The Branch: Eating Disorders and the Fear of Letting Go

Our understanding of the world is often made up of dichotomies; good and bad, happy and sad, light and dark. When we know which side of the coin we’re looking at, we can understand the flipside. This black and white thinking allows us to navigate life and find solutions to its difficulties; if we’re tired, we sleep, thirsty, we drink, and when we’re in pain, we seek relief.

I’m in pain.

It’s a throat crushing, rip-the-skin-from-your-bones kind of pain. Sometimes it’s a searing heat that sends me dizzy. At others, the intensity is such that I short-circuit and become numb. I don’t know which is worse. It’s had me peer from balconies wishing I had the nerve to jump and left me heaped on the bathroom floor. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m in a one-way glass box and on fire. I’m burning and you can’t see it. I have bulimia.

Bulimia is a mental disorder characterised by a distorted body image and compulsive desire to lose weight. Unlike anorexia, sufferers are often at a healthy weight. Bulimia involves fasting and intermittently eating large amounts of food before purging through self-induced vomiting, laxatives or over-exercise.

Despite their name, eating disorders are about much more than food; they are complex psychological conditions. They can be caused by many factors including genetics, brain biology, personality type and cultural ideals. And while you may think you know what an eating disorder looks like, the beast takes many forms. People with anorexia significantly limit their food intake and have a deep fear of gaining weight despite being severely malnourished. Those with binge eating disorder regularly and uncontrollably consume large amounts of food. And sufferers of orthorexia are obsessed with so-called clean eating.

In their many forms, eating disorders affect an estimated 70 million people worldwide. And we’re not just talking skinny teenage girls; men and women of all ages, shapes and circumstance suffer. So much so, that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental health condition.

But if a person is in a one-way glass box and on fire, their New Years Resolution will be to put out the flames, right? Not necessarily.

It was said to me that when my pain became too much - when I was tired of hurting - I’d seek help. That ill-informed conclusion was wrong. Because unlike depression, an eating disorder is something sufferers cling to; like an alcoholic clings to drink. Truth be told, if a fairy godmother appeared amidst a puff of smoke, waving her magic wand in promise of recovery; I’d mow the bitch down. Yet over the years I’ve taken anti-depressants, had several forms of therapy and sought to manage the pain of depression in various holistic ways. Why do I want one form of relief and not the other? If I know that eating disorders kill, why am I loyal to mine? Here lies the enigma.

An eating disorder lurks in the cracks of contradiction. It spits and snarls from the shadows, stopping anyone from getting close. It pins down its host in a contrasting space between suffering and salvation; leaving them paralysed while it consumes them in the grey. An eating disorder makes you believe you need it. That the thing itself is your cloak of safety and without it, you won’t survive. On your own, you’re as good as dead. Sufferers wrongly take refuge under the cover of the very thing that’s suffocating them. When we feel the asphyxiation but hear the deep breaths of those in recovery, how can staying put feel like the safest option?

There are many reasons why sufferers of eating disorders fear recovery: an association of weight gain with failure, the loss of control, the absence of a coping mechanism or form of punishment, anxiety that others won’t be able to see our pain, a loss of identity, facing the world as a recovered person and not knowing who we’ll be without our disorder. To the healthy, these fears seem irrational or secondary to the destructiveness of the disorder. But to the sufferer, they can be powerful enough to keep an eating disorder alive or lead its host to suicide.

There’s a story that rings true of recovery for me. A man is walking along a cliff when he slips and falls off the edge. He manages to grab hold of a tree branch which he clings to for dear life. Terrified of the drop, he cries out for help. “Is there anybody up there who can help me?” Silence. The man calls again, “Please, is there anybody up there who can help me?” Nothing. The man keeps calling. “Somebody. Anybody. Help.” Finally, a deep voice calls back, “This is God. I can help you. Trust, and let go of the branch.” The man pauses for a moment, then cries, “Is there anybody else that can help me?!”

Bulimia for me is a branch on the edge of a cliffside. Holding onto it is far less scary than letting go; no matter the fall. And while I can hear a voice asking for my trust; I cannot yet lend it. But for those that do, the light they shine is enough to grow hope that one day we might all let go.