One spring evening in 10th grade, my parents asked me what should have been a simple question: “What do you want to eat?” But I had planned to purposely skip dinner. I told myself I’d gain the endurance to skip more meals if I skipped this one. It was the beginning of my journey to lose weight by skipping meals.
In the past, when I was about 7 or 8, my parents and doctor had put me on diets because I was overweight. I was expected to reduce carbs, drink a full glass of water or eat an apple before a meal, exercise more, and eat less. Snacks were hidden. I grew ashamed of my body and wore sweaters in the summer. The neighbors made negative comments about my body, and my parents didn’t stand up for me.
My parents closely monitored my food intake when I was little, but as I got older I took over and began weighing my food. I would oversleep to skip breakfast. And then, over the course of a month last spring, I went from eating three small meals a day to two even smaller meals to just a few snacks, and then nothing at all.
At first, I felt accomplished about skipping meals and losing weight, but as the days passed, I felt tired and dizzy. It became hard to concentrate on homework. The words blended into the lines. It became harder to walk as I dragged one foot in front of another. My hair started falling out. I lost my period. But I didn’t tell anyone and I still went to school, my volunteering, and internships. I thought nothing was wrong, but clearly there was.
Depressed and Seeking Control
I had actually been struggling with depression and self-harming since I was 10 or 11 because I felt so much pressure to succeed at school. And now, the desire to lose weight was added onto that. The more depressed I felt, the more I restricted my food intake. It was the one thing I could control.
I come from a Chinese culture where eating disorders and mental illness are not viewed sympathetically: You are seen as undisciplined and fragile. So when my parents realized I was depressed, their response was to try to control me rather than try to understand me. It turned into a power struggle: I wanted the sense of control that refusing food gave me. But when they realized I’d stopped eating, they wouldn’t let me leave the house alone. They followed me upstairs after every single meal, checking on me every 10 minutes. Losing the little autonomy that I had made me even more depressed.
When my parents realized I was depressed, their response was to try to control me rather than try to understand me.
Gradually it came to a point where my parents were physically scared about my health. My mother would chase me around the house trying to get me to eat something, but I’d tell her that I already ate, even though I hadn’t. My parents offered to buy me fast food and sweets like bubble tea and McDonald’s, but I said no. They didn’t understand why I was trying to change my body so much.
I was glad they noticed that I was struggling; I secretly wanted them to see how much I was hurting. But invading my privacy, chasing after me with a bowl of food, and telling me that I’d starve to death did not make me want to eat.
Headed to the ER
At the end of April, my parents took me to my pediatrician: I’d lost 21 pounds in a few weeks. Seeing my weight was not a surprise; I weighed myself after every meal. And I wasn’t surprised when the words “eating disorder” came out of my doctor’s mouth. My mom responded, “Yeah, we’ve been looking at types of eating disorders and I think Jacqueline has one.” I wished I had said to her, “An eating disorder huh? Took you long enough to realize!”
I knew I had an eating disorder, but for my mom to realize it was a relief. At the same time, I was annoyed that my mom was tracking what I ate and didn’t eat. Sometimes I wish she had left me alone. As we left the doctor’s office, I felt numb. I didn’t know what would happen next.
Around 5 p.m. the following day, I was doing some last-minute AP seminar practice, when I heard my parents’ car tires grinding against the rough concrete in the driveway. I had no idea where they were coming home from, but as they entered my dad told me to get ready to go out.
“We’re going to the emergency room; your pediatrician called and said your weight dropped too much within the last two weeks!”
Scared and confused, I got dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt and hurried out the door, collecting some books and water along the way.
In the car, my mother cried, “Why did you do this to yourself? Do you know how long you haven’t eaten? Is it my fault you don’t want to eat?” Tears flowed from her eyes, but I just felt resentment and anger. I wanted to say to my parents, “You commented on my weight as a child. You made me starve myself. You made me feel that I was unlovable based on the size of my body!”
