The Skinny on My Past Life

Most of you already have a pretty good idea of what an eating disorder is – if not, then what it means to have body image problems. I have yet to meet a person who exclaims, “I love everything about my body and myself!” What is “ideal”? How did you come to that conclusion? Where did you get those messages? Why is it important to fit the model that others feed us? Have you ever thought, “If only I could look like (or be like) so-and-so, then I’d be so happy?” I have.

It’s a sad thing that eating disorders are now a commonplace idea, event, or occurrence. We live in an age where we are constantly being “told” what to look like, what is “ideal” and further, we are instructed to be judgmental of others who don’t fit the stereotypical visions fed to us since early childhood. I had once been a victim of those ideals that are still considered to be an embodiment of perfection – except that “perfection” became perverted to “at any cost” and “thin” was “never enough.”

I am an only child, and early on, as far as attention came or went, I did not have to compete too much for it. I had my physical needs met – “food, water, shelter, air, and so forth,” as our book says. Maslow said that “the key factor determining which need is dominant at a given time is the degree to which those below it are satisfied…” I had also completed the requisites in Erikson’s models for trust versus mistrust, and initiative versus guilt to a functional degree – No one told me about my early childhood other than with the adjective, “precocious.” I learned to read at a very young age, did the cursory things kids did: played, had imaginary friends, fought with my cousin like a cat when I wanted something that I coveted, and figured my way out of my innate shyness by the time I was in the second grade. For all intents and purposes, I was just another normal child with no glitches. In fact, I excelled at everything that I was tasked to do, and minded my manners very well. I believed that every problem could be faced down, and in my estimation, the world was a good place to live. I had been classically trained in piano, raised in two cultures – both Japanese and American, and managed to juggle these different realities pretty well. I had my safety needs met – I was adequately protected from physical and psychological threat, had order and structure, and was generally protected from fear and anxiety. Perhaps I was even a little too overprotected.

The problems started when I reached my teens. Everything went out of order: first, naturally, my body changed, and I had not been sufficiently warned about this impending metamorphosis. Then, my father got orders from on-high – our family was to pack up and move to Guam. At that time, I had learned industry versus inferiority and was far ahead of the curve in many areas of my life. As far as Maslow was concerned, I had achieved membership, acceptance, belonging, feeling loved, and feeling wanted with my friends, school, family, and musical instruction. I was content, and thriving.

On Guam however, the family I knew, as well as the system I’d grown accustomed to would change overnight. I went from being a child who could rely on reality to one whose reality was fractured and fragmented. I had to leave all my friends behind; I had gotten popular in middle school, and had been selected to study classical piano at college entry levels at 13 years old. On a fateful February 2nd, I was transported from this, to all the unfamiliar things I never expected or knew existed. My mother decided to immediately go to work where she could be with Japanese friends, and my father discovered a second life. I not only lost the world “out there,” but I also lost my family, and the effects were devastating. Identity versus isolation became a theme in which I would remain stuck for years. At that tender age, I was just barely tapping into Maslow’s “Ego and Esteem Needs,” having a modicum of respect and liking for myself and others. I had learned competence, creativity in the arts (classical piano) and academics, freedom, and even got a little fame in my small world. It would take me many years to fall from that state of grace, back to the bottom of Maslow’s triangle, and then crawl my way back up towards a degree of self-awareness, where I am learning to stand today.

When I was 16, I was going out with some friends and had on some skin tight jeans. I was already a little uncomfortable with my shifting body, when my mother caught a glance of me before I left and said, “You’re not going out wearing those pants, are you? Your legs are too fat for them.” That was the pivotal phrase that would stick in my mind for years – even a decade or so beyond, and that would nearly kill me. Looking back, I can see that my mother was merely projecting her fears onto me – visiting her own negative body images onto her daughter, who was an embodiment of all her insecurities. That’s the way it tends to work: we see something in someone else that makes us uncomfortable, and we point it out because we’re afraid of it within ourselves. Of course, I didn’t have this kind of awareness at that age, and I believed my mother’s words. I quickly learned that I should hate my body as my mother continued to visit her negativities about my new weight. She compared me to others – as she did regularly, but now it was body-for-body: if you only had so-and-so’s legs/body, you’d be so pretty … too bad you’re not as pretty as so-and-so … too bad you’re short and heavy … why are you eating? Each day, I hated my body more and more.


