Emma B.
Photography by Emma Brogan
Before reading this letter, we'd like for you to know it discusses Emma’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 are reading this know that asking for help is an act of bravery, not shame.
When I started my freshman year at Villanova University in the fall of 2020, I believed college would be the place to learn about myself and discover what I truly wanted to do with the rest of my life. However, over my four years in school, the goal I set for myself devolved into not only losing complete sight of the person I wanted to become but also the person I relied on most — my mom. As I write this letter, I am five months post-grad, sitting in a treatment center 1,035 miles from home trying to face my eating disorder and navigate life without my mom.
While I loved many aspects of my time in college, I also endured many hardships. Everyone in college faces the stress of an exam or the agony of a term paper, but the hardships I am referring to are not ones that many of my peers experienced. However, I never wanted any of my friends or classmates to know how much I was struggling. So, I pushed down my pain and placed a mask over my face, my voice, my actions. I concealed absolutely everything. The ups and downs of my mom’s health never showed on my face. I turned in every homework assignment, attended every class, and pasted a big smile on my face at every party.
On October 6th, 2022, I was sitting in my Thursday morning statistics class when I got a text from my dad. He was in the parking lot. He told me to pack up my things and walk out to meet him. I froze in the hallway for a few minutes as my heart and body were trying to avoid the most painful words I knew I would face in the parking lot.
My mom passed away. At that moment, the pain and suffering I had been masking became too much. The life I built by putting on a mask started to slip from my grasp. It was all too much. But this slip in control over what I built gradually escalated into a tighter grasp with more controls and rules put in place by my mind about how to wear my mask. My ability to place stricter rules about my mask was the beginning of a downward spiral cranked up to high gear.
In all this time I was struggling and masking it, I genuinely believed that I did not need anyone’s help. I assured everyone that I was ok. I told myself I was ok.
I was not ok.
I did not know it at the time, but all my avoidance of pain and all my masking damaged me mentally and physically. By not turning outwardly for help, I essentially was sabotaging myself internally. I denied the problems for a long time. I denied the pain, the grief, the sadness. It took one year and eight months for me to finally see that maybe I was not doing as well as I told everyone around me. I looked in the mirror and realized that the mask I wore daily morphed into an eating disorder and exercise addiction. The mask I wore as a means of protecting myself was destroying me.
The night after graduation, I broke down. I was faced with the fact that the world I knew, the schedule that I clung to would no longer be my reality. I, or well in truth my mask, propped myself up on the dependability of the schedule I built day in and day out —workout, class, eat only at this time. Without my schedule, I could see a crack in my mask; I saw how broken and exhausted I was from trying so hard not to show any pain. But seeing it and fixing it are two completely different things. I was at a loss. Being so exhausted, I did not know how to pick myself up. It was at this moment, almost five years after first putting on my mask that I took the step of asking for support. I turned to those around me, the people from whom I hid my pain, and asked for help.
With the help of my family and friends, I made the most difficult decision of my life — to face my pain head-on. On the 18th of June this past summer, I traveled six states away from home to an eating disorder treatment center. In the days between deciding to admit myself to the center and arriving, I never felt more disappointed in myself. If I am being completely honest, I was ashamed. For years, I had felt pride in my ability to be there for everyone around me without having to ask for their help in return. I went from being seemingly the most pieced-together person to the one who needed a lot of help immediately. I had grown dependent upon my eating disorder; I used it as a lifejacket to keep me from drowning in all the pain I did not want to feel. But now that I had decided it was doing me more harm than good, how was I supposed to give that up and trust that I could survive the pain, trust that I could continue to live my life?
However, asking for help from my family and friends was short-lived. I decided when I arrived at the treatment center that I would not burden my family or my friends with what was happening. At the center, I had an immediate team of people designed as my support system; I decided they were enough. I told myself, “I am the one who put myself in this situation, so I do not need anyone except the professionals here to help pull me out of it.” I quickly learned that my approach was not only an incorrect assumption but also an ineffective method. Once I truly surrendered to this process of healing, I learned navigating grief—the root of my pain—is next to impossible to do alone. The burden of that pain is something that required the support of the staff at my treatment center, my family, friends, and peers. My writing of this letter is another step in my process of moving through not only my grief and pain but the shame I put on myself for needing the help of others.
This journey has not been an easy one; anything referred to as a journey rarely is easy. My journey through my pain, grief, and eating disorder wavers on but has given me one of the biggest lessons I have learned thus far in my life: It is ok to reach out to others and ask for help. It is not healthy or sustainable to rely only upon yourself. No one person can carry everything life throws; it becomes too much to hold. I have learned those who care for and love you often want to provide you with help, they want to support you. I have learned it is not a sign of weakness to need the people around you. It is a sign of strength to know your limits and lean on those around you.
By finally allowing myself to lean upon the support of others, rather than my mask, I relieved myself of the pressure to maintain the facade that I put up and the control of the eating disorder. I felt shame and fear by admitting how broken I was, and that I needed help, but when I chose to come to treatment and started to let people in, I was able to set myself truly free.
I am writing this letter because I think that although many people my age might not be trying to push through the exact struggles I faced during my time in college, I would wager that most college students and young adults are trying to push through something. Life is messy and in that messiness is pain and hardship. I am writing this letter to those who are in a place of pain and hardship and who like me for years are trying to avoid it, push through it, or cope in an unhealthy way around it. I am writing this letter to tell those people that despite what you might tell yourself, not facing your pain is not a strength, and that it is actually an act of bravery to face it and ask for help.
Emma B., Villanova University
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