I’m currently reading “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller. Chanel recounts her experience of sexual abuse by a young man, Brock Turner, who ended up being sentenced to just three months in county jail. At the end of one of the chapters she writes “You are worth more than three months.” The sentence did not equal the damage the assault had done to her life, to herself.

The book is gut-wrenching. It made my think, cry, reflect. More importantly, it brings out so much anger out of me. Anger that I have often not openly expressed and kept bottled up. After I was sexually abused at 16, fear, guilt and shame silenced me. The trauma, the intense violence of the act literally muzzled me for 15 years. When I finally spoke out, all I felt was guilt, shame, sadness and depression. It has taken me years to get over the guilt but until I started reading Chanel’s “Know my name”, I don’t think I had expressed anger. Maybe anger at myself but certainly not at my abuser. For me, he was just dark figure whose face my trauma has erased out of my memory. I did not know who to target my anger at.

Now I realize that is doesn’t matter. I can still be angry. With. With the system. With a society that did not teach women to speak out when they are abused. A society where women have to accept to be the pray of men.

If I could speak to my abuser, I would list him all the things that I have lost as a result of the rape

Self-confidence

Hunger

Virginity

Relationships

Desire

Years of my life

Sense of privacy

Control over my body

Carelessness

Identity

Myself or my self

Instead I have to deal with

Fear of relationships with men

Anorexia

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Disgust of my body

Guilt

Depression

Loneliness

Isolation

Insecurity

Sexual dysfunction

Constant vulnerability

What kind of life would I have without this act? How much did it alter the trajectory I was on at 16? My abuser has changed my life forever. Made it more difficult. The impact is immeasurable. It will take time to rebuild myself.

This is why victims want justice.

The week before Canadian Thanksgiving, I felt deeply sad, may was on the verge of depression. I hadn’t felt so lonely in long time. Because I grew up in Europe, Thanksgiving has little meaning in my family but I know the importance it has here: a big family affair around the communal table.

It is common knowledge that food is not simply about nutrition and survival. Food is visceral and emotional. It connects us to hearts, bodies and mind. When you eat a slice of cake for example, it’s not about nutritional value but about joy.

There is a reason for the saying “Breaking bread together”. Eating is social. Eating together is a basic human expression of friendship and community. In every culture or religion, eating with others has a social function. For centuries, it has built or reinforced bonds between family members, friends and communities.

Food also connects you to a culture. My sister-in-law is orthodox Roman Catholic. Every Easter, we have a gathering during which specific dishes are served. Similarly, when one of her family members passed away, churchgoers offered various breads and food items as a sign of respect and love. There is something deeply touching about these moments of sharing and giving, whether you are religious or not.

Even in times of hardship, the act of sharing food is important. It shows that there is more that unites us than divide us. When I was in Rwanda 10 years ago, a family I had grown close to invited me for dinner. I knew they not well-off but they nonetheless decided to serve meat and killed one of their few chickens. The symbolic importance of that act still makes me emotional today. Despite our cultural differences, this dinner created a new bond between us as we each stepped out of our cultural bubble.

As someone with anorexia, I notice more than ever the connections that the sharing of a meal forms between people. It seems to facilitates social bonding. Growing up, eating together in the evening as a family was extremely important. The kitchen and the dining table were the command centres where we found each other at the end of a day. It’s where we shared stories, good and bad, where we bickered, laughed or solved problems. I truly believe that it strengthened our bonds as a family. It was also this time spent with my family in the kitchen or around the table that created my love for food. My mother and I went to the market together, looked at recipe and cooked. I cherished these moments of engagement because it made us stronger as mother and daughter and as a family. This is what legacy is about.

But herein lies the problem when you have anorexia. These moments are gone right now. Eating with other people is extremely uncomfortable, if not impossible for me. I’m simply unable to do it. Even when I sit with family or friends at the table, the mere fact that I do not eat, disconnects me from them. I can feel the discomfort.

I mourn simple dinners around the table with friend as much as big feasts at Christmas. As each important gathering passes by, I feel as if the bonds between me and others are weakening. Yes, I have formed new friendships but I don’t take part in dinner parties the way I should. I may join a picnic in the park in the summer but my incapacity to eat with other often makes me feel awkward and lonely.

