(Yelled at me, as the “voice” in my head):
You are a stupid, ugly fatass.
You will never be good enough.
You will never be worth anything.
Haley, your thighs are massive.
You have no self-control.
You don’t deserve to be loved, especially not by yourself.
You don’t even deserve to live.
Put the food down.
You can’t eat that.
Nothing tastes as good as thin feels.
Maybe if you lost some weight, people would like you.
You’re an idiot. You always say and do the wrong things.
You’re the dumbest one here. And the ugliest.
No breakfast today. And no milk in your coffee.
You’re unworthy, unintelligent, undesirable and unfixable.
You will never succeed, nor do you deserve to succeed.
You will always be like this—a stupid, ugly, fatass.
These thoughts all started infiltrating my mind because of her. She hides in a corner of my brain, pretending to be me, blurring the lines between what I really am and who I should be. She speaks to me; she’s the voice in my head, like when you think to yourself. She screams at me, she taunts me, she criticizes my every move. She fights with the girl who has always been Haley. She argues with logic. She skews the rational until I can’t tell which is right, until I can’t feel which way is up and which way is down. She is my eating disorder.
For years, her words were the soundtrack to my life. It wasn’t just the occasionally heard theme song, though. It was the alarm that woke me up in the morning, and the lullaby that put me to sleep. It was the song I heard on my way to class, and the melody that echoed in empty buildings. This was the song I listened to while I ran on the treadmill, and every tune that came on the radio. Her soundtrack became everything to me—before long, it was all that was familiar to me—all that I knew. Everything in my life revolved around these songs…the scathing lyrics forced me into patterns of calorie restriction, over-exercise, and prayer to a porcelain god after each meal. My thoughts were all replaced by comparison, nutrition labels, thinspiration, and secrecy. This voice was my best friend, husband, abusive lover, evil twin—all rolled into one somehow.
I don’t know how to explain to you what life with an eating disorder is like, except to tell you that I wouldn’t wish it upon even my worst enemy. It’s like living with a vicious watchdog chained to your body. It’s terrifying…to walk around in constant fear of yourself. It was a life with blinders. When I was at my sickest, hair falling out, crying over 3 calories too many—that’s when she was the meanest. That’s when, according to her, I weighed 700 pounds and needed to regain control of myself. It was, and still can be, a very twisted world.
And then, I couldn’t hide it anymore. People began to realize that I was hurting. You can only cry yourself to sleep so many times before your roommate begins to worry. And that was when it all crashed down at once: My parents found my calorie log. I was ashamed and embarrassed. What normal human being spends hours each week squeezing her fat, buying double-zero pants meant for prepubescent girls as motivation to lose more weight? How do you explain to your loving family how they can start a simple diet and go off it after our trip to the beach, but if I begin to cut back, I’ll be addicted to the emptiness, and ice water will become my meal of choice within a matter of days? How do you tell the two people who created and raised you that your favorite pastime has become destroying every fiber of your being? Pieces fell into place and my webs of lies unraveled. I was not given an option. I had to take a semester off of Colgate for treatment of mental illness.
Having to willingly let go of my eating disorder has been painful—the most difficult task I’veever had to accomplish. It’s hard to want to recover, even if I have every reason to need to get better. You see, although my relationship with food has been beyond abusive, it’s also been the only thing I’ve relied on to feel okay about myself. It’s my coping mechanism and a way to distance myself from true feelings. Leaving that security blanket behind is terrifying. It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff, surrounded by your family and friends, even impartial strangers. Everyone is encouraging you to jump off, cornering you towards the ledge. You don’t have a parachute, and every logical rational thought in your mind tells you to back away, don’t jump—this will kill you. How do you ever believe that they’re right—that you’d be better off jumping, falling, and seeing what’s at the bottom of the cliff? That’s what recovery feels like. Each bite of food is a step towards that same threatening cliff, and I’ve learned to trust that maybe they’re all right—that somehow I’ll grow wings on the way down. I had to tear down my old identity—everything I was familiar with—and build a completely new one. Eating again for me was like starting to write with your non-dominant hand…a task so incredibly frustrating because you have to focus on the art of each individual letter rather than letting your muscle memory take over what used to be a “simple” action.
