Sarah Z.
Photography by Jessica Pentel
Dear Reader,
Sarah’s letter describes her personal journey with anorexia nervosa and we advise those who may be triggered by these topics to exercise caution when reading this letter. If you are struggling please reach out to our Peer Contacts or one of the resources listed on our Resources Page.
Sincerely, The IfYoureReadingThis Team
If you're reading this, you don’t have to bury your feelings.
I don’t really know when my feelings of worthlessness and loneliness started.
I do know, however, that I developed anorexia nervosa to cope with them right around when I turned 13. I was in so much pain that I wanted to shrink away and disappear. I had convinced myself that I was a burden to everyone around me. I didn’t at the time understand how mental illness can distort your thoughts and emotions, and thought everything I was feeling was the truth.
Restricting food distracted me from these feelings. Seeing the scale go down made me feel like I was succeeding at something. And if I was good at something, maybe other people would see value in me. Ironically, I thought the only way people would like me was to chip away at myself. And so I blocked out my pain in favor of starvation. It was like diving into the ocean to escape the downpour.
Years of therapy later, I was weight restored, and could at least pretend my problems were solved. I was really trying to move forward at first, but somewhere along the way the feelings of self hatred crept back in. I started getting more creative with how I could restrict myself and “fix” my body. Cut out meat. Start working out. I felt good at something again, at least for brief moments following body checks and stepping off the scale. It was so much easier to exhaust myself at the gym than address what I was feeling. I was slowly sinking back under.
Then the first year of college rolled around and I just kept pretending my feelings didn’t exist. Only at a new school, it became much easier. I presented every distorted thought and behavior as some kind of charming idiosyncrasy, instead of a painful coping mechanism.
“I just love cardio!”
“I actually don’t like sweets!”
“I already ate, I’ll just get coffee!”
Meanwhile, I continued losing weight.
I also found a new way to block out the pain - by overwhelming myself. I loaded myself up with as many clubs, jobs, and responsibilities as possible, and between that and my constant obsession with food, I could block out the quiet but persistent hum of worthlessness. I kept up this routine until third year. As long as I could perfectly balance everything, all was well, but when I took one misstep, the feelings of inadequacy flooded in.
COVID made everything come to a screeching halt. With gyms closed and no responsibilities to distract myself with, I was forced to sit with myself and ask why I so badly needed my life to be constant activity. I had to stop and ask myself why keeping my weight so low mattered so much. I had to slow down and just focus on what I was doing in each moment. I ended up spending the summer in a city where I knew no one, and under lockdown. The time I would’ve spent working out, stressing over food, and overcommitting my time was spent exploring nature, dedicating myself to my internship, and educating myself further on the things I care about. And when my blocking tactics, the things I had often considered to be part of my identity, were taken away, I felt more myself than I had in years.
Arguably the loneliest I have been physically, yet the happiest I had felt in years. Making lemonade out of lemons felt more like being thrown a lifeline.
When I started to struggle again upon returning to Grounds last fall, I realized it’s all just a vicious cycle. I distract myself from my loneliness and pain by giving myself the illusion of success and productivity, whether “fixing” my body or overwhelming my mind, and as a result distance myself further from everyone around me. It was never really that I'm not good enough, it was that I never gave people a chance to know me. At that point I knew my method of burying my emotions until they flooded over was deeply unhealthy, and I started getting help on how to address my thoughts and habits. I started learning to let myself feel my emotions, and then let them go.
I still feel really lonely sometimes. I’m getting better at recognizing when I’m falling into old coping habits and changing course, but I won’t pretend it’s easy to ignore the feelings of not being enough. Sometimes my head starts to go back under. But I’m learning how to swim through it.
And more often than not, when I stop pushing people away, they're there to help me pull myself from the depths.
If you're reading this, you don’t have to bury your feelings. But they don’t have to define you, either.
Sarah Z., University of Virginia ‘21
Connect With Us
To follow IfYoureReadingThis at UVA on Instagram, get in touch with our chapter, and learn about more resources available to University of Virginia students, visit our chapter’s homepage.
AUTHOR CONTACT
This author has opted to allow readers who resonate with their story to contact them. If you would like to speak to the author of this letter about their experience, please use the form below.
