Crossing the NM to CO border…

It’s like a switch in my head. When I go home, the switch goes to ‘off,’ with Ed speaking to me very quietly, so quietly that I can shut him out most of the time. During the 4-hour car ride back to school, a transition occurs. When I am here, Ed has a lot of power, and sometimes even a little control. My hunger cues are diminishing, and I can’t trust myself to create portion sizes because automatically, I will put less food on my plate than there probably should be. I think about the causes, the triggers, wondering why this happens every time I’m at school. And then it hits me (or it hits my therapist). At home, I am 100% myself, telling my parents exactly what ‘s on my mind, when I am upset etc. When I am at school, my self-identity is overpowered by my ‘fake’ identity, the way I want people to see me. My goal for the week is to be more real and honest to myself, acknowledging my true feelings, rather than slyly shoving them away, as is routine for me. Hopefully, this will lead to honesty with my friends as well.

While I feel like I am slowly making progress (very slowly), such events as the one from last night really knocked me off track. During a big conversation about weight and joking around about how my friend wants to gain 200 lbs because it’d be funny, (which I was handling just fine), my friend, a boy, asked me how much I weigh. A little disgruntled, I said: “I am not telling you that!” He and another friend proceeded to guess my weight. Not realizing at the time that whatever weight they guessed for me, I would freak out, I let them continue to guess, going down in number, starting at 110, ending at 100. To their surprise, I was more than that. First of all, no boy should ever talk to girls about their weight; no girl ever wants boys, or anyone, to know. And second of all, one of the friends knows about Ed. I left the conversation, feeling nauseous, with Ed saying to me that “See, if they think you should be 105 or 110, that should be your new goal.” No, no, no. He’s got it all wrong. I didn’t listen to him, but I was up for the majority of the night.

As I grudgingly sit in my apartment this morning, still feeling nauseous but forcing myself to eat, I think of my mother’s words, which seem to save me on the daily. “Each bite is a smack in the face for Ed. Whatever he tells you to do, do the opposite.” I know that if I want to make it through the year, and go abroad for 5 weeks, I need to stay strong. I can’t let these conversations eat away at me (no pun intended). I just wish this wasn’t so difficult.