Posting this is terrifying…
Like, I was driving home from Madison by myself on a mild March day not too soon after getting my license when mother nature decided to unleash a spontaneous snowstorm. Before gathering awareness of the elements, I fish tailed off of the road. After regaining control, I continued to drive at a measly 15 mph on the highway, but kept losing traction and decided it wasn’t worth it to keep going. I pulled into a side road–fully prepared to sleep in my car for the night–just as an ambulance came roaring by with its sirens blaring soon followed by an oncoming car spinning completely off of the road. The trip took three extra hours, but I eventually made it home crying tears of relief as I pulled into our driveway; feeling thankful that I was alive.
Posting this is still scarier…
Once on a long run in the quiet countryside I was threatened to be shot at by a man inside of his house for no reason at all as I passed by. I never saw him, and he didn’t follow through with the threat (thankfully), but my pace picked up drastically and I was paranoid of every car that came up behind me for the next 10 miles.
Posting this is still scarier… (okay, maybe only in hindsight)
The thought of sharing this seven year account of my mental health was impossible even two months ago. It was still a large open wound–bleeding and painful with every step. Recently, though, in these first couple months of 2017 I have reached a place in which I am able to share this information. The wound is still far from healed, but I have at least found a band-aid to reduce the danger and vulnerability of it.
Most of my life has been dictated by mental illness. This is something I have never shared with people and have largely tried to deny to myself. I’ve always been a proponent of breaking the stigma of mental illness, but I’ve never actively done anything to contribute to the cause, which is part of the reason behind my writing this; however, part of me also feels narcissistic in doing so. After all, I’m an 18 year old who has grown up in the beautiful midwest with a great family and, in many ways, has been very fortunate and privileged. Apart from the past couple of years, I haven’t experienced an overly challenging upbringing, I don’t have an inspirational miracle story, nor do I possess the enlightening words of the Dalai Lama. So why should anybody read this? Well, heck, I don’t know! Maybe you’ll finish reading and think you just wasted a bunch of time, like when you look up that odd stomach pain you’ve been having on the internet, and before you know it you somehow ended up watching multiple “try not to laugh, I dare you” videos, put $70 worth of clothes you probably won’t buy into an online shopping cart, and are convinced you have appendicitis or should have been dead a week ago… I’m just saying… All I know is, that when I was younger, I needed to know that I wasn’t alone… That somebody else was struggling like me who could tell me I wasn’t crazy… I want to share my experience not only to be cathartic, but to give people another narrative to look to if they are going through similar struggles. I hope to be that person I needed for so many years to say “you are not alone, you aren’t as crazy as you think you are, and it’s okay to not be okay.”
Alright, enough with the suspense and wonder as to what secrets Sara Brekke has kept hidden all this time… Well, in sixth grade, at the way too young of age of 12, I was diagnosed with an eating disorder–anorexia nervosa to be specific. A disease that causes its’ victims to have an extreme fear of gaining weight and intense anxiety over food (it’s much more complicated than that, but that’s my stereotypical answer for now). Looking at my cousins who are this age today, I am nauseated to think that I was that young during the height of the illness. What started as a conscious reduction of the amount I was eating in order to compensate for cross country ending led me to being in the doctor’s office only four months later and 20 pounds underweight with a resting heart rate of 32 beats per minute… My fingers were purple with a lack of blood flow, I shivered in 70 degree weather with long sleeves on, my hair began to fall out, and I could see bones that most people don’t even know reside in their body. I was in a very dangerous situation, being told multiple times that my heart was at risk of stopping and that inpatient care was in my future. I was medically banned from all physical activity, leaving me on the sidelines in gym class and track, and my new routine consisted of seeing my primary care doctor, a nutritionist, and a therapist each week. When asked why I missed so much school and why the school’s top distance runner couldn’t do track I would answer with “There’s something wrong with my heart,” which wasn’t entirely false, but also nowhere near the truth.
Each day I came home from school, went to my bed, and cried. I was depressed, but I was also angry at everybody and everything: I was angry with my parents for making me go to the doctors in the first place, I was angry with the doctors for “purposefully wrecking my life” (that’s truly what I believed at the time), I was angry with my friends for not seeming like they cared about me; but most of all, I was angry with myself and my brain….
For so long I wanted sympathy. I wanted somebody to comfort me and tell me how sorry they were that I was going through this, but nobody ever reached out. I believe that, in many ways, mental illness is as–or more–debilitating and painful than many physical ailments or illnesses. From a young age I have felt as if my brain has been telling me that I’m not worthy of having a happy life. The illness took away my capability of eating; one of the most basic human functions. I mean, even babies can do that without anybody telling them how to... What was the point of living if I was caused misery be something so natural? Because nobody can see a cast, a bald head, or crutches; things that show visible signs of pain, our society treats mental illness like it may as well not even exist, and god forbid it be talked about. After all, by now I should probably just get over it– I’m only looking for attention (I hoped you understood that was sarcasm)..