Even my bonds with my family are, I feel, sometimes breaking. My brother is a fabulous cook but I have yet to be able to show him how much I appreciate this important part of his personality by eating one of his dishes. I also did eat dinner at his wedding. What horrible person does this? At my nephew’s baptism this summer, we hosted a feast in his honour but, unlike everybody else, I couldn’t eat. As much as I wanted to, my eating disorder was stronger. This was my nephew’s only baptism and, although I’m not religious, I was missing out on an important moment of his life. The guilt that I experience from these lost moments is immense because I know their request is simple: “I’m asking you to share joy with me.” Every time one of these communal moments passes, I feel as if something is breaking between me and others.

I also miss the personal pleasure some of these gatherings brought me. Birthdays were always important in my family. We were allowed to decide where or what to eat, and most of all we decided on the cake. What is a birthday party without a cake? Now that I have an eating disorder, there is something truly missing on my birthday. My birthdays bring me little joy not only because it makes me think about another year passed with anorexia but also because there seems to be little point for a gathering.

The American author and food lover M.F.K. Fisher wrote in The Art of Eating, “With good friends and good food on the board, we may well ask, ‘When shall we live if not now?’” This one sentence summarizes my current reality. There is a part of me that doesn’t live in the moment, that doesn’t experience the pleasure of living and connecting with others. When will I live fully again?

Photo: Abel Chuklanov, unsplash.com

As I am writing these lines, several U.S. states have passed some of the strictest abortion restriction laws in the country. Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia…Reproductive rights are being challenged. Women are worried that they will be deprived of their right to carry a child or not.

As I am writing these lines, I have just become an aunt. Whenever I see my two-month old nephew, I marvel. I can’t express the love that I feel for this tiny child. Even before he was born, my feelings were profound. The bond is intense.

There are suddenly so many new babies and children in my life. I often feel a rush of tenderness when I’m around them. I’m one of these people who can easily gaze at baby pictures, who listens to a couple of parenting podcasts and reads the parenting section in the New York Times even though I am not a parent.

Does this mean I’m craving for a child of my own? Do I yearn for my children or only for those of others? When I started writing this piece, I was already in motherhood ambivalence mode where neither options felt fully right for me.

And then came the ultimate hit.

I learned that I will have a hard time conceiving children. Not impossible. Just complicated.

This is not simply a result of my current eating disorder which makes my body so weak that I have profound fertility problems. No, my body also doesn’t want me to be able to conceive naturally. I know very well that there other ways to have child. Yet the fact that I do not really have the choice to have a child naturally makes me question my own motherhood even more. Right now, it’s like my body is saying “you are not made for this. This is as a sign that it’s not for you.”

Do I want to become a mother? Do I have the capacity to be one? I can’t stop the questions from coming and this recent news has made motherhood even more complicated in my mind.

— —

So as I reflect on what it means to be a mother today, I question whether I am fit for it and whether I want for it for me.

Becoming a mother is regarded both as a grandiose act and something that is just a given for women.

In her book Motherhood, Sheila Heti examines whether she should have a child before it’s too late and reflects on the fact that being female almost seems synonymous with having children. She writes “What is a woman who is not a mother? Is there anything more important for women to than mother? I know a woman who refuses to mother, refuses to do the most important thing, and therefore becomes the last important woman. Yet the mothers aren’t important either. None of us are important.” The fact that some U.S. lawmakers still put protecting the life of a fœtus above the well-being of the woman proves her right.

Many women in their mid-twenties and older get asked when they will they intend to have children. Not “if” but “when”. As if they had no choice to exercise. If they hesitate, they often get told they will eventually want to become mothers, “maybe not now but soon” as I have sometime heard. The mother of three children I was babysitting in my early twenties once questioned why I was studying so hard at university considering that I would give it all up to become a mother. First, she didn’t even ask me whether or not I wanted children (it was just a given) and second, she couldn’t envision why or how I would want to have a job and be a mother at the same time. This was in 2004.

