Why I Wish my Eating Disorder was Diagnosed as OCD
     The first time I made myself throw up was a revelation. I was hunched over the toilet in the dark, snotty and crying, but it was the first time in my life that I felt clean. My brain quieted. My breathing calmed. My stomach settled. I flushed the toilet, wiped my eyes, and left the bathroom feeling like everything was in order.
     You might find that disturbing. You might be grossed out, confused, uncomfortable. I get it. In our society, on the rare occasions we talk about eating disorders, we never talk about the gritty details. Maybe weâre trying not to fetishize them. But by not talking about them, most people donât understand the thought processes that go along with eating disorders, nor the function an eating disorder holds in a personâs life. This is my story. Itâs gritty, and gross, but itâs also the truth.
     When I was thirteen, my doctor told me to lose weight. I was a teenage girl in America, but miraculously, it was the first time I had ever paid attention to my body size. I had never even used the bathroom scale before. Now, I stood staring at its reading: 118. I had no benchmark, no understanding of that number; I just felt out of control.
     But then came the revelation. The day I forced myself to gag into the toilet provided a solution: control, order, quiet. I went on with life, succeeded at school, became captain of my middle school soccer team, and laughed with my friends. I felt in control of my life, just by spending a few minutes hunched over the toilet each week.
     As these stories go, eventually a few minutes each week didnât satisfy. Soon, I could only find order with all of my afternoon snack down the drain. Then, my brain was only quiet when I did it everyday.  I only felt clean when my stomach was completely empty. Eventually, I only felt in control if I did it after every meal.
     The first time I threw up to the point that I passed out, I woke up on the bathroom floor, starving, parched, and having peed myself. Somehow I still felt more alive and calm than ever before. I cleaned myself up, went into the kitchen, and made myself an egg-white omelet, filling my body with the tetris-like order of a healthy, satisfying meal in a barren stomach.
     I havenât talked or thought about these experiences in years. Now, having a burger with fries can feel like order and fulfillment. The growl of an empty stomach feels unbalanced. The thought of making myself throw up feels like a tailspin out of control. But no wonder. My obsessions have changed.
     I was always a somewhat obsessive kid. When I was ten, I was obsessed with the rhythmic way our car passed each light pole by the side of the road. I would blink each time we passed one; if I didnât force myself to blink, the world felt unbalanced and I knew something bad would happen. On the bus into the city, I would play a game, staring out the window, imagining all the things I would put in order if I could. Cracks in the sidewalk, trash cans tipped over, a broken window. The world was filled with chaos and things out of place. In high school, I became hyperaware of the orientation of objects, cutting imaginary planes through space, colliding in the air. It made me talented at photography -- I took shots that found order in chaos, everything miraculously in line. But those photos were the exception: everything else felt out of place, so many planes out of sync and cutting through me. Even now, I still canât step on cracks in the sidewalk.
     Letâs be clear. OCD has three letters â I was obsessive, and I had a few weird compulsions, but I wasnât disordered. No one noticed, and I just felt like it was a quirk in my thinking. It never caused me much anxiety. But that all changed with the eating disorder.
     I found myself comparing my eating disorder to an addiction. It steadily took more and more purging to satisfy me. I sometimes found myself lying on the bathroom floor after throwing up, trying to remember what else was in the fridge downstairs, plotting to fill myself up just to empty myself out again. I realized that I couldnât stop, but I didnât know why I was addicted.
     Now I know. The sense of order after purging is a familiar thrill: relief of anxiety, a chemical rush of serotonin that settles the stress on my system. Itâs the relief I get when I finish a hard test. Itâs the relief of organizing my room, making my bed, folding my clothes. Itâs the relief of a crush texting back. Somehow, purging relieved all the anxiety of life at once, everything clean and controlled in that moment.
     No wonder I was addicted. I donât mean to take addiction lightly; the addiction to serotonin might not be as strong as cocaine or alcohol or nicotine, but it still messed with my head and caused me to defend it at all costs. I lied to my parents. I deceived my friends. I flaked on commitments. Just so I could get high off the next purge.
