My Goal With Anorexia Was Not To Be Thin, But To Be Loved

My experience with the disease | an essay I wrote January 2023

One misconception regarding anorexia is that it’s something that simply develops out of an insatiable desire to be thin. It happens to people with an extensive supply of willpower who will stop at nothing to be skinny. A diet gone wrong, if you will. 

For some this might be the case. But after doing some introspection and healing years after leaving an intensive outpatient eating disorder treatment facility I was at for a time, I realized that the desire pulling me towards anorexia and dangerous restrictive behaviors was not really wanting to be a size 0, though that was a part of it, it was the intense desire to be loved. 

I was 14 when I got diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Leading up to my diagnosis, I was steadily fulfilling all the criteria for the eating disorder: restricted calorie intake, over-exercising, self-inflicted throwing up, etc. By the end of 2019 I fit the bill and received my diagnosis. 

A few weeks later I’d find myself pulled out of school and placed in treatment. For 10 hours a day we’d eat meals, get weighed, and talk about our feelings. 

Despite likely needing a few months at the facility for my body to make a full recovery, I left early into treatment due to my family's insurance changing and no longer being able to afford my spot there. 

The next best thing was for me to begin working with a personal and family therapist. I did so and over the next few months I recovered. 

Coming out of anorexia I wanted nothing more than to act like it had never happened. I did my best to fulfill this desire. 

If I’m being honest, while in my eating disorder my desire was not to be thin, it was to be underweight. I yearned for skin and bones, for an unhealthy, unattractive, and concerning level of thinness. 

Why? Well, because of what I just said, concerning. 

Somewhere within me was a girl who felt like she was being overlooked. All my life I had been the overweight black girl at predominantly white affluent schools. My peers, though I loved them dearly, were my polar opposites. White, thin, rich, popular, beautiful, adored. For years I looked upon them with jealousy. 

Their beautiful white thinness gave them the attention and adoration of many. I believed my lack of whiteness and thinness made me unable to receive the same attention they had. 

So what did I do, standing in the corner of my middle school and high school watching kids I couldn’t relate to receive the attention I was vying for? 

I made them care. 

I attempted to render my body to a state where no one could look past me any longer. Where they’d look at my bony lifeless body and realize their love for me and my life, where they’d nurse me back to health. 

Being concerning meant others were concerned. It meant they cared enough about me to be invested in my wellbeing. This promise of concern felt worlds away from the seemingly easily dismissible life I was living. 

I believed that if I stuck to my anorexia well this utopia would be awaiting me on the other side. 

And maybe it would’ve been a utopia. I can’t say. I never got there. 

Another pervasive misconception surrounding anorexia is that every person who’s anorexic is underweight. Many people exhibit all the symptoms of anorexia and are at a normal or even healthy weight. Despite this truth, the general belief persists that everyone with anorexia is underweight. 

I lost substantial weight while anorexic but at no point was I underweight. Being an outlier in how most people mostly perceive anorexia and weight made receiving treatment – and more importantly, receiving concern – exceptionally more difficult. 

Due to my ultimate goal being receiving concern from my peers, I informed others of my diagnosis early. 

My underlying desire with sharing my diagnosis was to be met with support and love, but instead I found confusion. Despite my alarming lab results my father, friends, and even pediatrician were puzzled in the face of my diagnosis. 

Considering my ultimate goal with starvation, this lack of belief came at a devastating blow. 

The hesitancy at my diagnosis followed me even into treatment. 

A mother of another patient asked my parents if I was really ill, between my “normal” size and me being black, she found my sickness hard to believe. 

Shortly after, the facility informed my family that I was the first black patient they ever had and for that reason, they needed guidance. 

So now not only was I failing in my pursuit of being underweight, I also was also having to justify my disorder and right to treatment in every room I walked into.  

Leaving recovery, I was shattered. Not only because I was placed in less than ideal conditions to recover in, but also because I didn’t receive the concern I sought. I left anorexia depressed and with the lingering belief that I was unloved. 

This brings me to wanting to act like my anorexia had never happened. Not just because anorexia on its own is difficult to deal with and due to me leaving recovery early, I didn’t properly recover, but also because I was embarrassed. My pursuit of care was a failure. 

Unpacking this experience years later led me to many discoveries. First and most notably being what I’ve shared, the true pursuit behind my anorexia: care.  

Another being learning profound self-forgiveness and self-validation. Failing in a pursuit as tender as the desire to be loved left me with a seemingly broken beyond repair heart. My embarrassment ate away at me, I was at a loss as to what to do. The best option was to offer myself the validation I sought. Then forgive myself for the “failure” and sickness all together. 

I learned how to receive love and care without demanding it. I realized that the motivation behind someone caring about me doesn't have to be the fear of my life-threatening illness but it could be just because they love me, and that is okay. 

I had to release my past self from the burden of needing to have done better, to have completed her mission and receive the love we desired. I did not “fail” with anorexia. It is a disease that wreaks havoc on every person it touches. I endured it the best I could. I yearned for love and did what I thought was best to get it. 

Now being fully mentally and physically recovered, I reflect on my time with anorexia bittersweetly. I endured so much turmoil reaching for something that had never left me. While 2019/2020 will likely never be experiences I look back on fondly, they are the reason I can relish in the love I have today. I can’t redo the experience, but I can instill the lessons it’s taught me. 

I frequently ponder how my experience would’ve been different had the belief around anorexia not been that we all just really wanted to be thin, but that every person with anorexia is using starvation as a coping mechanism for deep seated emotional distress. 

Anorexia is a complicated and deeply misunderstood illness. Changing the misconceptions will require everyone being willing to abandon their previous notions and allow those afflicted with the illness to share their experience. In doing that, we can create a world where those with anorexia are treated more effectively and where no other person feels they must fight for care.