Women, more than men, are told that a child will add meaning to everything they do, that they will find their value and place in the world. As mothers, women gain a new status. As if, before having children, their lives did not have as much value. Of course children change your life, but the idea that women are somehow less because when they are not mothers is troubling.

Heti writes “Being a woman, you can’t just say you don’t want a child. You have to have some big plan or idea of what you are going to instead.” When a woman says she doesn’t want to have children, she’d better have a good reason for it. Otherwise she is selfish or there must be some kind of problem with her. She should want this naturally because she is a woman.

Not long ago, I heard a woman say on the radio, “you don’t regret becoming a parent, you only regret not becoming one.” I felt like I was being told that I was missing out on something if I decided not to become a mother.

Yet more and more women I know have made the choice not to have children. They find ways to show that not having children is also an experience. I know a few mothers who love their children but sometimes question their choice. On the podcast “Motherhood Session”, a woman spoke openly about succumbing to the pressure to become a mother. She kept telling her friends that she did not want to have a child but they insisted that she would change her mind eventually. Crying, she says on the podcast that even though she loves her baby, she still regrets succumbing to the pressure, to the social expectation. Hearing her despair broke my heart. While I am ambivalent about becoming a mother myself, the fact that this woman was put in this position deeply troubled me. Why is there always someone who will try to push this on women despite their reluctance?

Motherhood and anorexia

As someone who has anorexia, I fear motherhood.

First, there is being pregnant. I know it’s not easy. Should I ever be able to be pregnant, how will deal with the body changes and the weight gain that all people with anorexia deeply fear? How would I handle not being in control of my body considering that I am desperate for that control? What if these changes trigger a relapse? If I suddenly refuse to eat, I will put the life of my child in danger. Pregnancy after anorexia is also associated with adverse obstetric outcomes, miscarriage and prematurity. What are the risks for my future child ?

Second, there are the first months parenthood. The joy of being a new parent also comes with exhaustion and the reality is probably even harder than I can imagine. And how will I deal with the pressures society puts on women to go back to their postnatal body? Am I more prone to postpartum depression considering that I already went through depression once? Will my anxiety and my obsessive compulsive behaviors be even worse ?

In an essay about motherhood, Rufi Thorpe describes the exhaustion of not having time for herself and laments losing her privacy in her own home. “I am profoundly unfree”, she writes. “My job when I am with my children is to have as few needs as possible so that I can meet theirs (…). It is my job to be invisible to him.” One of the goals of my anorexia was to become invisible, to the detriment of my health. Now that I am learning to making myself visible again, will I eventually feel like Rufi Thorpe ?

One of my biggest fears is passing my eating disorder onto my children and projecting my fears onto them. Throughout my therapy, I met women whose eating disorder was in part due to their mothers’ own eating disorders. They also told me how difficult it is to have anorexia when you have children: meal times are a struggle because they could hardly sit at the table with their kids. In my family, mealtimes are moments of sharing and dialogue, especially when my brothers and I were kids. I view this a crucial to staying in touch with your children. But I also know that sitting at a table and watching people eat is hard for me. I fear that my ED will build a wall between my kids and me.

I am no closer to an answer. My decision on whether or not to become a mother is like my recovery from anorexia: this point on the horizon that I don’t know how to reach.

When it hit me, it was violent, sudden and unexpected. For 12 years, the memory of my sexual abuse had been hidden somewhere in the deepest confines of my brain, in some kind of black hole. I still don’t understand why. Apparently, it’s a self-protection mechanism but remembering the abuse 12 years after the fact didn’t make it easier. I was caught off guard.

The trigger that brought back the memory was the Jian Ghomeshi affair in Canada. The Canadian radio broadcaster was the subject of allegations of sexual harassment or assault. The #Metoo Movement had yet to emerge, but the trial of Ghomeshi caused public discussions about male power and what constitutes abuse.

I can’t remember the exact day it happened but suddenly the walls around the memory came down. It was a flashback: every sound, smell, sensation and image of that night came back to me in fast motion. Over the next few days, the scenario became clearer. New elements emerged.