     The first time someone found out, I was fourteen, and my mom asked me if I had ever made myself throw up. Unfortunately, she had no idea of the extent; she only had suspicions. I told her I was fine, and that I would never do it again. She trusted me. I lied.
     Usually when people find out, they try to fix it: âBut youâre so beautiful. You must know that, donât you?â
     I never doubted that I was beautiful -- it wasnât the point. I didnât care about beauty. I just cared about feeling clean.
     In our society, OCD is for clean freaks, germaphobes, hypochondriacs.  Eating disorders are for vain white girls with too much time on their hands.
     My mom couldnât have guessed that it was an addiction. She didnât know it was a symptom of a bigger problem. Of course she thought telling me stop would be enough.
     I didnât stop for years. I would go through phases; every time I came close to getting caught, I would back off for a while. But I relapsed every single time. I got better at deceiving. I knew my parentsâ schedules better than they did. I was the only high school student that willingly cleaned the toilet.
     When I was a senior in highschool, my disorder deepened. I had too much anxiety for purging to be enough. I started fasting as well. Any food that did make it into my stomach didnât stay long. I lost ten pounds over the course of a month. My friends told me I looked great. I started sleeping a lot.
     I began to get blinding migraines. One came on while I was driving, and it was so painful that I couldnât see and had to pull to the side of the road. I started to dissociate, lose time, wake up in the middle of the night unsure of where I was. I became convinced I had a brain tumor. My periods stopped, and then I became convinced I was pregnant, despite not remembering ever having sex. Still, it didnât matter. I was convinced I wouldnât live long enough to have the baby anyway.
     When I tore my ACL in my soccer state final, I decided that it was my fault, because I was destroying my body. I stopped purging for awhile. I started getting up at 5 oâclock most mornings to swim before school. But exercise didnât give me the same high. I started purging again, tentatively, now equally obsessed with avoiding illness and injury as I was with chasing the high.
     Somehow, I was accepted to college. Suddenly, there wasnât as much to stress about; the high didnât have the same pull. I still purged, but not as often. When summer came, I started running and swimming everyday, and eventually I was fit enough to always be hungry, my stomach always clean. Everything felt in order.
     At some point, I found diet pills. They were easier to hide.
     Three weeks into my freshman year of college, I tore my second ACL, playing rugby. Despite now being on diet pills, I hadnât purged in two months. I looked down at my injured knee and thought, âThis is your own fault. â I vowed to never purge again.
     In January, I found my stash of percocet from the knee surgery, and discovered another high that felt like quiet and order. When I ran out, I drank so much that I vomited, and just like that, I was back to my old tricks.
     I was back home that summer, hiding in plain sight. In August, my mom intercepted the monthly delivery of diet pills, and she sat me down and confronted me. I hadnât purged in a long time (three weeks), and I was convinced I was done. Still, it was the scariest conversation of my life. A house of cards falling down. All my obsessive planning, my years of lying, my life of deception, and I was found out by a package delivered at the wrong time of day.
     Still, I told her the truth, and I agreed to therapy. I found I could breathe easier than before.
     (I stopped therapy after five weeks. I told my mom I had figured everything out.)
     At Christmas, I used the words  ârecovering bulimicâ in front of my family for the first time. It felt like coming up for air.
     In March, I turned twenty. I had been at it for seven years. It felt like an eternity. The week of my birthday, at a campus event on mental health, I gave a speech to two hundred classmates about my ârecovery.â I was still on diet pills. I dropped out of school two weeks later.
     Recovery and relapse sometimes feel like two sides of the same coin.
     A list of habits, formed after seven years of routine:
Each morning, my first thought when I wake up is what my body looks like, and how my stomach feels
Before leaving my room, I look in the mirror between 10-20 times until Iâm satisfied my appearance is actually okay to show to the world today
I canât eat breakfast unless Iâm hungry
I canât eat lunch unless Iâm hungry
I canât eat dinner unless Iâm hungry
I can eat more ice cream than youâve ever seen someone eat in your life, even if Iâm not hungry
I buy too much food when I shop because I never know how many times Iâll have to throw up until it âfeels rightâ
Before I leave the house, I check all the rooms to make sure there arenât any signs of my disorder
Before I invite someone over, I check that the toilet is clean and the bathroom doesnât have any sign of my disorder
I always take the trash out before anyone can see how much Iâve eaten
I always have a story ready when I go shopping in case the clerk asks what Iâm buying all this food for
Every time my Mom says the words, âI have to talk to you about something,â I have a overwhelming feeling of impending doom that Iâve been found out
Every time Iâm alone in the bathroom with a full stomach, even now, I still think, what if?
