Staring Contest with Death

When I was younger my mom called me Skinny Minnie. I’m not sure what she meant by this or why she called me it, but I know that I was confused. Even at a young age, I thought it was weird to have a nickname revolving around my weight -- especially because I wasn’t even particularly skinny; I was completely average. Maybe she thought it would boost my confidence, but as I got older, it did the opposite. As I approached the age of puberty, gaining weight I didn’t want, I began to find it mocking. But I’m not skinny, I began thinking at the ripe age of ten. I was ten years old and I already hated my body. I was called skinny like a compliment -- like a promise I needed to keep, but what would happen when I wasn’t skinny anymore? I wouldn’t let that happen.

Sixth grade would mark the first time I skipped lunch, then lied to my mother. It started slowly: one less meal a day and weighing myself once a week. However, this quickly snowballed. By eighth grade, I  was eating as little as possible without arousing suspicion and when I had to eat, I would purge it back out. I would do situps in the bathroom and squats while I brushed my teeth. I drank black coffee and tea to chase the diet pills I snacked on religiously. My weight was slowly falling. Each pound lost was a victory and each goal weight reached was a celebration. But I still couldn’t let people know. My friends and teacher would make remarks, but I denied everything. I lied to everyone and began to isolate. They’re just trying to make me fat, I would think to myself each time someone tried to make me eat. But I soon grew tired of my constant lack of energy and fainting spells. I lost my period, giving me the potential to be infertile. I started to ponder recovery.

I came to a fork in the road and needed to pick a path: recovery or sickness. I did not know which road to take. If you’ve never suffered a mental illness, you probably think this is crazy. How could you even think twice about this? I mean who doesn’t want to be healthy? But there’s a certain comfort in sickness. My eating disorder was my best friend. It was what I turned to when I was lonely. It was what I was best at. And I couldn’t give it up so easily. But I needed to pick a direction. There was no middle road. I had tried that before and quickly realized that you cannot partially recover. There is no way to healthily have an eating disorder. If you are not recovered, you are dying. But in my mind, that wasn’t a problem.

I was stuck at this fork, making pro-con lists and debating my life: I could continue to destroy myself -- weak, and fainting; or I could lose a friend I held so dearly. Of course everyone was telling me there was an obvious answer, but they weren’t the ones losing the comfort of being empty. Emptiness was my favorite feeling. How the crisp icy water would slip down my throat to the forgotten land of my stomach. I liked being cold in a warm room. However, the idea of living, not just existing, seemed interesting to me as well. A kind of foreign language. The idea that I could stand up without passing out or eat dinner without crying. The carelessness people carried around food was unimaginable, but a piece of me wanted to partake. My curiosity was slowly building. Now, you probably think this is a Hallmark movie where the shy little girl is struggling internally, then suddenly opens up to the world and recovers in the next scene, but that’s not how my story went. My eating disorder was too good. Spiraling downward was my favorite ride and I wasn’t quite ready to get off. So I continued skipping meals and crying on scales, even as the number lowered. I’d promise myself just one more pound, but it was always one more pound. Until I realized that it would never be enough. Even when I was nothing but skin and bones, the number was still too high. The only number that mattered was 0. A 0 in tennis was love and I thought that was a beautiful thing. Something I could relate to.

I craved to be 0.

0 calories.

0 fat.

0 pounds.

I wanted to be so small I could disappear. I wanted to blow away in the wind. I’d lie in bed at night and count the number of ribs I could see, then trace the ski slope of hip bones to my concave stomach. I was both the enemy and the victim in my own story. Fighting against myself, with myself. A slow form of suicide. Though after years of venturing this path of sickness, I slowly began to regret my decision.

Organs shutting down, heart palpitations, and anemia; I didn’t want this anymore. I was ready to turn around. I looked death in the eyes before realizing it wasn’t what I wanted. I needed to taste its misery before I would spit it out. Though I now wish I hadn’t been so stubborn. That I would’ve just taken the right path to begin with. Because now I need to walk all the way back to the fork in the road before I can continue in the right direction.

-Hayley Chisholm

Hayley Chisholm is an emerging student and writer at St. Anne’s Belfield School. Particularly passionate about the topic of mental health, she enjoys portraying it through art and poetry. Her gives a brutally honest account of mental health struggles without glorifying it.