I was 16. It happened at a friend’s place. I had never been there but to this day I can draw the exact floor plan of that house. The entry-way, the living-room, the staircase he led me to. The bedroom. I remember the old furniture, the color of the walls.

Most of all, I remember the dark figure in the bedroom. I can’t see his face. This is the one thing I will never remember. His face. Because I barely knew him, he remains a nameless stranger, a dark figure taking my hand to go upstairs in the bedroom, sitting with me on the bed, then pushing me down and preventing me to move even when I said no and attempted to escape. All the sensations of that moment are too real in my head to be fabricated.

The abuse is not the sole reason for my eating disorder, but it plays an important part. Eating disorders are about control. That night, when I was abused, I lost control over my body. And what is more personal and private than your body and your identity? Until then, I had grown up in a rather cushioned world. I knew sexual abuse existed, but predators existed mostly in in other families, in books or movies. That night my comforting world was fractured. I lost control over the most intimate part of myself. Or rather, that control was taken away from me by an oppressive figure. I was no longer in full possession of my body, my needs, my privacy and my desires. My body was no longer my own, the decision was not mine.

I left the party early. I have never felt as lonely as standing alone at the bus station at the party. The image of myself standing there will never leave me. For days, I felt guilt. I refused to tell anyone about it because I thought it was my fault. I was trying to explain away the abuse, to find some rationalization why this had happened to me. I should have said “no” louder, did I even say no? I agreed to follow him upstairs, I shouldn’t have. I must have said something to let him to this to me. There needed to be a reason and I was the culprit.

Once the fear of a possible pregnancy left me, the memory escaped to some dark corner of my mind. When it came back 12 years later, I felt no less guilty.

Even though the eating disorder only developed years after that night, my attempt to control my food intake and the shape of my body is my way to retrieve the control over my body that I lost that night. Those who suffer from anorexia lead highly regulated lives. We have rituals that we must abide to. Eat this, not that. Do this at this time, not another. Maintain a schedule. Hit the gym. Most importantly, control your weight. My daily schedule looks pretty much the same every day because the control over this routine reassures me. If something comes in the way, I panic instantly. The loss of control that night led me to a desperate need to control every aspect of myself.

By now, I have learned that this sense of control is a complete illusion. Anorexia is anything but being in control. On the contrary, I have lost control over my body and my eating. My very low weight is a proof of that loss.

My hunger is also metaphorical. My constant hunger is a desire that I refused to fulfill. Desire for the respect and privacy was taken away from me that night. My first sexual experience should have been good. Instead, it was a nightmare. To me, sex became equated with violence. I know nothing else. To this day, I have a hard time fulfilling any of my desires or needs. Because the dark figure refused to hear my voice, I struggle to say what I want but I long to be heard.

Talking about her sexual abuse as a 12-year-old, author Roxane Gay writes in her book “Hunger”, “those boys treated me like nothing, so I became nothing.” I tried to do the same through anorexia. I became so thin that any trace of femininity disappeared. I didn’t want to feel desired because I felt that that would lead to violence. I wanted to do away with the basic human desire to be seen and acknowledged. I wanted to experience disgust when I looked at myself in the mirror. I wanted my body to disappear. Part of me embraced anorexia because I didn’t want to be attractive. I wanted to erase the womanly curves, to conceal parts of my body. That way, I would not be abused, manipulated and hurt.

Silence is damaging.

The constant flashbacks and nightmares forced me to talk. I had more to lose not telling about the abuse and by not talking I was replicating the act of silencing that occurred that night. I was diagnosed with a post-traumatic stress disorder. When the dark figure refused to move away from me, I was paralyzed with fear and shock. Only through intense therapy was I able to get over the guilt and the constant flashbacks. The therapy was intense. I had to write down more time and time again the event of that night — every emotion, smell and sound that I remembered. Repeat and repeat until I was able to detach myself from it. It worked. I no longer feel guilty. This person knew what he was doing. He assumed that he had the right to do this to me. He will never pay for the consequences of his action. I will pay forever.

