All of My Thoughts, All of My Words.
By: Chloe
“Why is it so hard for me to be happy all the time. Why can’t I always be happy all the time? Why can’t I just be happy for 40 percent of the day? I would even take 20 percent on a bad day.
I find myself going through the same routine day by day. I wake up too late because I go to bed too late. I can’t fit into my jeans without horrible sessions of starvation because I won’t allow myself to accept the fact that I’m a size 4 not a size 2, like I was in eighth grade. I go to the bathroom and there’s my best friend. My scale. This is the most toxic relationship I’ve ever been in and I will never let it go.”
This was from February 22, 2018.
“To do:
-workout
-no food (did you eat today? Don’t check this off)
-8 glasses of water”
This was in one of my least favorite and most damaging journals, and I plan on burning it one day. The only thing I got out of those four years of my life was that journal, and just that one. Not the one the year before, or the one the year before that, and so on. Just that one. My journal from February 2018 to April 2019. This was the year I spent in and out of many different toxic relationships, first and foremost my relationship with my body.
I get told I’m being too narcissistic if I share something about my eating disorder on my public account. My mom tells me I look like I’m begging for attention when I reposted (on my Instagram story) an ED recovery doodle. I wasn’t looking for attention, mom. It just made me smile. I thought you would too.
“I will never be able to accept my body.”
Easily one of the most worn out lines in this journal. When I was living in 2018 I was dating a cute boy with kind of shaggy blonde hair. His name was-- haha don’t worry. I would NEVER.
This was my second real (“real”) relationship. I dated a boy (*boy*) in high school that quite literally made me ball my eyes out in my dorm room the week after Freshman year had started, when he told me “it just isn’t going to work.” How! How is it just not going to work? We can do it, come on! We are Freshman on two opposite sides of the country, but we love each other and we can do it. We are the exception!!
We weren’t the exception, and you probably aren’t either. The good thing is, being the exception with that boy would have taken away all the incredible, challenging, and goofy memories I’ve made since then. Looking back on it now, if I had to spend every cent I make to NOT end up being the exception I would do it. If you and your high school boyfriend don’t work out, listen up. It is going to be okay, and your chest might hurt, and you might not be able to breathe for a second, and your life might seem like it’s well beyond over, and you might even want to just post a lot of thirst traps on Instagram, but you will be okay. You will be. I promise. I have just started to tell my story, and my little high school boyfriend is the tiniest chip off of the iceberg that is still coming.
“You are just so cute. I could look at you all day and my head would never not wish that you would stay with me forever.”
I mean he was so cute, and my 2018 diary can back me up on that one. He was different than bf #1. He wasn’t the type of guy that would have graced my eyes in high school, because let’s be honest I was snobby and spoiled and mean. I was a mean girl who walked around the halls with a chip on my shoulder, shorts that would always get me dress coded, and thighs that always touched. No one thought I was mean, and I actually had a lot of friends. I was just mean, though. I can’t describe to you why, but I was mean and I know I was mean. I was mean because I had never been so horrible to someone in my entire life: myself.
Back to 2018.
Cute blonde bunny. That’s what he was according to my diary. He played a sport and was damn good at it. He played poker with me and we would go on drives for hours and talk about everything but I would never remember any of it because the only thing I would think about when I got back to my bed was what I couldn’t think about. I couldn’t think. I was so in love with him.
I was in love with his clothing. I was in love with his scratchy voice, the way his muscles looked in that shirt, the way his eyes looked with that hat on, and the way he would sing the lyrics of a song to me and try to make it relate to us. We drove to Connecticut.
“And, I turned on that dumb Taylor Swift song that Jane had downloaded on my phone. This was an accident and he knew all the lyrics! I love this boy so much it hurts and I don’t know what to do. What will I do when he ends it with me?”
How did I already know that he was going to end it with me? Before I found the texts, before I got the texts, and before I decided to destroy my body forever I had this awful little idea in the back of my head. “He is going to leave you, Chloe.”
“My entire body is unable to move and I will never be the same.”
Yep, I lost him.
When I lost him, I lost me. I lost myself in the numbers on a scale, and never being satisfied with a triple digit. I lost myself in the words “you look disgusting Chloe” or “Chloe you should lose a little weight.” It was never “Chloe, you look great.” I was either too skinny or too fat, and my mother was the Simon Cowell with no Randy or Paula to help me feel less awful about myself.
The first time I went to the hospital was because I got too drunk at a party. I was crying about a blonde haired cutie. My heart felt sunken. I looked around me and he wasn’t there. Every boy I saw was so notably not him. Every song that was played was a memory.
The second time I went to the hospital it was because I weighed less than a three digit number. My mom begged the doctors to let me go, but they told her that “it is not safe for her to leave until she finishes the transfusions.” Even when I was “fine” to leave physically, my mental health was well aware that I’d be right back in that bed a few weeks later.
I stopped eating. I ate too much. I went on diet after diet. I forgot how to laugh, cry, joke around, do my makeup, play with my little cousin, stalk someone on Instagram, watch a movie with my mom, go to a bar with girlfriends, and close my eyes. All I could do was stare outside of an empty window wishing I was with him, or skinnier, or happier.
“I’m in the hospital again. This time I haven’t been able to stay awake for very long. My chest is in such bad pain and I don’t know where my mom went but she was just in here a second ago. I’ll write more when I wake up.”
This was one of the last entries I wrote before I was in and out of almost death for 48 hours.
I recovered. I recovered because on my own I told myself that I deserved to recover. If you see me today I might be in the park with my iPad, trying to study for the LSAT. I might be watching The Bachelorette (can we please leave ca-LARE out of this narrative?) with my friends in our Boston apartment. I might be flirting with my neighbor? I would love to include him in a future story?
“To do:
-LSAT
-write story for that magazine
-dinner with mama
-go look at cats!
-nails done
-get bday gift
-get more mascara”
I need to get more mascara because I have a date in a few hours with a cute neighbor boy. I plan on showing him my tequila loving energy, and he has already challenged me to a game of poker.
It would have been hard. It would have been hard to text someone about being excited for dinner when I still got an uneasy feeling if I’d had a little too much bread. It would have been hard to take a shot of tequila without our old drinking game. It would have been hard to get ready to play poker with a guy who isn’t my blonde shaggy haired boy.
The point is, it isn’t hard now. I needed to not be the exception in my long distance relationship. I needed to put my body through a world of damage to learn how much I love her. I needed to lose love to leave room to find better love. I needed to recover because I deserved to recover.
