Coming Out Liberated Me

Senior year is a period of my life that I barely remember, even ten years later. To this day, I’m amazed I never passed out during a cross country meet, in class, or god forbid, while driving my siblings and I to school. Classes, practices, meets, weekends, so much is foggy, pushed far down by the deep, undeniable hatred I had for my body. I did not feel the excitement of graduation and new beginnings, or the anxiety of college applications and SATs, or the anticipation of summer jobs, not really, because I was desperately chasing control: control over my relationships, my body, my diet, and especially my worth. 

Throughout my middle and high school years, I absorbed thousands of messages around beauty, bodies, and diets, which shaped my understanding of what bodies are “desirable” and “undesirable”. What is considered “desirable” can vary amongst cultures and in the United States, it’s heavily rooted in the straight male gaze. For myself, and many, many lesbians, there is the unique addition of compulsory heterosexuality, a theory coined by lesbian scholar Adrienne Rich that acknowledges the expectation of heterosexuality, especially for individuals who are raised or identify as women. 

I didn’t develop my eating disorder overnight; eating disorders are complex illnesses that develop gradually. I had already tried in other ways to meet those impossible standards first, such as wearing makeup and dresses, and it still didn’t feel like enough. When I started to diet for the first time, I held the belief that by controlling my food, I could control my body, and ultimately earn the approval I’d been taught to chase. However, like so many others with an eating disorder, what started as an attempt to become “acceptable” quickly progressed into dangerous restriction that put my life at risk.

Eating disorders are horrific liars; they are nasty, incredibly cruel bullies. You don’t feel good or powerful or happy when you engage in behaviors. The glamorization is nothing more than a deadly response to western diet culture. I never once loved my body when I was depriving it. What I felt instead, especially in my darkest moments of the illness, was a horrible, soul-crushing loneliness.

In December, days before winter break started, my best friend H went to the guidance counselor and told her everything. The counselor met with me and let me know of her legal obligation to tell my parents when we came back from break. 

Knowing I had no choice, on December 24th, I allowed myself to eat chocolate for the first time in months. 

Eating disorders are complex, serious mental illnesses; recovery can be just as complex. On the days when your eating disorder won’t stop taunting you, won’t allow you a single moment of rest, you may not feel exhausted but instead completely defeated. It’s important to remember this because no longer engaging in physical behaviors is only one part of recovery – the physical part. The mental and emotional part? The part where you dig into what fueled your eating disorder, recognize triggers, and develop coping strategies? That’s painful, long, excruciating, and the less than six months of therapy I had before starting college wasn’t enough time to address it.

Navigating Recovery Amidst Heteronormative Messages

Navigating recovery during my first semester of college was challenging but I was adjusting as well as I could. I met my own group of friends, fell in love with running again, and was even trying new things like the Salsa Dancing Club. Finally away from my small hometown and out of the deepest parts of my eating disorder, I was starting to thrive, but I continued to be weighed down by heteronormative expectations. 

When I went to a party with those friends and had my first kiss, all I could think about was the fact that for the first time in years, I felt wanted. Validated. Attractive. The connection in my brain was clear: dressing according to heteronormative beauty standards worked. The hours I spent building my body image and self-worth, fighting against triggers, learning about the body positive movement, were temporarily forgotten because of this interaction. I no longer lived with extreme hatred toward my body – or myself – but the few months of therapy I had before college weren’t enough to tackle the deeper roots of my eating disorder. 

When I was at the Ballroom Dancing Club Christmas party with my friends and he showed up uninvited, my friends made it clear he wasn’t welcome and he left. That was a moment when I felt not only loved, but beautiful…and it had nothing to do with my appearance. In retrospect, I wonder how much could have changed for me if I’d had more of those moments while in my first two years of college.

2017 was a series of nonstop events that included changing my major and  transferring to Virginia Commonwealth University, joining VCU’s crew team, and breaking my pelvis in a car accident – all in the span of six months. Sure enough, my life flipped in 2018 when I became one of the fastest people on the crew team, studied abroad in Thailand and finally realized that I did, in fact, like girls for sure, and met my best friend M who is my ride or die. Much like my freshman year of college, 2018 was spent building a strong, positive support system, one that had nothing to do with my appearance and everything to do with who I was, who I am as a person.