With the right care, you get over sexual abuse. The wound heals, but the scar stays. It will never leave me. Just the other day, I was watching a movie about sexual abuse in the church. Throughout the screening I had flashbacks of my own abuse. I could relate to the victims. I stayed until the end but left the cinema in tears. I hate that I have that kind of reaction to a movie, but I can’t control it. These moments show how sexual abuse inhabits me forever. How my past is written on my body.

I used to hate week ends. At the worse of my anorexia, they were a nightmare.

Here is it how it used to be.

Still half asleep, my brain in a fog, I refuse to open my eyes. If feel the dread rising inside me as my brain slowly wakes up. I keep my eyes close because opening them would mean facing the reality of the upcoming day. My hands search for the sleeping pills on the nightstand. I swallow two. Sometimes they make me fall asleep for a couple of hours. Two hours mean a lot. Two hours of not thinking about how hungry I am, how empty my days are when I don’t have work to focus on, when I don’t have a concrete goal or a to-do list for the day. With the sleeping pills, I’m trying not to feel anything for another hour or two. Eventually, the pills no longer work, and I am forced to face the fact that I had to live another day. I must go though this one and another and another. Another day feeling hungry, useless and wishing I could just be unconscious for a while. I don’t want to die, I just want to sleep for long time. Be numb.

That moment when I woke up was my nightmare. There were no sounds to distract me from dark thoughts. I was forced to face them. The sadness of these mornings was paralyzing. I tried to find a goal for the day, something to do to keep me distracted. Keep me from thinking and being alone with myself. I was looking for relief, but it was always only temporary. An hour at the gym. Maybe two, if my body could survive it.

The ugliest feeling that comes with depression is hopelessness. It’s ugly because you don’t see a way out. Just. Get. Through. This. Day.

It took me a while to write this. I don’t think I ever spoke about how deep my depression was. I don’t think I was even aware of it at the time. But it was also easy to hide, especially when you fear like you might lose your job or your friend. Writing this also brings me back to those days. I have never forgotten the things I use to feel. It’s ingrained in me now. Perhaps it’s a good thing because I never want to go back there. I also have a hard time writing about it because I still feel guilty for the depression. I had and still everything going for me: a caring family, great job, money, a roof over my head. There was nothing to be sad about. The guilt only led me to be even harder on myself. Mental illness and anorexia constantly try to convince you that you are not sick enough, that you are not a priority, that there are people who are worse off. The latter may be true, but it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve help. It’s not a competition.

Depression comes out of nowhere. Depression doesn’t care about money or even how many friends you have or whether you are in a room full of people or not. You can have the best support network in the world, depression makes you feel extremely lonely. Depression had sucked happiness out of me no matter how much those I loved tried to help me.

After a while, things got worse. The memory abuse (that violent act I have still not written about) erupted out of nowhere, violently, suddenly. Once the memory came back, nights were not longer a relief. Nights came with nightmares and flashbacks. I was suffering in my sleep, waking up was more tiring than ever. I think that’s what forced me to seek help. My nights could be worse than the days.

This mental decline came with my anorexia. Depression is common in people with eating disorders. When the body is under-resourced it gets depressed. Restriction doesn’t make anyone happy and, for me, restriction was my form of punishment: no food, no pleasure, nothing. Restrict, restrict, restrict. I didn’t deserve anything that could give me pleasure.

Almost three quarters of people with an eating disorder suffer from a form of depression. They have many common symptoms: hopelessness, lack of interest, insomnia and fatigue, feelings of worthlessness, diminished ability to think. Both isolate a person and create distance with other people.

Once I started dealing with the trauma, the depression slowly drifted away. I still have bad moment because the eating disorder still brings me to dark places sometimes, but the depressive feelings are less intense. I have dealt with the post-traumatic stress disorder. I am learning that I deserve pleasure. While I still restrict the pleasure of eating, I restrict less in other parts of my life. The desire not to feel constantly both hungry and intensely depressed make me want to move forward.

I have learned to recognize the signs. I can tell when people around suffer from depression. It more than temporary sadness and loneliness. Nothing sparks joy, you simply disconnect from the world around you. When I see the signs in other people, I try to tell them because when I had depression, I wasn’t fully aware of it or refused to see. I convinced myself that had no right to feel like this. Well it doesn’t work that way. Depression is personal and label-less. Depression doesn’t discriminate.

