Taylor E.
Photography by Ben Curry
Dear Reader,
Before reading, we wanted to let you know that Taylor’s letter discusses eating disorders and sexual assault. If these are sensitive subjects for you, we encourage you to exercise caution and care as you read.
Sincerely, the IfYoureReadingThis Colorado College Team
If you’re reading this, it may be easier to suffer in silence, but it is not better.
My reality is a harsh construction of external and internal voices. A string wraps itself around my body and I tell myself to follow it. It is forceful and yet I surrender with ease - because I seek to appease. Thus – the external validation guides the internal turmoil. Self-awareness is not the problem. In fact, at times, I am far too self-aware. My brain is a concoction of irreparable anxieties. It feeds off the fears that spontaneous combustion is a fate that awaits just over my horizon, a disease that is simultaneously amplifying and compressing. It is a mental hypoxia that seems inherently inescapable.
What do you want me for? I ask the string.
In 2021 I went to an inpatient facility for eating disorders. I had a lot of healing to do. I had become extraordinarily skinny and was, quite literally, dying in an effort to maintain my newfound skinniness. I grew up bigger than all the other girls. Bigger than the guys, too. I’ve always found comfort in food. I found dieting to be a ridiculous outcome of miserable humans who were too scared to relish life’s best offerings. Food was not the bad guy, the industry was. I never got attention from boys or reveled in the benefits of “pretty privilege,” so it was easy to think like this. When you haven’t felt the advantages of being a certain way, there is no desire to fit that mold. Then one day the doctor told me I was in the 96th percentile weight class for my age group. So I stopped eating. And I lost weight. And, of course, people began to treat me differently. But you can only go so long without eating before you become furiously hungry. The hunger quickly overwhelmed me; every limb and muscle craved to be fed. Starving myself then morphed into gorging on inhuman amounts of food. And when I felt my stomach could explode, I indulged in lengthy, deep conversations with any toilet in my vicinity.
I swore on words to heal me. I let my pen be the officiant of my stitches and its ink both my mortal enemy and guardian angel. They told me to ride the wave of urges through til they faded from sight. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy told me to inspect the waves; why were they there? What was I feeling? What was I trying to cope with? What was it all rooted in? In fact, what are beauty standards rooted in? Why do we yield to these standards as a response to trauma? Remember! Skinny is not beautiful! They would assert. Over and over again. But how can I believe that skinny is not assimilated to beauty when Angelina Jolie and K-pop idols line the magazine covers? The same magazine covers that eye me up and down at the grocery store check-out. The same magazine covers that blurt out “How I Lost 20 Pounds in 3 Weeks!” or “The Ozempic Pandemic - How and Where to Get Prescribed.” What am I supposed to believe about beauty when skinny seems to be the only thing correlated to it? You cannot tell me I am beautiful no matter what when I step outside of the treatment center and everything surrounding me says otherwise
I look back at myself, pulling at my skin, stretching it. Ponds pool in my eyes and I cannot help but slap and pick at my body’s loose parts. Investigating how it transforms into a violently bright red from the friction and fades into an impossibly pale tone, paler than the one my skin already wears. How my skin ripples in waves of lipids and proteins and the cells that make up my being. This feeling is a nuanced one: a vividly angry sadness. An overwhelming depression that fronts as rage and a lasting hatred for myself. A visceral reaction to the birthday suit I bear. I say these putrid things but I cannot ignore the desire to take care of my body and mind – to see myself from above and admire my fragility. I tell myself that my words aren’t good enough, they don't mean anything. Yet, I hold out hope that they will touch someone's cracked skull, seeping its way into the mind of a lost soul searching.
In 2021 I went to an inpatient treatment facility for my eating disorder. And, it worked. I was, in many ways, “healed”. In 2022 I was raped during my first semester at college. A month later I relapsed into disordered eating as a way to cope with my sexual trauma. I confided in someone close, with aspirations of healing, and felt condemned. I stopped being vocal about my issues. I got worse, and I chose to suffer in silence. Now, this is me, putting my hand out. I’ve learned the importance of healing – to ensure my pain doesn't become a life-long cycle. I also now know it is not something I can do in isolation. Suffering in isolation has never been an aid to my healing. So, I am putting my hand out. If you are reading this, this is me, choosing to take one step at a time. A step towards healing, towards vocalizing my suffering rather than drowning alone. To take control of the string that seems all-consuming. It is a choice, a hard one at that, but nonetheless, a choice that we carry in the palms of our hands. And I am inviting you, to anyone coexisting with my words at this moment, to come with me.
Taylor E., Colorado College
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