My toxic 'friendship' with anorexia

For what feels like the majority of secondary school I formed a very toxic friendship with Anorexia. We spent all day together, and whenever we were apart I felt distressed and angry.

Our daily schedule went like this:

Wake up. Workout ( burn off dinner!) Squeeze in a dog walk. Breakfast can only be yogurt and fruit. Cycle to school (don’t walk in with friends anymore, cycling means you have time to workout and take the dog out and burn off breakfast). School. Thinking about food or mum. By break I have to have drunk 1.5 litres. Fill up bottle. Down it. Refill. Can’t focus in class. Food food food. Drink more water. Fills you up. Lunch. Refill. Down it. Refill. Something ‘light’ for lunch. Class. Two more hours left. Then cycle home and work out again. Then dinner. Then take the dog out. Maybe get work done but not a priority. Could walk home with friends but that would leave me with less time to exercise… foodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfoodfood. Home. Mum’s collecting leaflets and shit again god she’s like a magpie sometimes she’s in a world of her own don’t say anything. Retreat… Workout. Dinner. Something ‘light’, I’m not very hungry today. Dog walk. Stare at homework. Bed. Wake up. Workout (burn dinner). Dog walk. Porridge (oats and water only!). Cycle. Friends won’t care if I walk or not. School. Lump in throat. Fidget. Food food food. Break. Refill. Down it. Refill. Food food food. Write. Down it. Refill. Salad. Fidget. Cycle. Workout. Dinner. Dog walk. Homework. Repeat for another 2 years.

The schedule took very careful planning between Anorexia and I. If the plan was broken I got very frustrated. I’d failed our ‘friendship’.

During the holidays we got to spend even more quality time together.

We met due to a few negative circumstances and predispositions mixing together at the same time: loneliness, lack of confidence, family stuff, equating attractiveness with skinniness, and equating this achievement with having more friends/being liked. Thank you, diet culture (AKA eating disorder culture). All of these factors, as well as a few more, meant that at the time it felt like there wasn’t much I could control in my life. My friendship with Anorexia gave me something to control.

Like many others, I was sucked into the whole diet culture shitshow at a very impressionable age. What started off as a simple I hate my legs, “YouTube: how to get a flat stomach’, I’m gonna loose my puppy fat once and for all!, evolved into a more sinister relationship with my body, where food and exercise became a channel for focusing control over my life. Diet culture wasn’t the sole reason for our ‘friendship’ but I suppose that it provided a reason for the friendship to be instigated. My determination to stick at a project until completed (once I get started anyway) also contributed to our twisted friendship. As well as this, I was beginning to recognise the mental health problems my mum had, and my dad and stepmom weren’t especially supportive. It got to the point where I felt like Anorexia was the only ‘person’ I could turn to or the only ‘friend’ important to me. By the end of year 8 I was already obsessively reliant on my best friend Anorexia. We’d managed to mentally isolate myself from friends and family, despite them being so physically near.

The summer before year 9 gave Anorexia and I the chance to spend even more time together; time apart was distressing. Soon into the year I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and referred to CAMHS. It took a few years to cut anorexia out of my life. I had to recognise that our friendship was detrimental (well, life threatening), I had to recognise that it wasn’t normal or logical and I had to work hard to break the patterns of behaviour that equated starvation and over exercise with satisfying endorphins. Starvation releases endorphins, similar to the feeling we get after exercise, as a mechanism to stop us giving up through extreme events. For many people with eating disorders, they don’t recognise the abnormality of their behaviour, and so breaking away from it is unlikely until they determine to shut Anorexia out of their life. This is especially difficult because, in recovery, there is a loss of endorphin release and so the raw feelings return.

Currently, I haven’t interacted with Anorexia for almost two years. I wouldn’t consider myself acquaintances with them but I don’t want to forget them (coming out of the toxic friendship allowed me to learn things I wouldn’t have learned of if I hadn’t gone through the experience). The 2-3 years I spent sucked into a relationship with Anorexia has created a big gap in my memory. It replaced making memories with actual friends and finding what I’m really passionate about with nothingness: a black whole. Or, if there was anything within that vortex, then the only thing that mattered to me was the control that food and exercise enabled.

There’s nothing glamorous about anorexia (or any eating disorder) despite the cute photos of super skinny girls plastered over social media, despite the positive compliments you might receive for getting skinny (which helps to drive the detrimental patterns of behaviour) and despite the associations you may hold with your goal body that you’d do anything for. If you're a woman, you likely will lose your period, your hair and your confidence. You’ll fuck up your relationship with food and your body, your self esteem, as well as your family and friends. But sure! Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for that fix of control that ‘friend’ can offer.

Lately, I’ve been concerned about the effects of isolation on people who struggle with disordered eating patterns, who may be more susceptible to welcoming back into their lives a ‘friendship’ with Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating and so on; isolation is necessary for an ED to maintain its control of your life. I’ve also been considering all of the young people who are now more exposed to difficult home life, increased time for scrolling through social media and internalising diet culture (AKA eating disorder culture), coming to terms with the uncontrollability of the shitshow going on in the world right now and the clear loneliness that comes with isolation. They are likely more at risk of being approached by an eating disorder looking to make a ‘friendship’.

Ps - Everyone, let your friends know you care about them. They will love you for it. You receive some love, they receive some love. Win win :)

Jenny Taylor