Seek help. It’s still hard for me to stop restricting but I’m learning that I deserve to be happy. The sleeping pills will only last until you wake up and will be forced the face the day. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can seek help.

My grandmother and I write each other letters. The “old-fashioned” way. She lives on the other side of the Atlantic and takes care of my ailing, rather egocentric grandfather even though she 90 years old. Life is not easy for her. Loneliness is her companion even though she has friends around. In our correspondence, she usually keeps her letters rather short because it takes her time to write. She tells me about my grandfather even though I would like to hear more about her.

Last week’s letter was different. Longer, more intimate. She told me about her childhood, her marriage, her inability to have more than one child. At the end of the letter, she asks, “Do you think I have had a happy life?” I could feel the desperate need to know in her words. Unable to answer that question herself, she wanted me to tell her.

Her letter made me reflect about my own life. When I was dealing with depression, I couldn’t feel happiness. I couldn’t tell what had made me happy before the anorexia. Although the depression is gone, the questions have stayed. Who am I without the eating disorder?

Anorexia has become part of my identity, my toxic companion. The disease shapes who I am because it has wrapped itself around my body and mind and doesn’t want to let go. Often, I feel like I half a person. I watch the world move around me at fast space, I see friends become new individuals as they go on with their lives. Meanwhile, I’m stuck somewhere in a time loop.

So as I read my grand-mother’s letter, I attempted to answer this question, what makes my true self happy ? Not what makes the anorexic me but the person I was before, the person I am meant to or was meant to become if this hadn’t happened. I know it sounds wacky and esoteric but I cannot help but wonder who my “authentic self” is. Anorexia distorts my reality, dictates my every move, my likes and dislikes.

When you have an ED, you live in a lie. You believe the lies that the disease tells you about yourself. Although I’ve always been into sports, the anorexia pushed me to go every day and convinces me that this is just who I am. Would I really be this athletic if I didn’t have anorexia? I doubt I would wake up a couple of hours early everyday because I cannot bear the thought of not going to the gym before work. What are my passions? What do I like?

With anorexia comes a lot of giving up. A lot of loneliness and loss. Which roads have I not taken?

I don’t live to the fullest because the fear of eating affects my daily routine, my relationships, my environment. I am not always fully present. I don’t connect one hundred percent because my mind often wanders away as a result of the lack of energy. How many friendships have a lost? How many have I not made because of this?

Would I be single without anorexia? Would I have children by now? Last week, I saw a beautiful movie about the adoption process of a baby. Throughout the screening, I was thinking, “I want one!” Where was this suddenly coming from? See, I’m good with kids. I really like them. But for several year I have been thinking that perhaps motherhood is not for me. My reaction to the movie made me question this. Is the anorexia voice in my head telling me that I don’t want children?

Not all is dark, I suppose. Anorexia is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It has stolen part of my life. Yet at the same time however, I think it might have given me things too. It has made me fully aware of the social pressures put on women. I have become a feminist. Maybe I would not have gained that trait without the eating disorder.

Maybe I shouldn’t ask myself these questions. What happened happened and I cannot change it. But I’m afraid of the future. I am afraid of who I am without anorexia because I have forgotten who I was before. Will I be nobody? I was 27 years old when I was diagnosed with anorexia; I was still figuring myself out. The disease has thrown that process in disarray. The person I was before the ED will not be the person I am after but then who will I be?

It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff. Do I stay forever with my anorexia identity or do I take the risk and plunge? How do I go from being half a person living a half-life to my authentic self? I know the answer to these questions but taking the step is still scary.

Meanwhile, I hope that my grand mother knows how much I, and the rest of family, love and admire for the person she is.

(Note: As I was putting the final touches to this post, I saw this add on the metro. Coincidences.)

Have you ever thought about what “hunger” means? The dictionary definition of hunger states that it is a “feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat.” I’m going to assume that people who are reading this have access to food when they are hungry. You crave food, you eat. Simple.

When you suffer from malnutrition, however,“hunger” acquires a new sense. The words “discomfort”, “weakness” and “desire” take on a much deeper meaning.

