 17 in my housemaster’s office, with him telling me he thought I’d be fine as long as I was closely monitored, but he and staff close to me feared for me once I hit university. A common concern for parents, and a scary thing for me, who for the first time was being forced to consider that soon I’d be an adult with an eating disorder. Hearing this, my mum did the only thing she could, and the following year dropped me off at halls with a 16-pack of my favourite crisps and a bottle of tequila, alongside some strongly worded advice on how to deal with a hangover, and what kind of tequila I needed to invest in if I didn’t want one.

Despite everyone’s expectations, through my first year, my body consciousness and anxiety dissolved slightly. My mum had forced me into catered accommodation — the food was absolutely awful, so it wasn’t as useful as I’d have hoped. Though what really did help was my overwhelming sense of FOMO. After skipping dinner night one, I’d realised that meals were the site of socialising, and if I wasn’t careful I’d miss out on watching what the “cool” gap year students wore to dinners (usually something resembling a £500 sheer nightie and an army helmet) as well as events info and gossip.

Though first year wasn’t where the largest amount of my recovery was made, it really did reduce my food “noise.” Showing up to dinner slightly tipsy after a long day on the Downs hugely reduced the idea of food as scary. And seeing hundreds of people all eating, united in that act, made me feel ridiculous for not. Plus, the plans for pres were made there, and I’d be damned if I was going to be late. Maybe a slightly sadder reason that Badock dining hall was the site of my healing was this: I’d been taught all through my boarding school education that “eating disorders are contagious,” and I desperately didn’t want to pass that onto my newfound friends, who were all struggling with settling into university in their own way. But what started as performance out of protection soon bloomed into a genuinely healthy relationship with food.

I will always credit my second-year uni housemates and their accidental normality with my own now. My house was perhaps the sh*ttest find in all of Redland, with its completely concrete garden and my basement room — but the magic happened in between the two. My tiny kitchen housed the only sofas in the house, and, once again desperate not to miss out on any funny story my friends might have to tell about the stray they brought home from Fishies, I huddled in there, be it with a laptop or a bottle of wine. Watching them cook for themselves, and offer to cook for me, made me naturally part of something akin to celebrity Bake Off, full of as many laughs and disasters. I desperately wanted to be able to sit with them, soak up their company, try their food, and be a part of my new little family dynamic. So suddenly my one pot and pan had a use — I wanted to cook, to learn to cook, to cook for them, to have friends over for dinner. Something Eat Pray Love came over me, and suddenly cooking equalled socialising, especially as term went on and the threat of another club night became terrifying for my bank account. I think we figured out pasta, cooked by me, with a bottle of white value wine, was cheaper than whatever Spoons had to offer. In a sense, cooking became a love language, and the girls of my community, suggesting recipes, herbs and cheap soy sauces, became the administrators. Thank god for number 36, where the mouldy sodas somehow provided me with enough comfort to nourish myself, and I appreciate the nourishment from those around me. Although I’m no Gordon Ramsay, I eat better than I could ever have imagined, especially after consuming so many scare stories about girls at uni with anorexia, declining, dropping out, or worse.

After deciding all of this, I reflected on the advice from my housemaster. Although my first response was slightly angry that I’d been made anxious for really no reason, in a sense he was right. I was lucky enough that, without realising it, I was being closely monitored, even accidentally. My friends were absolutely going to make sure we all ate dinner — not because they were particularly worried about me personally, but because that’s what we did. We sat and took turns hovering over our one functioning hob ring.

Although I’m in no way saying this is always the case, I know I was extremely lucky. I think it’s important to hear that it can get better, and to trust yourself — and if you’re as lucky as me, you might be fixed by a drunken Taco Bell every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (and sometimes the days in between).