I remember the rank smell of the room, with that chemical waft of a carpet recently steam cleaned. A couple windows splattered here and there overlooking a parking lot on one side and on the other, a fence presumably offering some privacy to the yard next door.
Black Friday Sale! 50% off annual subscription — only $30 for a year of my paywalled content! Offer expires on Nov. 28.
(Oh hi — It’s me, Celeste… just a quick trigger warning. I get a little down and dirty this week on eating disorders (ED). If this makes you uncomfortable, please skip this post. Also, I will be using some fatphobic language to describe my thought patterns in my 20’s. These are ugly and problematic ways to speak about peoples’ bodies but I use them here to describe my sickness and dangerous thinking. Again, please use personal agency before you continue reading!)
The meeting was in the first floor of a townhouse in the Boston suburbs, a residential area that must have been rezoned to accommodate law offices or real estate agency, or in this case, group therapy.
A dozen folded metal chairs sat in a circle to cover the room’s space. I found an empty seat among several other women already sitting, their purses or backpacks comfortably situated in the chairs on either side of them. A soft buffer between us, only to be removed if needed. Hopefully not, as we all probably wanted some breathing room for what came next.
I looked around me and inadvertently began to assess the other women as my counselor informally started introducing this week’s meeting topic. We were all here for “eating disorder therapy” but I was surprised to see the women came in various sizes. The woman on my right was so thin I wondered if the breeze from the door draft would carry her away, while the one to my left looked overweight. “Eating’s clearly not her problem. What could possibly be her reason for being here?” I angrily scoured in my head.
As wispy woman to my right started to share about fears about gaining weight and how she focused on her safe food, I sat back in my seat, heavy down jacket still on like a blanket, and my arms tersely folded like a bump on a log. Unhappy to be here, not hopeful for recovery and bitter over it all. My situation. My role as victim. And everyone around me as perpetrators. Instigators. Unwelcome loungers on my log.
A lot of my feelings at that time felt sour like that. Who deserved help. Who belonged. I was told by my mom and therapist after therapist that I belonged in this room, a chair ready to hold my 21-year old broken frame. A room ready to listen. A space with other women ready to connect. But what was everyone else’s reason? Who deemed them broken enough to be here?
A woman across the circle from me caught my eye. Short hair and baggy eyes screamed “mom” to me, and again I shuttered with judgment. While the other women looked to be in their 20’s, this well-dressed, groomed woman with chestnut hair and sparkly earrings looked old enough to be my mom. “Get your act together,” I thought to myself.
You see, at 20-something I felt justified to feel fractured, a broken glass vase on the floor before the clean-up crew’s come in with the broom and pan. I also felt validated in the things I was doing: binging and purging relentlessly. Stuffing myself with fast food, milkshakes or candy before violently thrusting my head over the toilet to eject everything. Til the color of Ruffles cheddar and sour cream reappeared in the toilet bowl, or the taste of stomach acid lined my mouth.
“This is the shit we do when we’re young,” I told myself. We get a hall pass to be reckless. Self-sabotage. Drink to blackout. Sleep with strangers.
But this woman across from me — whom I’ll call Mary — opened her share up this week and in the weeks to come with stories of chaotic mornings with children. Or fights with her husband about money. Heavy sighs over laundry piles, parenting, and trying to feel accomplished over a day at home between a cycle of picking up toys and making *yet another* meal felt all-consuming. And it felt absurd to me. How dare she. How dare this woman who had 20 years to get her shit together now take up space in this world. My world.
Eating disorders and addiction do something very strange to our hearts. They shrink our empathy, reduce it to the size of a flea to make space for the grandiose voice of addiction talk. The bellow of that voice telling us what we need to survive and why everyone else’s needs matter less; or not at all. And it’s not because we are bad people or lack empathy, but because our ability for empathy is being held captive by the beast of addiction.
It wasn’t that I was a mean person in my 20’s. I was sensitive and hopeful. I was determined and focused. But my body and mind were held hostage by a sickness. A sickness so profound, it swallowed my ability to think of anything or anyone else. I was in survival mode. And in survival mode, I didn’t have room for other people.
Looking at Mary made me angry. I thought it was because she represented failure. Wasted life. Privilege gluttony.
So imagine my surprise when I saw Mary again last week. Yes.
Only this time, she was standing before me in the mirror. The mirror of a bathroom where I am currently in intensive outpatient treatment (IOP) for my eating disorder.
You see, I am Mary.
Ohhhh a cliffhanger — I know. Stay tuned for next week. It’s a doozy and I think you’ll love it. DID YOU SEE MY BLACK FRIDAY SALE! 50% off! If you cannot afford a subscription, please respond to this email and let me know you can’t afford it but would like full access.
Where You’ve Seen Me
Thank you to Teas and Trails podcast for inviting me on to talk about my running journey!
Pssst. If you sign up as a founding subscriber, you will not only get access to all my writing, but I will send you a signed copy of my book: It’s Not About the Wine!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Sober Mom Challenge to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.