It’s terrifying and confusing and pulls the ground out from beneath you when you are told by professionals that you are no longer in a place where you can trust your own mind. The brain that has led me to consistent academic success, landed me at Colgate, and won countless arguments against my sisters…I can no longer trust it to tell me what is right orrational or accurate. I can learn countless new theories and formulas and verb conjugations, but I somehow can’t look in the mirror and see what I really look like. I can ace a job interview, but somewhere along the way convinced myself that an apple is all I need for lunch, that my hipbones are more important than my happiness, and that I’d rather DIE than live at a healthy weight. It’s confusing to come to realization of your distorted thoughts and perceptions, but to not be able to believe otherwise.
In recovery, life sometimes seems to be an endless battle. It’s hard to wake up, looking in the mirror, wanting to starve myself for the day or week, yet know that I have to go eat breakfast because I decided that living life was more significant than the proportion of my thighs to my stomach.
What complicates recovery is the fact that not many people understand eating disorders, a diagnosis plagued by social stigma and ignorant assumptions. It’s not about the food. There is not one image of an eating disorder. They come in all shapes and sizes and weights and habits. To understand eating disorders, you have to understand that it’s not a conscious choice. It’s a secret addiction, with silence being the deadliest symptom. You can’t just “start eating normal” again to recover, either. There are rules and punishment, “good” foods and “bad” foods that become as memorable as one’s own birth date. You don’t always know who might have an eating disorder. You wouldn’t have guessed that I did. An eating disorder is not just the pictures you’re shown in 7th grade health class. Is it never eating anything? Is it the latest fad diet? No. But society’s obsession with thinness and perfection certainly doesn’t do anything to prevent the onset of eating disorders. Stop glorifying restrictive eating patterns and disordered exercise regimes. Put an end to the satisfaction that comes from eating less than the girl next to you. Stop acting like it’s “cool” or “attention-seeking” to have an eating disorder or any other mental illness…it’s not a class you can take for a semester and then drop. It’s not a trend or something you can just pick up until you fit in your prom dress. Let me be the one to tell you, the individuals with eating disorders who succeed? They’re dead, six feet under, having never lived. It’s not helpless vanity, either. It’s a voice in your head telling you that you are NOTHING on your own. It’s an addiction and a way to numb the pain. It sucks the living out of life, it takes your dreams and turns them into pictures of thigh gaps and ribcages. It tells you that this image is the one and only definition of beauty.
I’m proud to say, I returned to Colgate. After intensive treatment and now weight-restored and in a stable place, I’ve realized that I cannot and will not let myself be defined by something so arbitrary as a number on the scale. I began to refuse the idea that the size printed in my jeans is the determining factor of my self-worth. I started fueling my body, my mind, and my spirit. I am no longer defined by a measurement or simple number, nor is the essence of my identity captured in the black and white print of a résumé. I am not a cookie-cutter 21 year old girl, nor do I need to be.
Look at the people around you. Can you find someone that looks normal? Or a group of people, maybe. Now I want to ask you another question…what the HELL is normal? Am I normal because I wear Sperry’s and straighten my hair? I don’t know. But here I am, on stage, in the Colgate chapel, in front of hundreds of strangers, speaking these words publicly for the first time: I AM IMPERFECT, I AM FLAWED, I AM HUMAN. The student who lived in a Spanish household in the center of Madrid for a semester? That’s me, the same girl finally learning how to use the English word “NO”. The girl you see mixing up left from right in zumba class? I’ll admit, that’s also me. What you don’t know? How many weeks of hospitalization it took for me to reach the point where I was allowed to exercise again. Look around you…and rethink your original judgments. You don’t know anyone’s story or anyone’s struggle or the dream they fall asleep thinking about. So how can you define them in one word? How would you define me? Anorexic?
My name is Haley DelPlato. I am actively participating in the daily struggle of recovery from anorexia and bulimia. I have also been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, Social phobia, Obsessive Compulsive tendencies, General Anxiety Disorder, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I’ve struggled with self-harm, self-hatred, and a vicious addiction to self-destruction. But I am so much more than these labels and diagnoses and categories. My name is Haley DelPlato. I’m a Colgate student from the class of 2014. I’m a Spanish speaker with blue eyes, a country music fan, and a child at heart. I’m a story-teller, a musician, and I don’t own a single pair of white socks…I’m a daughter, a sister, and a friend. I’m a girl who is finally realizing the vast possibilities of life that exist outside of our struggles. My name is Haley DelPlato, I’m a warrior, and I am in your company.
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