Eating Disorder Awareness Week – My Story

It was 2014 and I had been hospitalized for depression not an eating disorder. Yet the doctors made it very clear to me that if I wasn’t eating the hospital food, I had an eating disorder. My question is, who likes the hospital food? My roommate and I came up with a plan that anytime a nurse came into our room I would take out my goldfish crackers that my mom brought me and I would snack on those. At the time, I had no relationship with any eating disorder. And not in a million years did I ever think I would struggle with one. The doctors were simply wrong in that moment but this was my first introduction to someone assuming I had an eating disorder based upon my appearance.

That week didn’t “make” me have an eating disorder, but it did mark me.

2015 and 2016 rolled around and as my depression got worse, my anxiety got worse and I began struggling with the very thing I never thought I would struggle with.

At the beginning of 2016 I had gone to Atlanta, Georgia to go through treatment for my anxiety and the depression. But because the eating disorder became known, I was sent to an eating disorder treatment center in Florida after that. Then after that, I was sent back to Atlanta where I went through more treatment for the eating disorder.

I had always heard in treatment centers that this is something that you will always struggle with. And hearing that simply had no hope or life attached to it.

I would tell my dietican at the time that because I saw no hope, I didn’t care if the eating disorder took my life.

In 2017 I found breakthrough after hitting rock bottom and found a freedom and a hope that I hadn’t know in years. I experienced remission for almost three years until I began to face trauma that shook me and rocked my world in the most unexpected way.

Although I started coping with all that I had previously known to have helped me, I knew that it was a lie that someone had to live with an eating disorder forever.

That remission spoke loudly and I am so thankful. It provided hope and provides hope. Not just for me but for others around me that struggle and wonder if there is an end in sight. It allows me to breathe. To catch my breath. It keeps me writing. It keeps me hoping.

Fast forward the end of 2024 and I had just walked the halls of five other treatment centers and a hospital – this time it was all for my eating disorder.

The girl in 2014 joking around with her roommate and the goldfish crackers wouldn’t have imagined the girl that lay on a bed in the same room 10 years later getting an x-ray done of her heart. Never would I have imagined I would be in the same room 10 years later in the state that I was in. It happened. There isn’t shame. But there is help.

After I left the hospital, i wrote this:

I felt like my body was becoming numb to life and alive to death. But in that dying, I was shaken awake. It was like lightning and thunder marked my seven days in the hospital. Wild, blinding flashes of lightning and rolling thunder shook me awake. My heart feels like it’s waking up…

During my seven days spent in the hospital, I went into a meeting with my treatment team one morning thinking we would be discussing a discharge date. Instead, the head doctor began to list off all that wasn’t right with my body, my labs, my EKG. Was he trying to scare me? Because it was working. He said, “Don’t be surprised when they come up to get an x-ray of your heart this morning.” How could this be so bad? My stomach dropped. within 30 seconds, other doctors barged into the room, interrupted the meeting, and said, “We are ready for Annie.” I felt like I was living in a nightmare. Everyone on the unit was aware of what was going on. Moments later, labs were drawn two more times because once at 7:20 am wasn’t enough. Later that afternoon I had 5 doctors approach me asking me questions I only knew half the answers to. I didn’t know my body was in the state that it was in. But it was enough to wake me up and scare me in a good way into wanting a different life. A life outside of this ED. I can’t live like this anymore.

A few days later in rounds, I told the treatment team, “I’m ready to live life differently. ready to take things seriously”. Not that I wasn’t, but being half in is much different than being all in with recovery. 

Shaken awake in unforeseen, painful, scary circumstances but my God is Emmanuel and El Roi. He is forever with me and sees me and will turn all things bitter into something so sweet. That’s the story I get to tell. Even in the middle of it all. Because that’s where I am. Hand in hand with Him. 

Once I left the hospital, my treatment team had already made the decision that I needed a higher level of care. So continued the queue of treatment centers.

Why am I sharing this? Well, I know there are people reading this who are in the position I was in. Weaving through different treatment centers wondering if there is an end in sight. There are people reading this who know others who have struggled but you have never known what it’s like to have an eating disorder. I write for you too. This week is all about awareness.

I will also say that you never know who might be struggling around you. The girl sitting with her sister at the coffee shop might be on a three hour pass but still in residential treatment. The other guy shopping in the travel section at Target might be getting last minute supplies for their first time in residential treatment. The girl who’s on her phone at a restaurant might be logging her food on an app for her dietician to see. You simply don’t know what someone is going through.

Eating disorders are isolating. If you know a friend, check in on them. And remind them that it doesn’t have to be their forever struggle. Because it’s true. <3.