Describing what it means to have an eating disorder is extremely difficult. Words fail to explain the sensation.

How do you explain not being able to eat when that comes naturally for most people? When I say “I can’t eat”, I get all kinds of reactions. Confused looks and gentle nodding. Others give me advice about how to gain weight. I always find that rather amusing. Really? I know what I have to do to gain, I know I have to eat. This is the type of reaction that people who are overweight also get: advice on how to lose weight. Believe me, they know. And they know better than anyone else, like I know better than most people what types of food I have to consume to do to gain weight fast. I have read books, articles and paper. By now I’m almost an expert in nutritional science and behavioural therapy. Anorexia is not about lack of knowledge.

It also has nothing to do with being smart. I remember five years ago hearing my grandfather say “She is a smart girl. She has a Master’s degree. How come she can’t even eat? What’s wrong with her” I was next door, he didn’t know I could hear. His words hurt me. They made me feel stupid.

Then you have people who say “You’ll see, I’ll make you eat. I’ll cook you the best bowl of pasta you have ever eaten.” You can’t imagine how much I would like to eat a bowl of pasta. I know people only mean well. But it’s just not that simple. If it were, anorexia would not exist.

Nobody really knows what it feels like to be in my body every day. When I try to explain what anorexia feels like, I try to use images. Patients with anorexia experience food and calories the same way people fear certain objects or animals. The neural response is the same. Think a bout your biggest tangible fear, such as spiders. Now imagine that someone places a spider in the palm of your hand. Your brain, your entire body would be paralyzed with fear. My neural response to let’s get a burger and fries is the same. My fear in intense. When you have anorexia, no fear is greater than eating.

I know it’s illogical. It sounds ludicrous. Eating should come naturally. How can that be?

Unfortunately, I was born with the anorexia gene. It could remained dormant for my entire life but my anorexia gene decided to wake up when I lost a lot of weight after catching malaria. Suddenly, my body was in heavy energy deficit, which my brain interpreted as being in a famine environment. While most human beings would jump on food, my body went into survival mode: eat less and move. This is the anorexia famine response the genes cause (more about that in a future blog post).

Of course my logical brain tells me I must eat. I know I’m hungry. But human beings are animals: the survival brain trumps rational thinking. No matter how smart you are, you cannot control the anorexia response. It is an instinct: migrate or die, restrict or die. The fear of eating will protect you from death, my brain tells me. Fight it and flee.

The problem is, I’m still hungry. The desire for food is still there. And since you are hunger, the desire if even greater. When you are hungry, you think about food right? Well, that intense craving doesn’t go away when you have anorexia. The problem is that you can’t fulfil that desire.

So I think about food constantly. And it’s exhausting. Hunger means thinking about how hungry I am. Hunger means planing meals in my head and fantasizing about foods that I will never be able to eat. Hunger means spending minutes in front of a kitchen shelf not knowing what to do. Hunger means having dreams about food and waking up in sweats when you are about to take a bite. Hunger means being hyper-interested to food, such as menus, cooking shows and cookbooks. Hungry means that all my sense are focused on finding potential foods. I’m hypersensitive to anything related to food. I can hear the opening of a bag of chips better than the average person. I can smell food from far away. I obsess about food while I still fear eating.

Sounds exhausting, no ? Yes, the relentless thoughts about food that I will never eat is torturous. It can drive me insane sometimes. More than once, I have broken down in tears on the floor when faced with a plate of food I couldn’t eat.

Maybe now you understand what hunger really means. I crave the plate of pasta you put in front of me but my hands are tied, my brain screams “no”. I am paralyzed with fear. If I eat it, I feel like a failure. If you force me to eat, you might a well place a gun on my head.

Maybe now you understand why recovery is hard. You are exposed to your biggest fear.

I am not sure how to begin this story. I only know that I want to write it. It’s not just any story. It’s certainly not a fairytale. I want to write about the anorexia I have been dealing with for the past seven years. When we talk about eating disorders, we talk about so much more: our body, the bodies of others, our relationships, the society and culture we live in.

