A Heavy Weight

How an eating disorder consumed my life and college years. by QUINN GAWRONSKI illustration by EMILY GUNN

Swirling disco lights punctuated the stood for my insecurities, flaws, and Even as I typed that story, a red darkness of the party and distorted weaknesses. If I lost the weight and what light blinked in the back of my brain. My the scene of punch-drunk girls and it represented, I could love myself. If I lost fingernails were purple, my hands were jostling boys into a blur. Rum made my the weight, I could be loved by someone shaking, and I was freezing despite being tongue heavy and my head dizzy. An ex else. The pounds dripped off my frame bundled up in three sweatshirts. But I I hadn’t seen in months stood behind slowly, but I wanted to get there faster. As believed that, unlike my sister Taryn, I the DJ booth. I felt his gaze cut through my eating disorder unfurled, everything possessed control over my illness. A part the crowd before it landed on the back I did, and everything I was, became of me felt that, in comparison, my eating of my neck. I wondered what he saw as wrapped around a weight that was always disorder was mild, like I didn’t need help those lights briefly illuminated my skin. out of reach. unless I was emaciated. If I wanted to get I wondered if he noticed the new ridge Twelve hundred calories turned better, I could. I just wasn’t thin enough yet. of my spine, the butterfly shape of my to 1000 and then to 700. Cardio became rib cage, the carved hollows under my my punishment for bad behavior — a Friends and followers on social media cheeks. He crossed the room and led me few croutons meant I had to do sprints praised me for my new body, for my out the door into the backyard. The gleam until I saw dark spots. When I went out, dedication to the gym, for my restraint of the moon illuminated his face. I feared bartenders would pour regular around food. Someone told me that when Coke instead of diet and bump me over I turned sideways, I disappeared. I think “Are you anorexic?” he asked. the allotted amount of alcohol calories I he intended to hurt me, but instead, his tabulated for that evening. During winter comment satiated the hunger food failed I said no, but I meant yes. It felt break, my sister wanted to make Christmas to fill. Maybe someone else saw the euphoric to hear those words leave his cookies, which sent me into a rage. version of myself I kept searching for, even mouth, because to me, skinny when I couldn’t find it. When I was synonymous with beauty. To begin with, I only wanted to “As my eating disorder controlled my eating, I could also control how other people saw me. lose 10 pounds. unfurled, everything I did, I was addicted to that feeling, this wave of energy and a The summer after my freshman year of college, I plummeted headfirst into a rabbit hole of and everything I was, became never-ending hunger high that flooded my head with serotonin. But that feeling only lasted for weight loss advice. My heels struck the endless black loop of wrapped around a weight that a few months before it came crashing down with a force that the treadmill as I clicked on, each word sinking into my permeable mind. Click. Track your calories. was always out of reach.” knocked me to the ground. One spring morning, I woke up with a head full of heavy cotton. It Click. Cut out sugars and fat. obscured my vision and traveled Click. Drink water instead of eating. Click. Every morning I stripped down to down my throat so I couldn’t form a Don’t eat anything packaged. Click. Click. weigh myself and made sure to avoid water coherent sentence, and when I sat down Click. in case it might throw off the reading. I to work that day, my eyes wouldn’t measured every meal I ate down to the focus. My body was sending me a blaring Back then, my eating disorder wore tablespoon, another rationed 200 calories warning — I deprived myself of food for a clever, acceptable disguise labeled to carry me for the next four hours. I so long that my brain was malnourished, “health.” It sunk its teeth into me to fill controlled every part of my life just as long screaming for the food it needed to my head with facts and figures on the as the scale continued its descent. function. fastest way to become this better me, a version locked inside the shell of my body Of course, I knew all the signs So I began bingeing, gorging on and waiting to come out. I listened to the and symptoms of eating disorders. as many calories as I used to eat in a rail-thin women on my screen who spoke Anorexia transformed my sister Taryn week in one sitting. It was my body’s about juice cleanses and fasted cardio, into someone unrecognizable — sallow reaction to being underfed for months, believing that I would feel beautiful like bruised skin, protruding hip bones, hands but that didn’t stop it from happening. them if I just followed their steps. I cut clutching the side of her wheelchair after The illusion of control crumbled around out foods one by one: meat, cheese, dairy, she was hospitalized. It controlled every me as the pounds crawled back under eggs, gluten, anything in a wrapper. I bite she put into her mouth, every lie she my skin, accompanied by shame that tracked my calories and did cardio. told to leave the dinner table. A year ago, hung over my shoulders. Everyone could I wrote an article for this magazine about see my failure, the weight that wrapped As the weeks went by, weight how this illness eroded her life — and the around my thighs from the calories I ate came to mean much more. Each pound lives of those who loved her. while locked in my room. The climbing

Still, I held onto this imagined version of myself, white-knuckled. Whenever I wanted to lose weight, I could; all I needed to do was find the hunger high. Time and time again, I did. I tacked on more rules and restrictions; the taste of control was always sweet on my tongue. This endless loop consumed my sophomore and junior years, and by senior year, I was exhausted. Bingeing took over, and dust accumulated on the scale tucked under my couch.

I wanted to get better, to live without this omnipresent force that dictated my happiness, so I stopped tracking calories, doing cardio, and weighing myself. My body felt so foreign — distorted and swollen, bulges where there used to be taut skin over bone and muscle. Friends began to say I looked healthy, instead of skinny. That word felt like a stain that I wore on my back. It read: fat, unlovable, failure, weakness. I know this isn’t logical, but this illness never is. One cloudless winter morning, I woke up before the sun. The black glistening scale in the corner of my room called out to me, begging me to get back on. When the numbers blinked red, my heart fell from my chest before it plummeted through the floorboards. I sat in bed for hours while dawn approached, searching my BMI and planning the new goal weight. I even told myself I would get there in a healthy way, but that week I dropped six pounds and picked back up every old habit.

Finally, I saw my eating disorder for what it is.

It leans in close to my ear, whispering promises of confidence and beauty and love. It offers me something better, nestled in the palm of its hand like polished gold, but steps back further and further while I lurch headfirst into the ground, desperate to grasp something that always will be out of reach. After my relapse, I realized I was never in control. No matter how much weight I lose, it will never be enough. It will take and take I wish I had a solution, but I don’t yet. A part of me still denies the reality of these past few years, still wants the whittled-down version of myself I see in photographs. There are days that are easy and some that aren’t, but I know that there is something better ahead. I can picture recovery, in glimmering moments when I’m unburdened by this illness.

It’s a warm summer night and I’m wearing a sundress that flits across my legs. I’m at a healthy weight and I feel beautiful. Inside a club, the air vibrates with music and multi-colored lights fly across my skin while I dance. My body moves alongside everyone else’s, and the world is briefly suspended in space, nothing outside of this swaying crowd and pulsing rhythm. I don’t think of how many calories I’ll burn from dancing, what I ate that day, or wonder if people can see the curve of my stomach. My head is blissfully empty. And in that moment, I’m free.