Emily S.
Photography by John Tropeano
Before reading this letter, we'd like for you to know it discusses Emily's experience with an eating disorder. If you think that reading about this will be triggering for you, we encourage you to take a pause before reading this letter, center yourself, and prepare any resources you may need to access after reading it. If you'd rather not read this letter, we encourage you to read a letter on a different topic, such as this one. If you're reading this, your feelings are valid. If you're reading this, your feelings are valid.
If you’re reading this, your perfectionism is only harming you and it’s time to break the cycle.
Diet culture has always had a fierce handle on my life. I learned to read in kindergarten, probably around the age of 6, and by the time I was 8 years old, I was picking up diet magazines instead of picture books. I started to pay more attention to how I looked in the mirror at dance class, started compulsively weighing myself, and Googled things like “9-year-old weight loss tips fast.” I didn’t know it, but my surroundings encouraged me that this was normal, and I developed an eating disorder at a very young age.
As I grew up my eating disorder evolved with me, and by the time I was in high school, it had spiraled out of control. I was overinvolved, exercising an unhealthy amount, lying to my friends and family about what I was eating, and holding myself to an impossible standard of perfectionism. I felt like I had a good thing going, and as long as I was constantly occupied by my eating disorder and never left alone with my thoughts, I would be fine.
Naturally, this all spiraled out of control when the world stopped during the Covid-19 pandemic. Suddenly, I had nothing external to hyper-fixate on and was left alone with my own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and perfectionism. My mental health was in sharp decline, and my self-hatred spiraled into feelings of depression and suicidal ideation.
My eating disorder began to take more and more from me, and I didn’t even realize. I thought that if I kept going, I would finally feel like I was “good enough.” It took being taken out of school for six weeks of intensive eating disorder treatment for me to start to understand that I would never achieve this feeling. Unfortunately, this realization came after I had isolated myself from my environment, and I felt largely alone.
So, if you’re reading this and you relate to any of these feelings, please know this: nothing will ever be “good enough” for this voice inside your head, and it is time to start recovering now. For a large majority of my life, I had no idea how much my eating disorder was negatively influencing me. I have maintained and fostered genuine connections, discovered more about myself, and incorporated elements of happiness back into my life while ignoring the nagging voice in my head that was screaming at me to stop.
Now I know this process is easier said than done, and it can be so difficult. Recovery has challenged me in so many ways, and some days I just want to give up. It is not linear and it’s ok to have setbacks, I have even gone back to treatment since being in college. However, my best advice is to just keep pushing and creating the life you deserve to live. Because even though it is hard to believe, we all deserve and are capable of happiness and self-fulfillment. Life is too short to be this hard on yourself, and we get the opportunity to turn our narratives around.
Emily S., Villanova University
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