Blisters

It’s national eating disorder awareness week. Usually during this week, I stop looking at social media accounts because most of the personal things that are shared trigger me back into my own habits. This year, the week snuck up on me, so when I found myself unexpectedly reading paragraph-long Instagram posts about personal histories with eating disorders, I felt inspired and supported instead of triggered and anxious. This weekend after getting some bad blisters, I was lying in bed and thinking about the relationship I have to scars. This piece is what came of it. Please be careful with yourself in reading this if you have a history of disordered eating. I didn’t write this or share this with the intention of triggering someone else, and truly hope it has nothing but a positive impact on you if you read it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This weekend I left Palmerston North and went to the city of Taupo with a few friends. Taupo is on the edge of Lake Taupo- a lake as big as Singapore and deep enough to practice scuba diving in. It’s at the bottom of a sleepy volcano. Its home to the Huka Falls, natural hot pools, craters that emitted steam, and plenty of gorgeous landscapes. We had planned a weekend full of hiking, swimming, eating, and adventuring.

            We started our first full day in Taupo early. We woke up, had breakfast, and immediately set out to hike up towards the Huka falls. We planned on a four hour hike to the falls and back, stopping on our way back down to swim in the hot pools. However, once we reached the falls, we decided to follow some signs up towards the Aratitia Dam. By the time we had been hiking for about two hours, we were certainly a little tired. We had walked from our hostel to the starting point for the hike to the falls, which had added about forty five minutes onto our total hike time. That was fine! It was a pleasant enough walk, and it was nice to be able to see the town up close.

            However, when we made the choice to walk up to the Aratitia Dam, we hadn’t factored in one crucial piece of information; we had no idea how long it would take. What the sign didn’t tell us was the distance from where we were to the dam. What we would later learn is that it would take about two hours to get to the dam. And another two hours to get back to the falls. And then three hours to get back to our hostel.  About ten hours in total if we kept on the path we were on (which we had to[1]).

            Around the five hour mark, my feet had started hurting pretty badly. I was wearing leather boots that don’t offer much breathability, but I didn’t have much of a choice besides continuing on. Our path had to lead somewhere. All we could do was walk forwards. We all ran out of water. We were hungry as hell. Daisy, the saint that she is, had the foresight to bring along a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, so we all ate plain bread and scooped peanut butter out of the jar with our fingers. We split the few granola bars we had with each other. Eventually we found a place to refill our water, but we still had a good couple of miles to go. No one was prepared to get lost for as long as we did, and yet somehow we were all still in good spirits.  

            All in all, the hike took us 8 hours. 8 hours for an 18 mile hike means we averaged about 2.25 miles per hour- which really isn’t bad considering all the breaks we took to take in the scenery and eat our raw bread loaf. By the time we got back to the hostel, I had six blisters that had formed, popped, and reformed in my boots. Taking off my shoes was excruciating.

            As I peeled back my socks and took a look at the bubbles of pain that had formed, I felt almost a sick sense of gladness that I had some proof of the pain I occasionally complained about during the hike. I was glad that my complaints weren’t unfounded. I had proof of my suffering.

            Since that moment, I’ve been thinking a lot about why it made me feel proud to see my blisters. It wasn’t just that I was proud of myself for getting through an 18 mile hike in horrible shoes with little (spoken) complaints, there was something more beneath the surface. I felt almost like bragging, and not because I did something athletic.

            See, there’s something about having scars, or any kind of “proof” of pain that makes me feel jealous. When people have markers of the things they’ve gone through, I can feel my brain involuntarily wishing I could have that too, and I think it’s a leftover effect of the eating disorder I started to develop in high school.

            As a 16 year old, what I envied about scars was that it was a cry for help that didn’t need to be vocalized. I used to follow blogs on tumblr that idolized anorexia, glorified cutting, and honored mental illness. I considered these people stronger than me, because they had the strength to “follow through” in their self-harm to the point where they didn’t need to ask for help- everyone already knew they needed it. They would complain about their parents forcing them into therapy or rehab, and I would feel jealous that the people around them knew about their suffering enough to get them the help they needed, whereas I suffered in silence and invisibility.

            I never told anyone that I had an eating disorder. I told maybe two friends that I had had one- past tense. I told them not to worry, that I was over it, and I was fine. The first person I told in the present tense was my therapist at age 19. I had gone 3 years without being truthful, because I had hoped I would be skinny enough for people to be able to tell. I wanted to be thin enough that my entire body would be a scar- I would be proof of how horrible I felt, proof of the things I was dealing with. I wanted my eating disorder to be enough proof of all the other things I was feeling that I couldn’t express out loud to anyone.

            For me, my eating disorder is rooted in control. When I feel hopeless or powerless in the world around me, I find I can at least control what I put into my body. To ask for help, to give up what I thought was the only control I had on my life, was allowing myself to be so completely vulnerable to those around me. It felt impossible. When I told my therapist about my eating disorder, it felt like a betrayal. I felt like I was betraying myself- like each step I took towards recovery was a direct assault on whatever little power I thought I had. But the worst part was that I had elected to betray myself. By telling my therapist, by asking for help instead of being forced into it by someone who recognized the pain I was going through- I hated myself for not “following through” in the same way I perceived those tumblr blogs to do.

            Something my therapist would later tell me, is that sometimes you have to treat your mental disorders as a physical disorder. Sometimes you have to pretend that your anxiety is actually a broken leg, and you have to allow yourself the same patience and compassion when you can’t do things that you would if you were physically impaired. She would say to me, “Well what if you had the flu? Would you get this mad at yourself for not going out if you were throwing up?” And I would shake my head no. Anxiety and depression are invisible illnesses. No one can really tell what you’re going through unless you tell them. Eating disorders are the same way. I wished I had scars because I wanted the kind of visibility that a broken leg can bring you.

            I no longer have an active eating disorder diagnosis. I am officially “in remission”, but that remission is never really complete. Old thought patterns sneak up on you in moments where you least expect it. After a full day of exercise with minimal nutrients, seeing visible marks of what I endured brought back the feeling of pride after I managed to eat only an apple and a muffin all day back when I was 17, or when someone complimented me on how healthy my plate looked in the dining hall when I was 19.

            This is the most I’ve written about my eating disorder somewhere that isn’t my own journal. I feel like I’m finally at a place where I can write all of this down and share it without triggering myself into unhealthy habits. In fact, while writing this, I ate a sandwich with mayonnaise- a food my brain has deemed impure. It still takes some convincing to let myself eat whatever I want, and to push back whatever guilt tries to surge up, but the thing is, it’s getting easier. It’s not a linear route to recovery. I can’t look back and say that I’m “over” my eating disorder- because I’m not. It’s something that I’m sure will stay with me for a long time. I turn 21 in two months. It’s been about two years since I started seeing a therapist. Two years since I took the first active step towards recovery. Since then, I’ve seen therapists, nutritionists, psychiatrists, general practitioners, and more. I’ve learned how to ask new friends and old friends for help. I know there are still hard days. I know there are still things I have to get through. But I am so fucking proud of the recovery I’ve made so far.

---

[1] Not really. We actually opted to walk down the highway back towards town instead of taking the “scenic route” because we were so fucking tired. Which is why the whole hike only took 8 hours instead of 10.