Eating Disorders, Part 1

So this week has been "Eating Disorder Week" at school. No joke--on Monday we walk in, there's this huge purple (why purple?) ribbon thing hanging from the ceiling, and all these signs hanging on the walls. I've found it slightly rattling all week. Part of it is that it's discomforting to go to the bathroom, sit down on the toilet, and find yourself staring at a sign that ends in the line, "I knew I would end up dead before I was thin enough." Yes, the bold was part of it. But part of it was that I was diagnosed with an eating disorder myself at the tail end of ninth grade, and I don't like thinking about.

Now before I continue, I should point out that I've never starved myself or binged/purged or anything like that. I've never been anorexic, bulimic, or a binge eater. There's sort of another category for generic eating problems, and that is what I had. Just so you know.

In a way, it goes back a long time; I've never been a big eater. I didn't used to eat a lot or get hungry that often, and that was how it always had been. Also, when I was younger, I found food (I know this is going to sound weird, but bear with me) boring. Think about it. It just sits on your plate. I wanted to read instead. I mean, I knew I had to eat, and I did, but I'd want to read at the same time (I don't think I knew how to multitask then). So I was always thin as a child.

And you have to understand, this was kinda a big deal in my family. Well, not really, but my mom was always trying to get me to eat more, gain more weight. Maybe it's a Jewish mother thing. But I think it was a bit more. Whenever we went to my grandparents in Baltimore (this was before Grandma fell apart, and we were a lot closer then) my grandpa would always ask me how much I weighed. And I would tell him proudly that I had gained X number of pounds. And he would give me reward money. Grandma was always trying to feed me, but in retrospect I think that was just Grandma being Grandma. I mean, everytime we visit her these days, if she can concentrate enough she tries to feed us all. It's pretty depressing. But I'm getting off-topic.

It's not like eating dominated my life or something. But I just wanted you to know that since I was young, I was always being told to GAIN weight, not lose it.

Flashforward to ninth grade. My history class was working in the tech lab. I had some nose problems (maybe it was stuffed or runny, I don't remember) and asked the teacher if I could go to the adjacent room which was connected by a doorway to get Kleenex. She said yes. So I go to the other room. There happened to be a computer by the doorway, so this chair is kinda blocking the way in. I had to move it to get past. So I started to move it and I got really dizzy. You know when you get dizzy and your vision sort of blacks over? So that's what happened, only it didn't fade after a moment. I heard this crash, like something had hit the chair.

So the next thing I know, I'm horizontal. I think I'm at home, in bed. Then I realize that the ground is hard and cold, and hey, wait a minute, I'm not home, I'm in school! I had passed out, but at the moment I had no idea what had happened. So I got up kinda shakily, get the damn kleenex, and wipe my nose. I was bleeding. And not just a little, but quite a bit. In retrospect, I think I must have hit my nose on the chair when I fell. The nosebleed creeped me out a bit, and I was a little unbalanced anyway, so I went back to the tech lab and asked my teacher if I could go to the nurse. No one had realized what had happened because the door was partway closed. Maybe they heard the crash, but hey, people are always moving chairs around in school.

So I went to the nurse, who of course sent me home. Later on that day, when my dad came downstairs to greet me, I was doing a puzzle. I got up quickly, got dizzy again, and the next thing you know, I'm on the floor again. Fortunately, didn't get any nose damage this time.

Of course we went to the doctor. We probably went to a string of them, I don't really remember, but the point is, we ended up in this nutritionist's office. And they weighed me and everything--I was ninety-something pounds then, had never been 100--and said, guess what, you have an eating disorder.