Leading up to my high school graduation, I made a resolution that I never broke thereafter: to lose weight to the point that I was entirely content with my body and to be as thin as my friend. I had a new resolve, and decided that anything was just an issue of mind over matter. By graduation, I had dropped from 130 to 110 pounds, and was well on my way towards my goal. My first benchmark had been achieved: 110. The next stops would be incrementally marked off every ten pounds until I hit the three-number barrier. Everyone thought I was so very together because of my will power, and I was excited to be receiving long lost attention as well as a sense of accomplishment after years of perceived decline and failure.

About that time, I had read about a young girl who had starved herself down to 55 pounds and nearly died because she couldn’t see herself as thin (she was 4’11”). I admired this young lady for her efforts! More and more literature started randomly appearing about this topic, but still, I didn’t connect the dots that I was like them. I started taking laxatives because one of the sad side effects of my rigorous dieting was constipation. It was an innocuous act, but my logic immediately began to warp its use. One pill became two, which doubled, and so on until I was taking upwards of 130 pills of the strongest laxatives on the markets and even shoplifting them to support my habit. Still, I pressed on, and no one was the wiser. My body had actually gotten physically dependent on laxatives, and psychologically, it made me nervous to consider reducing the quantity for fear of gaining weight. I felt trapped. I was down to 100 pounds and was so dehydrated that at any given point, I was near shock – the symptoms were all present: acute drop in blood pressure and fluids, cramping, flushing of skin, sweating, cold sweats, increased or irregular heart rate.

Still the skinny ads and movie stars were pervasive and to be my public and private mirror; more and more stories started appearing about women’s extreme dieting killing them; Karen Carpenter had passed away, and several celebrities had been afflicted by this disorder. It seemed to have become public overnight. Eventually I broke the 100 pound barrier and at 95 pounds, I was hospitalized. In my head, I couldn’t justify hospitalization because the women I had read about were far below that weight – 95 pounds was heavy. Immediately upon hospitalization, my kidneys started to fail – I was urinating blood, and this created quite a stir. The doctors put me on IVs and electrolytes, and forced me to eat. Eating had become an unreasonable task to me; I decided what and how much I was going to eat – not anyone else; I trusted no one. It seems I was going backwards on Erikson’s model of growth. I remained in the hospital for nearly three months – to what end, I couldn’t see back then. I thought the medical staff was worried about nothing. If weight was an indicator for wellness, then I was cured because I had gained 15 pounds and now weighed 110 pounds. Immediately after being released, I dropped back down to 95 pounds, and not long afterwards and within a year, I was hospitalized at 83 pounds. This time, I had initiated the process and sought out help at UCLA’s famous Neuro-Psychiatric Institute. Looking back, I am not sure what I was hoping to achieve because I was dead set against gaining weight and ended up fairly close to where I started three months later. I think I was so lost and confused that just being in a “safe place” was a good thing – even if it meant a slight weight gain.

Unattended issues surrounding my teenage years started swirling around me in my 20s, and I fought with my parents daily. I had not forgiven them, and I hated them for uprooting me years ago, and for ruining my life. My condition, as far as I was concerned, was their fault. While they had been out living their lives, they had never stopped to notice that I had been hurting inwardly. Meanwhile, I gave university life a chance and managed to have a brief one year reprieve of sorts (I had learned of bulimia) and got straight A’s, was accepted to the honor’s program, and was noted on the dean’s list each quarter. Tragedy broke when I received a B. I fell apart, believing that the B was the ultimate evidence that I was a failure and too stupid to succeed. After that, I struggled with my eating disorder for several more years while working in the corporate world rather successfully, though with some physical difficulty. There was at least some evidence that I was capable of holding down a job, of going to school, of being amongst people, but my primary mission was to remain thin and be the best I could be at everything – especially losing weight.

All things fall apart. I stopped working. Unattended issues came back with a frightful haunt. Eventually, I lost all steam and plummeted down to 80 pounds again. I went in for treatment and still resisted. I was given no prognosis – not a chance of living. By the second similar hospitalization/treatment, I arrived at their doorsteps at 68 pounds and dying. Tests revealed that I had already suffered very mild heart attacks, had incurred unknown kidney damage, and was dangerously underweight. Even at 68 pounds and emaciated, I fought fiercely to continue down my path of destruction. The treatment center eventually sent me to an actual hospital where I had to receive IVs through hyper-alimentation and cut-downs because my veins had collapsed or shrunk for the lack of fluids. I bear the scars of those procedures with great reluctance and some residual shame today. The only industry I knew was anorexia nervosa. Otherwise, I was merely inferior. I lived in shame and guilt, and took minimal initiatives towards living and my recovery.