     A few months into my time off from school, I started purging again. I was living on my own, battling my own demons, fighting for my own happiness. I felt okay resorting to my old habits, because I had only myself to answer to. After I threw up each night, my brain was quiet, and I could sleep without detailing my own downfall.
     When I found a roommate, it was harder to hide. The trash had to be taken out daily, to hide the ice cream cartons, the donut boxes, the wrappers. By now, my day was completely occupied with compulsion and habit. Wake up, diet pill, breakfast. Walk the dog, go for a run, purge. Shop for binge food. Eat, purge, eat, purge. Diet pill. Shower, make-up, dress for work. Check appearance, clean house, take out trash, check appearance, check clean house, check appearance, get in car, check appearance, go to work. At work, check appearance ten more times. Eat a salad. Go home. Go to sleep.
     My day felt empty, but it didnât matter. It felt like order.
     The day before Thanksgiving, I lost control of my car on our steep snowy road. I gunned the four wheel drive to avoid my neighbor, and my car tumbled, landing in the ditch upside down. Somehow, I climbed out without a scratch.
     In bed that night, I realized I was scared to die. I hadnât felt alive in a long time. I stopped purging.
     In the spring, I frantically chased feeling alive across the country, too scared to slow down and face the desperate anxiety that followed me everywhere. In Los Angeles, I had a panic attack so bad that I passed out shaking. My friends thought I was having a seizure. The ambulance came, and I was convinced I was going to die. The EMT asked if I was on any medication or supplements, so I mentioned the diet pills. He shot my a look of such contempt that I suddenly remembered that eating disorders were a choice that vain white girls made.
     I became obsessed with health instead. I stopped the pills, stopped the purging, started counting calories, running, doing yoga, sleeping enough, not sleeping too much, getting enough sun, not getting too much sunâŚ. Every day I found something new to add as a fun new health habit to schedule into my day. I convinced myself that I was finally living to the fullest, embracing health, embracing life.
     At night, I drank to quiet the thoughts.
     In June, I started grinding my teeth so hard at night that my stiff neck muscles choked me all day. I applied for readmission to college, and waiting for the acceptance one day, I became so obsessively attuned to my throat that I was convinced I was having an allergic reaction, that my airway would close up at any moment. I walked into the ER and demanded treatment. I spent four hours in the waiting room thinking about all the possible diseases I could have. I strategically positioned myself in a chair where the nurse could always see me, in case I keeled over, gasping for breath.
     I went to the ER four times that week, urgent care twice, spent thirty hours in various waiting rooms, rode in one ambulance, and got four different diagnoses until one nurse finally found one that made sense: anxiety. She told me to get some sleep, and get on medication.
     (I knew that she was wrong. I was going to die from some unknown illness, and it was all my fault.)
     It took two more weeks to get a prescription for anxiety medication. In that time, I developed new habits:
Creating a mental map of every hospital in a 20 mile radius
Estimating the time it would take to get emergency care
Estimating how long I could stay alive if my airway cut off
Estimating how long it would take for me to get help if I was alone
Clutching my neck to pretend the choking sensation was my hand and not my throat
Mapping every sensation in my body
Bookmarking WebMD on my phone
Learning the symptoms of a heart attack
Learning the symptoms of an aneurysm
Learning the symptoms of a blood clot
Learning the symptoms of a stroke
Sitting alone in my room at 3am, unable to sleep, waiting for death to come
Hoping I would pass out from panic so that I didnât need to feel scared anymore
Drinking until I forgot why I was scared
     It might sound silly, but I swear Iâve never felt braver than those nights I went to sleep despite believing I would die before sunrise. I suppose I had to keep living, if I was so scared of dying. And yet, every night, the decision to close my eyes felt like giving up.
