Not many practising Catholics I know have an eating disorder. Actually, I don't know a single one. It doesn't really seem to fit very well together, does it...
Even I struggle to make out how these two parts of my life go together.
I haven't always had an ED (and btw, strictly speaking I have never been diagnosed, but that's due to the fact that so far I've either managed to avoid my GP or to pretend that everything is fine). The first time I developed an ED was when I was 15 and we were doing food chemistry in school. I had been fat for quite a few years; after my parent's divorce I had started to put on weight. When I realised one day in November in class how much calories I actually eat every day I was really shocked and disgusted by myself. I decided it was time to seriously lose some weight now.
As disgusted as I was I couldn't eat a thing the next day. And well, as things go, I discovered what a powerful feeling it is to have conquered myself, my hunger, my body, and basically everything that I hated about me.
Since my parents were divorced but still living in the same area it was so easy for me to avoid meals - I just told them I had eaten at the other's place or at school or at a friend's house. No one ever managed to keep track of were I and my siblings were all the time so no one worried about my eating habits simply because no one noticed they were kind of odd.
I started to lose weight very quickly and lost about two stone over the first month. Still then no one really seemed to notice, I still wore the same clothes and frankly, people tend to ignore you when you are shy, not particularly beautiful and in no other way sticking out of the crowd.
After a few months when I had already lost more than three stone my mum began to see that I lost weight but since I was the fattie of the family this was a good thing. She also saw that I ate little but never actually grasped that it wasn't really little but more or less nothing at all. I hid food wherever I could - during meal times in my mouth (and then ran to the toilet or the kitchen sink to spit it out) or I'd secretly put it back or on my brother's plate, and I used to spoon yoghurts and other creamy food down the sink and leave the empty boxes in the kitchen so that my mother would think I ate them.
Sooner or later other people noticed I had lost weight, teachers, friends and the family I used to babysit for. Scarily enough, none of them ever worried, all I got was compliments on how well I looked. When I look now at the few photos I have of this time I look terrible - circles under my eyes, pale as death, frizzy hair and terribly baggy clothes. I can't believe nobody ever worried. Either I was a very talented and convincing actress or else they all never really looked at me in the first place.
When I think back to the feelings of the time all I remember is anger, self-hatred and - yes - the wonderful and amazing feeling of power. Power over my own body, power that allowed me to deceive everyone around me, and this immense willpower which let me succeed.
At all this time I was decidedly christian (not really Catholic then but I guess I'll come to that in due time), reading the bible, going to church, praying and all that. And, believe it or not, fasting is a very effective religious exercise. You can feel very close to God when you haven't eaten for a couple of days, and even in retrospective I don't think that this feeling of closeness to God was an illusion. He was there with me all the time, and the worse I felt in life the closer He was to me.
I must have been very thin then. Not dangerously skinny, I never reached this stage, but thin. As it is with EDs you don't see yourself for what you are. I never felt thin, but was always the fattie that I used to be. So no number on the scales was low enough because I'd not feel it.
By March I realised I had a serious problem: I was starting to worry about receiving the Eucharist because it might make me put on weight. This thought struck me with such intensity that I decided I had to change. God was the only one I could still trust and rely on so not being able to receive Him because of my ED was just too much to bear. It wasn't like I changed over night. It took me weeks, months even, to start eating again. I had no support from anyone but God - after all, no one else knew about my problem. People are blind for what they do not want to see. I prayed, I prayed and I prayed, and slowly, ever so slowly I could let go. I still counted calories, I still was afraid to put on weight. But I would make myself eat because I had had a glimpse of what I would become if I continued on this way. The prospect of losing God was the only thing that made me turn. Of course, I put on weight. But over time I found out that those who like me don't care about my weight and those who don't like me don't either - they just use it as a means to hurt me but they still didn't like me when I was thin so what's the point in destroying yourself for them.
So, that's briefly how it all started with my ED...