EDA Week 2014: Sock It To Eating Disorders #3

My socks for today: mix matched argyle socks. One blue & green and another yellow & grey.

I don't fully know why I chose these socks for today. I've had them for years. Both pairs have giant holes in the heels and a couple in the toes. It's so bad actually that I have to wear extra socks under them to protect my feet and hide the fact that they are torn.

Oh hold on. I think I maye just found a reason.

In high school I had a nickname: Ella. After I was diagnosed I started taking measures to make sure I didn't fall back into habits. One of these measures was to have meetings with the school counsellor during lunch. Then I could talk about my day and she would eat lunch with me. I don't know if I can thank her enough for taking her lunch time to sit and eat with me. It helped a lot in the beginning and kept helping when I was going through rough times. 

Anyway, one day she said to me that she was surprised that it was me. She said I seemed so confident about who I was that she never would have guessed it would have been me. At that point she paused and said "It's like you're two different people. Ella an Erin." 

I thought about that for a while. And, while I don't really think I'm two different people, it did make me realise how good I was at hiding. 

No one knew that I took diet pills from ages 12-13. No one knew that I went home and didn't eat. 

I hid that I was broken. Much like I hide that these socks are broken. 

Most people hide their eating disorders. We don't flaunt them. Part of that is because it's embarrassing. There is such a stigma attached to eating disorders that speaking up and saying "I have a mental disorder." is hard. Part of it is because of ignorance. Heck, I don't want to deal with some of the ignorant things that people say to me. But I think most of it is because we don't want help. We don't want people to realise we are different and try to change it. It's like an abusive relationship. You know it's wrong, you know you should leave, but you don't want people to find out because they'll voice what you already know and make it impossible to pretend that everything is alright.

I'm not hiding anymore. This is me stopping. I know who I am, and I'm just not going to hide who that is anymore. 

I guess I should rid of these socks.