When we arrived at the ER, my mother told the person at the registration desk that I had anorexia and hadn’t eaten in two weeks. I was hurried into a room, my hands and legs shaking, as they put a white medical band on my wrist and drew my blood
A Turning Point
I sat on the stiff mattress in the emergency room, wearing a yellow gown patterned with shapes of all colors. My parents sat by my feet with their heads down. I whispered to myself, “This isn’t fair for them.” But part of me responded to my self-blame with, “This isn’t your fault. No one deserves to have anorexia.” I thought, “If I had just eaten, none of us would be here right now.” At the same time, I still wanted to be thinner. I could be thinner. And if being thinner meant being sicker, that was OK with me. I wanted to hurt myself if that meant giving me a sense of control and being thinner.
My thoughts were all over the place: On one hand, I felt normal—I had been doing all my day-to-day activities. I felt that I didn’t deserve or need treatment because I wasn’t sick in the first place. On the other hand, I knew it was true that I’d lost too much weight. I felt cold and dizzy all the time, and I was struggling to focus in school; I didn’t know it at the time, but those were consequences of being anorexic.
Soon, my blood results came in, and my labs were all abnormal. I attempted to walk to the bathroom, but when my foot touched the tile floor, I collapsed. The nurses caught me and wheeled me back to my bed. Soon after, a doctor rushed into my room and started talking about transferring me in an ambulance to a nearby children’s hospital where I would be admitted for treatment. I looked at my parents with hesitation. “What is wrong with me? Am I actually going to a hospital?”
A Long Journey
That was the beginning of a very long and difficult journey, one that I am still on. I ended up staying in a hospital for a month, where I had to have a feeding tube. Then, over the next several months, I moved around to four different residential programs for my eating disorder. Some didn’t end well, and I also landed in different psychiatric wards to recover from suicide attempts. Eventually, my parents found one residential center in another state that provided the care I needed. I was there for three months.
It was in treatment that I learned that my anorexia was a symptom of my depression. As my anorexia had gotten more severe, so had my depression. They fed into one another. Instead of resisting treatment, or feeling like there was something wrong with me, I eventually recognized that I was simply getting the help I deserved and required. I arrived home from the treatment center two months ago. I am back home surrounded by family, friends, and my mental health care team, but I still feel very up and down.
For a long time, I blamed my parents for everything. Sometimes, I wanted to scream at them, but I know they would refuse to admit what they had said about my body and how they made me feel unlovable in the past. I felt they had pushed me down this path, and I even pledged to never forgive them. But now, I ultimately feel grateful my parents rushed me to the hospital that day last spring. It’s possible that my organs would have started to shut down. They were the people who saved my life. Their role in my treatment and recovery was the only way I survived.
Choosing What Seeds to Water
I can see now that, even though my parents didn’t fully know how to support me during the worst of my eating disorder, they tried. They never left my side and traveled across states, from hospital to hospital, to get the mental health services I needed. Sometimes I was frustrated that they didn’t see how much I was hurting, but now I think maybe they did see—they just didn’t know how to help.
Throughout my struggles, my relationship with my parents has changed tremendously. At the start of my eating disorder, there were a lot of misunderstandings that ruined our relationship. They kept bothering me to eat without trying to address why I wasn’t eating. Toward the middle, I was angered and frustrated with how they made me feel about my body and blamed them for ruining my relationship with food. Now a year later, they understand my struggles with depression and my anorexia much more.
We still have power struggles, though. We fight about whether I should be allowed to go out on my own and how much privacy I deserve. And I still struggle to find other ways of control; unfortunately, I do it through maladaptive coping skills like cutting.
I am still in recovery from depression, anxiety, and anorexia. Some days are harder than others. I still take medication to help me get past those hard days. I still struggle with my body image. I still struggle with getting out of bed and eating.
At times, I still don’t know how to be OK with my relationship with food and my parents, but I know that one day it won’t hurt as much as it does now. And I am definitely in a better place than I was: I no longer place emphasis on my weight and I feel like my body is the least interesting thing about me. There are way more interesting aspects about me: I am a good friend, daughter, researcher, and writer. Those are all the seeds that I will choose to water today.
- Mental Health