Some reflections about where life has taken me over the last ten years… I meant to publish a post like this before the end of 2019 but didn’t finish it in time.
At the end of 2009, I was 17 years old and a senior in high school. I had skating practice before school every morning. I was taking 4 AP classes, including AP Calculus, Physics, English, and US Government. I lived with my mom and my brother. My dad sometimes lived with us, and sometimes would spend the night somewhere else. I was obsessively counting calories and exercising, with occasional "lapses" where I'd fall into the temptations of bread, Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, sugary cereals, and other refined carbs. People started telling me I looked too thin again, even classmates and teachers and acquaintances who I didn’t know well. My parents and doctor agreed. I was sent back to treatment. I spent New Year's 2010 at the child and adolescent inpatient eating disorders unit at Rogers Memorial Hospital...
There’s a lot of ways in which I’ve grown and made progress in the 10 years since. I have graduated from high school, moved to New York, gone to university, crossed many places off my bucket list, ran a half marathon, and gotten to know my family better. At the beginning of this decade, I never even thought of my mother or father as people with their own lives. I have had conversations with my mother, father, and brother that have helped me understand them as human beings. Towards the end of the decade, my father got remarried. I've only met his wife a couple of times (which is pretty weird, honestly), but I like her a lot. I have a career that is intellectually challenging, makes me feel like a productive contributor to society, and allows me to live comfortably in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Most days, I don’t derive my sense of identity from being skinny or sick anymore. I eat a lot of the foods I used to just watch videos and collect pictures of.
But there's also a lot of ways in which I've regressed or remain stagnant during the last ten years. I “discovered” purging and developed bulimia. Many days I feel like I can't stop binging/purging and compulsively exercising. I feel a loneliness gnawing at my insides that grows bigger every day as I watch my peers find satisfaction in deep friendships, romantic relationships, and even starting families of their own. The loneliness, depression, and hopelessness about life are surely tied into why I'm so obsessed with controlling my weight. But I’d like to believe that maybe the 2020′s are the decade when I won’t need to chase that anymore, because I’ll have something real of substance, like all the people I’m jealous of. I'd like to believe that the 2020's are the decade when God says to me, "See, I told you it was all worth it."