     Sometimes fearing death got so tiring that I just wished it would come already. Life seemed complicated and chaotic, but death seemed fairly orderly.
     The more consecutive days that I continued to wake up, the more I questioned my theory of death. I still knew I had something terminally wrong with me, but I guess it wasnât as immediate as I thought. So I did my school work. I made friends. I went to bed every night sure that that night would be the night, but each morning I woke up and continued living.
     I slept with my door unlocked. I didnât want protection from the outside. I wanted protection from dying alone.
     In November, I gave a second speech at the same mental health event on campus. I only talked about the last year and a half, and I hardly mentioned my eating disorder. I said I was confident it was only a matter of time before I would get over my anxiety about health too.
     I was lying. I was still waiting to die.
     As the reader, itâs probably tiring to read all this. Call it repetitive. Sad. Potentially boring. It had been almost 9 years. Of course it is.
     In March, I let my grades slip. I knew people were counting on me to get through school, because I had already screwed up once. But grades felt so irrelevant when I wasnât sure I would live through school.
     One day, a girl walked up to me in the library and asked for help with our statistics homework. Talking to her felt like waking up: like I had been sleepwalking through life, and suddenly here was a brand new day of possibility, fast talking and bright and full of sunshine.  On our first date, I had a panic attack and thought I was finally dying. I didnât. I kissed her instead.
     Sleeping next to someone helped me stop thinking I would die alone. Dating someone helped me make plans for the future, instead of assuming there wouldnât be one. But I still felt scared. Life still felt like chaos, and I couldnât control it.
     Life still is chaos, and I canât control it. Iâm twenty-two years old. Itâs been ten years since that first day in the bathroom. Two years since I purged the last time. A year and a half since I went off diet pills. A year and a half of obsessing, cataloguing, waiting for death.
     Four months ago, I made my regular appointment with a psychiatrist to refill my anxiety medication. There was a new doctor. She wanted to get to know me. She asked what I was scared of. She suggested a new medication- one that helps people with obsessive tendencies around anxiety.
     Three weeks into my new medication, I had stopped cataloguing. I stopped waiting. I (mostly) stopped obsessing. Three months later, and I go to bed every night fully anticipating that I will wake up in the morning.
     Ten years, and three weeks later, Iâm cured.
     Youâre waiting for the punchline, the relapse, the return to the cycle. There isnât one -- I honestly feel cured. Hopefully, eventually Iâll be on the medication long enough that Iâll forget the habits that I formed over this last decade. Maybe then I can go on a lowered dose, or go off it completely. But for now, it helps. For now, it heals.
     We commonly accept modern medicine as a miracle, giving life to the lifeless, curing disease, providing hope in moments most hopeless. But to be medicated is to be diseased, and we donât accept eating disorders as real illnesses, deserving of real treatment.
     As we know, eating disorders are only problems for vain white girls.
     I wonder now what would have happened if, as a thirteen-year-old, I found myself obsessing about my weight but knew I could tell my parents and my doctor that something was wrong, without shame. What would have happened if I had gotten treatment then.
     I donât know what would have happened. I try not to obsess over what-ifâs anymore. Iâm happy with the present now; thereâs no need to obsess over the past. Iâm trying to plan for my future instead.
     But, sometime in the future, I might have a daughter. I hope society will have caught up by then. I hope she doesnât believe eating disorders are choices made by vain girls. I hope we will understand that eating disorders are a manifestation of anxiety in a society that constantly sexualizes and shames teenage girls.
     If my daughter ever has disordered eating habits, I wonât ask her, âHow could you do this to yourself?â
     Iâm going to ask myself, âHow can I help her feel better?â
     I hope that I can teach her to be unashamed and resilient. I hope I can teach her to share what sheâs feeling, loud and proud. I hope I can show her that she deserves to feel better.
     I hope I can show her that sheâs not alone.
     In telling my story, and acknowledging the millions of others like it, I hope that other parents can do the same for their own children.
     Maybe. Thatâs all I can hope. The world is still chaotic, but Iâm no longer scared.
