I stumbled upon some old pictures from high school the other day. There she was, right in the middle of it all – a girl I hardly knew. She was tall and thin with a great big smile, but her eyes were dim. Although a stranger to me now, I know very well the secrets she hid back then. That girl was me.
Throughout my elementary school years, I was bigger than most of the other girls. I wasn’t popular, but I had a great group of friends. Occasionally, I would get teased about my weight. A memory that stands out the most to me was when a girl seated next to me in the cafeteria said, “She’s stuffing her face! She’s so gross!” as I was eating my sandwich. She got a laugh, I got a wound. It’s strange how seemingly insignificant moments from our lives stick with us for a lifetime.
Fast-forward a few years to high school: During a dress fitting for a family member’s wedding, the dressmaker said to me, “You must have gained some weight since your last fitting.” I was mortified. An adult woman said this to me aloud in front of several members of my family… and that’s when it all began.
I asked my sweet mom, who still made my lunch for me every day, to only send half of a sandwich for me to eat. I told her it was because I had the earliest lunch period at 10 am and I wasn’t very hungry – oh what a lie that was. She asked me if I was sure I wouldn’t get hungry, but I assured her I just didn’t want to waste any food.
What I wished she would have asked me instead was, “What’s going on?”
The lies became easier as the weight began to drop, and I relished in the attention I was receiving – especially from my male counterparts. Eventually, I started dating my first “real” boyfriend and became, admittedly, consumed with our relationship. I placed all of my self-worth in how much (or how little) I weighed and whether or not I thought my boyfriend actually liked me as a result on any given day.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a fabulous mother and we were (and still are) very close, but looking back I wonder how she missed all of the signs. I had become so thin, ate so very little, and was an emotional shell of who I had once been. Even as an adult, when I have tried to have conversations with her about my bout with anorexia she seems unconvinced that it ever occurred. You see, I think most people have a false perception that if a person is at least eating something then they must be doing just fine. Well, surviving off of half an apple and a diet soda a day for months at a time isn’t really doing just fine.
Moms, this is such a delicate topic.
In a world where body image propaganda is literally lying in the palms of our kids’ hands day in and day out, it is so hard to convince them that their worth is not placed in the size or shape of their bodies.
What I wish my mom would have asked me was, “Do you know that you are enough? Do you know that you can be healthy and happy? Can you sit with me for a while and talk whenever you are ready?” I know she would have asked if only she had opened her eyes to see what was really going on, but that’s the thing: we have to open our eyes. No one wants to believe that their children might be harboring a secret, but maybe they’re the ones sitting and just waiting for us to ask.