Everybody has a story. What motivates me to write mine is the fact that it may lead to answers. I do not claim to have them, but I want the world around me to understand what it is like to live in the body and mind of somebody who has anorexia as an adult. I am also hoping that my writing will help me understand how I came to be like this.

I want to debunk the myths and misconceptions. Eating disorders are misunderstood by those who don’t suffer from it, especially when they affect adults. We have our daily lives, we have jobs and families, we put on a happy face but we suffer inside and lie to those around us. But I no longer want to lie. I want people to understand.

Why tell it now? Because I woke up in the middle of the night shortly before turning 35 this year thinking that I really did not want to be sick anymore. I have never wanted to have anorexia. I hate it. Yet this time, I seem more determined than ever before. I have been dealing with for 8 years. I’m exhausted. I’m hungry.

So this blog will be about pain and insecurity, identity and society, loneliness, depression and demise. It will be about hunger and my attempt to disappear. It is an ugly story because of trauma, violence and rape. So, yes, my story is ugly. But it also has its happy moment. There is slow healing, hope, personal growth and love from closed ones. It has happiness because, yes, things are better today than they were five years ago when I taking sleeping pills to avoid thinking about food and feeling lonely on the week-ends. Ultimately, I hope it will be a story of redemption and triumph. I don’t believe in fairytales but I believe there can be happy endings, that light can emerge even from eating disorders.

I hope this will be about the triumph to accept myself and allow myself to be seen as I am after years trying to disappear physically. I want to discover who I am without the anorexia.

To tell my story, I need to start with a picture in one of parents’ photo albums (of which there are many). In this picture, I must be two or three years old. I’m eating pasta in tomato sauce and I’m just covered with it: in my hair, on my hands and cheeks. I’m laughing hysterically, taking pleasure in eating and playing with food. When I look at this photo, I recognize the child that I was. I know it is me but I have a hard time reconciling it with the person I am today. As a child and teenager, I loved eating. I was a gourmand who enjoyed every single food item and ate with pleasure. Today, the contrast between the food-loving child and the woman for whom food has become a threat, is striking. How did I go from there to here? This photo reminds me of a time when food was not a threat. I wish I could go back there.

When people think of anorexia, they see the teenage girl who wants to look like skinny women in fashion. Anorexia is seen as a vanity and bulimia as in incapacity to control oneself. If you think this way, let me debunk this myth for you.

First, eating disorders (ED) affect boys and men (even though to a lesser extent). Second, many adults suffer from EDs. The reasons you don’t see it is that most adults have to go on with their lives despite the disease. They have to. They have to hold jobs, take care of their families, make a living and do not have parents or closed ones that can force them into a treatment centre. Adults are also perhaps more ashamed of their disease. I know I was for a long time. We are also very good of hiding our problem. Unlike infectious diseases , anorexia is rather easy to hide unless, like me at some point, you are so thin that you have no energy to walk. But in general, I can’t tell you how many times people have told me how healthy and happy I looked even though I was dying inside and was way below my normal weight. We live in societies where exercising and being thin is celebrated, so the fact that I exercise constantly or look skinny generates compliments from those around me. But they don’t know.

But one of the biggest misconceptions about anorexia is the idea that we want to look like like skinny models on the runway. Get that out of your head. Anorexia is not a vanity. It is a matter of genetics and, often, of trauma. Growing up, I could not care less about fashion magazines or celebrity culture and obsession with diets.My parents never put pressure on me to look a certain way – on the contrary. I also spent a year and half attending therapy sessions at an eating disorder clinic and never met one patient who an eating disorder because they wanted to be skinny top model. On the contrary, none of us have made to choice to have anorexia. Let me repeat this: we have not chosen to have anorexia. Would you chose to be tortured? No. We are smart, hard achieving individuals. Get rid of the idea of the conceited and narcissistic teenage girls once and for all.

This is one of the reasons I am telling my story. To debunk the myth and tell the truth, or at least my truth about my eating disorder. Putting myself on display is scary and I hesitated for a long time before telling it. It is too crude or too explicit? I’m making myself vulnerable.But I need to tell it to perhaps help myself and help others. It seems necessary. So I’m starting this blog.