Everyone gets sick from time to time, it’s inevitable. From a minor cold to an infection that requires recovery in a hospital, the process in which the body repairs itself is all part of being human. Sometimes our skin tears, our bones break, and our organs don’t function properly. Some medical illnesses may take more time and energy to diagnose, like the kinds of illnesses that are usually portrayed in TV programs like Chicago Med, House, or Mystery Diagnosis. Finding a cure, regardless of how big or small the illness is, is what those who aren’t well and their loved ones wish for. In an ideal world everyone would get better, but this doesn’t always happen.

When you think of an illness what image comes to mind? How do you get better? Maybe it’s taking some time off work or school to stay in bed and recover with mum’s special homemade chicken soup. Or maybe it’s releasing your stomach contents because of a bad stomach bug. Either way, the discomfort of the illness is visible to those around you. If others see your pain, they can always manage to find a way to sympathise with how you’re feeling. Mental illness is different. It’s often harder for us to understand something if we can’t see it or if we haven’t experienced it ourselves.

I want you to think back to a time when you were truly ashamed of who you were or what you looked like—a moment where you were the only one that thought badly about yourself and no one else could see what you saw. More than anything, it was a time where you wished the world would just swallow you up completely. My eating disorder had always been a personification of those feelings. According to a recent study conducted in 2016, there are approximately one million people in Australia currently living with eating disorders, and only 16% receive treatment. Like a growing number of teenagers these days, I have always struggled with my body image and weight, but this eventually led to a pretty serious eating disorder. It started when I was around fourteen and continued to grow rapidly throughout the rest of my teenage years. It turned into a daily burden and very quickly grew out of control. It was my silent battle and my biggest, most embarrassing secret.

I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I can only describe it as this internal struggle. The feeling that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t skinny enough, wasn’t in control. At the time, controlling what I ate seemed like the perfect way to regain that control, and it seemed like the only way that I could finally become good enough. I had never realized how easy it could be to not eat until I avoided it entirely. Avoiding certain types of food turned into skipping meals altogether until eventually, I was not eating for days at a time. Other times, I would fight back against my impulses, push past the negative thoughts, and break the rules. Then, all I would do was eat until I simply couldn’t eat anymore, pushing past the limits of what I was capable of. I would eat so much it hurt, but I didn’t stop not until the impulses changed and I had to get everything out of my system.

Purging became a way to hit the reset button and undo the mistakes of the day. Whether it be the mistakes I made in class, like an incorrectly answered question, or the mistakes I made in everyday life, I could always find an excuse for my addiction. With every missed meal, I felt more in control. Every single time I told myself this was the last time, even though I knew that was a lie. I had conjured up this idea of what I should look like and until I achieved this image, I wasn’t good enough. It became too easy for me to see myself as anything other than inadequate.

I would spend countless mornings in front of a mirror just to lift up my shirt and judge myself. This is the lightest I will be all day, I tell myself, sucking in my stomach, turning to the side, and imagining and wishing myself thinner. Breakfast was always the hardest meal; despite my stomach being empty, I always felt like I’d just eaten a three-course meal. All day, I would struggle to keep down what I ate, and I would be worried about my next meal and if others were going to judge me for what I ate. My day would end the same as it began: in front of the mirror, shirt off, and judging myself. I would wish that I could eat all the food in the world, not gain a single kilo, and not hate myself because of it. I was purging every meal, I was light-headed, pale-skinned, and underweight, but it still wasn’t enough. When you have an eating disorder, it’s never enough.

I was angry that no one seemed to notice what was wrong with me. At the same time, I was relieved, as I was too embarrassed and too scared to know what they might think of me. Would they think I was doing it for attention? Would they think I was being stupid? Would they know how to help me? I was often complimented on my body and how skinny I was, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see what everyone else saw. Every time I looked in the mirror, all I could see was someone that wasn’t good enough, someone who wasn’t skinny enough. Every day, I couldn’t help but look at myself and think that I could still be skinnier.

Scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram feed never helped. I was always confronted with posts that featured tall, slim, and beautifully tanned models like Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner. Even advertisements for makeup lines like Maybelline edited their models and captioned it with “What real beauty looks like.” The more I looked, the more I began to build this concept of what I should look like to be considered beautiful. With every day that passed, it felt like I was getting further and further away from that goal.

Nowadays, everyone spends their spare time looking at various forms of media—whether it be social media, magazines, or television—and they all seem to form these ideas about how we should look. They like to build this idea of a distorted and self-edited body image that creates a belief that beauty is only achieved through body weight or plastic surgery. Most of the images that are displayed all over the place are unrealistic, but that doesn’t stop people like me from going to the extremes trying to achieve them. They say that adolescents are the most at risk to this type of unrealistic exposure, as their brains are still developing. The media isn’t solely to blame, but it does play a big part in the increasing number of mental illnesses forming in teenagers, like depression and eating disorders.

As my sickness developed, I ended up pushing my friends away, keeping them at arm's length so that I didn’t hurt them. To this day, I’m not sure if any of them noticed what was truly wrong with me. Did they avoid reaching out to me because of how stigmatized mental health is? Was it because it can be scary to talk about? Or did they really not know because I hid it so well? Even though I have never properly talked about my sickness with my friends and attempted to push them away, they have never left my side. 

After many skipped meals and a lot of lost kilos, I was 17 kg and at risk of becoming seriously ill due to a lack of energy and nutrients. When it came to completing important tasks with deadlines, I found myself too tired. My mom took me to various doctors so she could try and understand why I had no energy. Eventually, I realized that something had to change. I needed to start eating normally again. I needed to start developing a healthy and realistic idea of what my body should look like. Healing from an eating disorder is just as hard as living with the illness itself. I can’t personally speak for others going through it because everyone’s experience is different, but for me, it’s still an uphill battle.

For some, they are able to heal and never have those negative thoughts again. For others, it may mean that those thoughts are still present, but this time, they are able to control their impulses and never let it have an impact on their life. Recovery is never a straightforward process; there is the possibility of relapses, and there are many challenges to overcome along the way.

Recovery for me was especially difficult because I was too scared to ask others for help and went through the process alone. Looking back, I wish that I had asked for help because it would have made the process a lot easier than it was. An eating disorder is already an isolating illness, and having support helps to get through the loneliness the illness can cause. Taking this journey alone wasn’t the hardest part of my recovery and neither was admitting that I had a problem. The hardest parts were getting over all the negative thoughts that I had developed over the years and getting over the worry of putting on weight. I had been focused for so long on my size and what everyone thought of me that I had unknowingly developed an intense fear of gaining weight and eating three meals a day.

I would have bad days where I would feel incredibly overweight and disgusted with myself. Then I would have good days where I would feel comfortable and confident in my own skin, and I wouldn’t be worried about what I was putting in my body or if I was gaining weight. A large step in my road to recovery was the realization that I could spend every day being miserable and unsatisfied with who I am, or I could base my happiness on something other than a number on a scale.

I found it easier to be distracted and keep my mind focused on new things that would gradually result in me gaining weight. I began getting involved in more activities to avoid letting all my negative thoughts enter my mind. If I started to feel low, I’d have a nice relaxing bath, listen to some music, read a book, write a story, or hang out with friends. After meal times, I’d keep myself busy to fight the urge to purge and eventually, the feeling went away. Gradually over the next few years, my weight began to increase until eventually, I was a healthy weight again. But it’s not to say that I haven’t since relapsed, or that I won’t relapse again. I do still miss the occasional meal, playing it off as not having the time. I am still not entirely happy with the way I look, but then again, who is?

-Amy Critchley

Amy Critchley is a seventeen-year-old undergraduate currently studying a Bachelor of Creative industries at the Queensland University of Technology. She has spent many years of her youth working on multiple stories and hopes to eventually publish them some day. For most of her teenage years, Amy struggled on and off with her mental health and body image, and writing was a way for her to escape from that. As a result, much of her work is representative of these themes.