For some – for me, things had to get so abysmal for so long that the only way left to go was a "slow up.” At some point, and years into this disease, I decided on a lark to volunteer. I was interested in law enforcement and decided that it might do me some good to pursue it. Long story short, I started volunteering at a Sheriff’s Station in Los Angeles and before long, they immediately hired me. Slowly, I started coming out of myself. I looked to the female officers as my physical role models because they couldn’t be thin – they had to be built up for their jobs. I started working out and working with people in the community. I began mentoring at-risk children and living outside of myself. I actually started to feel alive, and could laugh again.

After four years there, I left the department for another corporate job, and realized that I was no longer the same sick person I used to be who could shut off emotions to do unpleasant work. The position lacked meaning and purpose and I realized that until and unless I went back to school, I would not know my life or myself. I fell into a deep depression and emerged from it with one class at PCC. It was a decision – just like the volunteer work had been, and just like my decision to not use numbers to measure my well-being. (To this day, I do not get on scales – that is the one appendage I cannot shed because my recovery is far too important for me to become obsessive or distracted by silly numbers.) One successful class led to another, that number doubled, and before I knew it, I became a full-time student. Instead of quitting because of a B this time, I kept on, mourned my losses, and faced down my demon of perfectionism. That B, as it turned out, wasn’t going to count towards my transferable credits and further, I got an A in the class that really mattered. When I had pushed myself sufficiently with school, I decided to add tutoring to the mix – a little work and school. It was the best job I never had before! Finally, upon all that, I am here, talking to you about an ordeal I once went through. This ordeal has taken a toll on my life and has not been without a price: I have paid thousands upon thousands of dollars for surgeries, treatments, doctors, hospitals, and dental care – starvation and bulimia are definitely not good for the pearly whites! I lost many good friends who I pushed away because they cared, and my family had to endure my worst moments.

I have climbed slowly up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I guess the point of all this sharing is to let people know that it is entirely possible to fall down and get back up – we are a resilient lot – the human race. Sometimes things can get so dark and hopeless to the point of not wanting to continue, but somehow, we all do – we continue and we endure, and we survive the unsurvivable; and when we’ve faced ourselves – even incrementally, we start to see the light. It is only dark when we hide our faces from ourselves and others. We all have the ability to overcome – each in our own unique ways because each solution must be custom-made to each of our journeys and struggles, and because we are the often unknown architects of our life – both for good and for ill. The answers, I discovered, had to come from within, but the instructions and counseling had to be received from people around me who cared. We are a social animal.

Polaroid Haze

I look back longingly

For the old faded days

When the things were fresh

And the world was newer

In days of 8 millimetres 

And faded Polaroids 

In this brave new digital age

I have become pixilated 

Copied and pasted 

Into jagged hews

All dimly lit and dulled

A syntax error

Control-Alt-Delete me

And Photoshop my mind.

Look Both Ways

You will understand me if you ask. If you judge me, you will understand less. If you berate and condescend, I will be your mirror, which will carry your reflection. If you assume who I am without knowing, and insist upon the rightness of your assumptions, I will ignore you. If you yell at me about me I will fall silent because I will not indulge lower communication, though I will acknowledge your frustration. If you cry I will hold you, if you speak to me I will respond. If you talk over me, past me, through me, or irreverently close out my voice, I will not try to talk over you and will fall quiet as your words bleed out of my ear. But if you converse with me, we will achieve everything our words convey to one another. I will not be a victim of bullying because I was sided against as a child. It may be what I've known, but I have never tolerated it. I am your greatest ally or your worst nightmare: the choice is yours. If you are mean to me, I might shrink, but eventually I will figure it out and draw strength from it. And because I am human, if you corner me, I will fight back and come to regret my words and all the hopes belying my love. If you cannot find the strength within yourself to keep a modicum of your promises, I will see the pattern and begin to doubt the integrity of your words. I am a gentle person with an abundance of patience, but if a line is crossed I am far less forgiving. "Sorry" is a good start and doing is a better one.