Sofia K.
Photography by Ally Szabo
Please note: In this letter, there is mentions of an eating disorder. If you think you may find this content triggering, please consider reading one of the other letters of IfYoureReadingThis.org, or prepare to access any support systems or resources you find helpful.
If you’re reading this, know that your experiences shape who you are, but your past does not define you.
I am recovering from an eating disorder.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school — nearly ten years after developing a PTSD-related eating disorder, rooted in anxiety — that I felt somewhat comfortable admitting that to myself.
I was too young to understand and acknowledge what had happened to me, to comprehend how it had and still has affected my relationship with food and my self-image.
I remember being pulled out of a chorus class in fifth grade because I needed to go speak to my then-therapist. She was an eccentric woman: an Israeli with short, cropped purple hair, who decorated her office with trinkets from her travels and often urged me to try marzipan, which I hated.
I hated sitting in that office because I didn’t know what to say; I didn’t know how to make sense of the way I was feeling and the behaviors I was exhibiting. I hated sitting in that office because I felt there was a spotlight on me, a Mark of Cain-type thing branded on my forehead labeling me as a problem. Something that needed to be solved. And solved immediately.
I felt like a thing — a gadget, a broken clock, a squeaky door desperate for WD-40 — that needed to be fixed.
But I did it. I sat in that office every week for an hour. One day, I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I started eating again after months of barely doing so. I felt pride in being able to ‘cure’ myself. I felt I saved myself from the shame I felt — I no longer would be taken out of class early or lie to my friends as to where I would disappear to every week. I hated having some sort of secret life, some sort of secret problem that nobody could know about. I felt I saved my family from the pain and the stress that I felt I was causing them — I no longer had to attend therapy sessions that I learned were, indeed, costly or feel like a problem.
It's been ten years and I would be lying if I said I didn’t still feel shame or disappointment, or anger toward the situation. I wanted to move on with my life, to put the experience in a box and tuck it away to gather dust, to be forgotten. I saw what happened to be a defining aspect of who I am, a label of sorts forever printed across my forehead. I fought so hard to draw up new labels, new definitions for myself separate from my experience with the eating disorder.
I’m done being at war with my past. My experience as an individual who has suffered from an eating disorder is one of the many things in my life that shaped me into the person I am today — a strong, resilient young woman—but it is not a defining aspect of who I am.
I am not Sofia because of what happened to me. I am so much more. I am in therapy, attempting to work on managing my anxiety, which often involves introspection and reflection on a period of my life that I so desperately worked hard to forget. I am grateful to have that outlet each week. I thought opening my Pandora’s Box would bring back all these emotions — the shame, the disappointment, the anger, the guilt. And it has, but I’ve also slowly begun to gain clarity. I’ve learned to give myself some grace, to be okay with my best, whatever that may be, and to attempt to not be so hard on myself. It’s a process; it’s something I must work at every single day.
I drowned myself in reading and writing during that time. Since then, I have cultivated a deep love and appreciation for the written word. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels: it is a story of a young woman who, despite facing many hardships in her life, overcomes them and, in separating herself from the past, she cultivates a sense of freedom, independence, and self-sovereignty. She famously quips, upon asserting her independence to Mr. Rochester, “I am a bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
I am free from my past. I am not entrapped, ensnared or entangled by my experience.
Our pasts do not dictate our future. Only we do that. We have control over our narrative. The pen is in our hands; it is our story to write, to tell, to share.
Sofia K., Villanova University
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