Speaking about my eating disorder is the best thing I’ve done at BC

I have been struggling with varying forms of an eating disorder for nearly six years, and besides my family and a few close friends, I hid my struggle from everyone around me. As a female student on this campus, I know that I am not alone.

Things first began my freshman year of high school when I started feeling more body conscious and uncomfortable, but I never really took any action until early my sophomore year. One day that year, when I was 15 years old, I came up with this idea, a challenge for myself. When I came home from school, I decided that I wasn’t going to eat anything until dinner later that night, despite the fact that I already hadn’t eaten for hours.

I distracted myself all afternoon even though I was starving, and once I finally ate at dinner, I felt an overwhelming sense of satisfaction for waiting. I liked that feeling – and that was really when everything took off, just more and more days of being controlled by the satisfaction that came from not eating.

I lost maybe 25 pounds that year. I felt a lot of pressure from the people in my life to lose weight, so they were cheering me along until I reached a certain point. Then, they completely flipped and were saying things like “What are you doing to yourself? You need to eat more.” That was really hard too, because I felt this pressure to lose weight and then all of a sudden I was being told to eat more instead of eating less.

In a lot of ways that encouraged me to go further with it, because I was frustrated by that flip.

By then, there were a lot of people noticing a change. In school, I was really pale, my eyes were kind of shrunken in, and my hair was falling out. A lot of people told me I looked good, but I knew that many others knew something was going on. Still, I denied, denied, denied and didn’t tell anyone. That was probably the hardest year.

My junior year I started putting weight back on and every pound felt like ten to me. I was so uncomfortable, I wanted to crawl out of my skin. That was equally as difficult, too. That’s when I found a comfort in bulimia and I had developed my next bad habit. That continued on and off for the next couple of years.  

College was a new challenge because of drinking, which wasn’t really an issue for me in high school. I would look at how many calories I would be drinking when I was going out, which totally freaked me out, and ultimately made me not want to partake in the social scene at all. There were a lot of other times I didn’t want to go out with people just because I was so insecure about my body.

Freshman and sophomore year, too, I had more of a problem with bingeing – I would be hungover or tired or stressed, which lead me to over eat, and then I would have this guilt that would completely overtake me. Inside I was so emotionally upset with my self that I almost couldn’t function, so that’s when I would hide myself – I would do whatever possible so that I didn’t have to interact with anyone.

I would go to places on campus where I knew I wouldn’t run into anyone so I could deal with it on my own until I could get out of that negative headspace, and put a smile back on and pretend like everything was okay. I could never do that in the presence of other people – even though in retrospect, that’s what would have helped me.

I was so afraid that I would get questions about it. I was deeply ashamed and embarrassed and I figured no one could possibly understand what I was going through.  So I just secluded myself and spent a lot of time during the day just trying to be by my own. I essentially shut everyone out.

Things took a turning point and got a lot better when I went abroad; I ate what my host mom gave me and that was that. All of the overthinking and stress was gone. Losing control was what ultimately helped me. And then when I came back to BC, I got out a lot of the bad habits I had before.

Starting senior year I was freaking out – I can’t believe I’m going to graduate – and I felt like I hadn’t really done anything important. I hadn’t done anything that I really believed in. When the What I Be project came up, I blindly jumped at the opportunity.

The one thing I do so strongly believe in is the power of vulnerability. I thought if I could be one voice that speaks out about eating disorders and says it’s OK, I would be happy leaving this school saying, “I did something important.”

Speaking about my eating disorder through the What I Be project is the best thing I’ve done at BC and probably the best thing I’ve done for myself. It’s been such a liberating experience, taking ownership of my eating disorder and accepting it as a part of who I am. It’s opened a lot of really great conversations, and allowed me to be a lot closer in many of my relationships. Of course, there have been hard times as well, moments when I feel like I’m naked in a crowd because everyone knows this about me, and I don’t know what they think about it. But in the end, I feel as though I am finally ready to be the absolute best, truest version of myself, and I could not be more excited to see what that looks like.

At Boston College, we think there is such a stigma built up around eating disorders but when it comes down to it, as soon as I opened up about my experience, I actually received overwhelming positive support. It’s been the opposite response of what I was always afraid I would get.

If I had done this so long ago – once I got close to my friends at BC, if I had opened up to them, these last four years here would have been a lot different and a lot better. I guess that’s just one of the regrets I have – I didn’t trust this community enough to be supportive of me.

Everyone is always talking about how Boston College has a problem with people being competitive and there being so much pressure, and so many people suffer from eating disorders, and that makes it seem like it’s not an environment in which you can be open about it.

But I think, the reality might be just the opposite – we just don’t know that yet because not enough people are taking the risk.

This story is in honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. If you are suffering from disordered eating, or think a friend may be, you can get help here.