Oof. This is gonna hurt. It's okay now, but...I'm still ripping a band-aid off from an old scar and it stings still. I'll start this off with a preface current day as I am right now, and then I'm gonna spill the tea. So... This period of my life in January of 2013 looks back on 18-year-old me. In case you missed it in one of my initial posts, I was had just forcibly come home early from a Rotary Student Exchange program to Taiwan.
I can't express how much that hurt. That's an old wound that actually re-opens and bleeds out on me from time to time...even writing about it makes my stomach drop. My whole life dream was living and working over in Asia, and not just anywhere, but Taiwan became my home. I had worked for seven years prior to going mastering the Chinese language...which... say what you will about English being supposedly the most difficult in terms of grammar, spelling, etc., but... I'm telling you; as an American born native speaker of English, it is ABSOLUTELY challenging.
It's not like I grew up learning or knowing a second language, either... this was something I took it upon myself to do because THAT is how much those people meant to me. People I had met some of in my own community because work had brought them over to my small town in Michigan, but largely, a group of people I had yet to meet. It didn't matter. I already was in love with them. A love and a draw that I cannot humanly comprehend. It was just....part of me.
However, I digress. Beyond the time and effort put into learning Chinese, beyond the time and effort it took to scrape together all the money for my exchange from a regular job, odd jobs and fundraising... it was that my dream and whole purpose in life was now "broken". It was "ruined" and I blamed.... well...I blamed myself, but I also blamed anyone who had a hand in my forcible return home. And again, why was it that I was found to be in true physical danger to the point of being forced home early?
A truly deadly eating disorder. I had started my exchange at 110 pounds, already down 10 from my original weight the prior year because I had become consumed by body dysmorphia. I did my best to hide it. I truly felt this was not a disorder, this was not a problem to be fixed.... I felt the problem had already been diagnosed as "fatness". And I did not want ANYONE stepping in the way of my solution to starve myself to death.
At the point January rolled around, 2013, I was brought back home and about to undergo yet another forced process.... a partial hospitalization program for the eating disorder. I was down to 75 pounds and diagnosed with several health problems, the few I remember were something wrong with the liver enzymes, early onset osteoporosis, and a heart murmur/tachycardia. My blood pressure and pulse were of concern, too, but the initial hospital at CMU I was checked at essentially said they personally couldn't help because all their beds were full. Of course...do you think that bothered me? Obviously NO... breath of relief, more like it (how very sick I was, indeed). That was when we got referred to the PHP for eating disorders, and in the couple weeks it took to get in, I was hell in a handbasket for my extremely scared, sad, and helpless parents.
They were trying to force me down to get milkshakes in me, meanwhile I cried, screamed, and writhed in tears, but, trust me.... NO ONE was having a good time back then. My parents were crying, too. I was crying because I was sick and wanted to stay sick, they were crying because the child they loved was sick and wanted to stay sick....there were no winners in that time, and I can't thank them enough for literally forcing me to stay alive so I can be here today and have a little girl of my own. I was made to gain about 6 pounds before entering treatment, bringing me up to 81 pounds. Needless to say, I thought I was a monster.
Wow, heh, I mean, this turned out WAY more than a preface, more of a whole frigging post in it of itself, so...I do send my sincere apologies (whoops! I did it again). So now that you have way more detailed context than you ever possibly required to understand the journal entry I'm giving, here it is (I'll type out the note just in case the photo is difficult to read):
Caption 1: "Jan before treat(ment). You are Fat" (times, like, I would assume about a dozen or more times I repeat that). Then I have "beautiful" written next to the first stick figure, over the second I have "81 pounds" and things beside it like "flat stomach", "thin arms you can fit one hand around", "legs you can fit both hands around", and "hipbones you can feel".
Caption 2: (mid-January before program)
"I want to write positive thoughts to please my parents but I have none to give. My mind goes blank and all I hear is 'I'm a loser. I blew it. I failed my Rotary exchange. Now I'm fat. Too fat to be liked. Too fat to have a boyfriend. Undeserving of eating. Undeserving of clothes and a place to live. Undeserving of my family.' At first, I just felt stubborn and resistant to saying things against my eating disorder because I was afraid if I betray it I'll get big again and be like every other 'normal' sized girl. I know that's selfish and unhealthy to think, but that's how I feel. Now, though, I'm not just stubborn and resistant to venting anger towards my anorexia-- she is blurred into my personality. She helps me feel special, disciplined, focused, determined, beautiful, like literal weight is lifted off my tense body, and complete. She makes me feel desirable and attractive--worthy of other girls' envy. She gives me a feeling of power and complete confidence to want to go out and show off my thinness."