Before going on, I would like to make some points clear about eating disorders.
-Eating disorders are not reserved for self conscious girls who strive to have a body like those in the magazines. They affects all genders, races, and ages and don’t need to stem from a desire to be thin. In fact, I became extremely self conscious of my thinness. I feared being seen in a swimsuit or sports bra knowing that every vertebrae and rib in my body being visible made me appear more reptilian than human. To hide my emaciated body, I have worn two pairs of pants and baggy longsleeves to hide my knobby elbows and jutting hipbones. I did not develop anorexia because of the models in magazines. I was confident with my body up until sixth grade and ate anything and everything–never giving a second thought about the appearance of my body. While I do believe that society gives an incredibly detrimental message to young people, females especially, in what their body should look like, a full blown eating disorder for me was a combination of underlying mental illness and these societal ideals.
-There are multiple types of eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, and eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS), so it is almost impossible to assume somebody does or does not have an eating disorder based on their appearance. Eating disorders don't require the sufferers to be under 80 pounds in order to be considered dangerous. Every body has a different threshold as to how much stress and malnourishment it can handle before quitting. You can be a healthy weight and still have an eating disorder just like you can be under or overweight and not have an eating disorder. There is no direct correlation between body appearance and mental well being. To give an example, during the early stages after diagnosis while I was restoring my weight, I appeared healthier, but cried for hours on end at home when my mom simply made me drink a glass of 2% milk or Ensure (true story).
-Eating disorders are commonly a side effect of what else is going on in life, in my case, anxiety. They are not a choice, and people cannot “catch” an eating disorder. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate and one of the lowest recovery rates of any mental disorder. It is a very serious disease that should be treated that way. The cause of my anorexia was lifelong anxiety and depression, which suddenly manifested itself via an eating disorder. This took me a long time to figure out and was the root of my frustration with the doctors and why treatment failed for me multiple times. Even after my Dad died and my weight dwindled with the suffocating grief, during a routine check up at the same hospital my Dad should have been walking into every week for work, my Doctor asked me if I would be open to seeing a nutritionist and therapist for my eating disorder… The eating disorder wasn’t my main concern at the time, the main concern was trying to convince myself that life was still worth living without my Dad...
It’s control. I could control and manipulate my body and what I put into it. I saw changes, and could predict those changes. Between the unpredictability of life and the anxiety that had controlled me for so many years, I wanted to take the wheel. But I didn’t know that my life would crumble as a result… Every thought and action became consumed by what I would, or moreso, wouldn’t eat. I stopped spending time with friends because I wouldn’t have control over the food I would be eating outside of my home environment; the reason I am able to count on one hand how many sleepovers I had between sixth grade and sophomore year... I missed out on the childhood and teenage experiences that I should have had: never having cake on my birthday, never ordering pizza with friends, fearing holidays revolving around food, and on top of that, my disorder dictated what my family was able and unable to do. Even when you do everything in your abilities to take control of your environment, life has a way of saying “Mmmm, nice try...”. What started as a confident and proud amount of me controlling my body spiraled into my disorder controlling my every action…
How does running play into this? After all, it’s not a huge shocker. The typical story of the top runner believing they need to be thinner to run faster, right? Not in my case... I did not have an eating disorder because I ran. In a large way, I ran because I had an eating disorder. My love for running has always remained and the joy I get from challenging myself and seeing the world through running is something that will never end, but it would be dishonest of me not to say that for much of my career, running turned into a way to burn calories more than to become a better runner. I now know that I was never running to my full potential because of my low body weight and refusal to fuel my body correctly both daily and before races. My body wasn’t worried about getting faster and competing, hell, my body was conserving every ounce of energy I gave it just so I could survive. I have been in denial of this, though…
Me? Na na na…
“I just really want to go for 5 mile runs as my premeet!”
“Yeah, I know we just did 4 miles of speed work and I ran this morning, but I could still really use a three mile cool down…”
Running was, and is, my therapy, but it also turned into a trap. I ran because I was anxious because I hadn’t run, and I was anxious that I hadn’t run because I was anxious that I would gain weight and lose control of my body without running (try to figure that one out!) Point is, running both helped and perpetuated my disordered thoughts, something I have been working on changing…
The thing about disordered thoughts is that the person experiencing them doesn’t know that they’re disordered! That sounds like an obvious statement, but if that’s the case, why do we tell people with eating disorders that “they just need to eat more”? (Derp dee derp. Huh, thanks for the suggestion, I never thought of that!) To understand mental illness, one must understand that the brain does a superb job at making incredibly rational and intelligent people act like they got hit in the head with a coconut. It’s also important to note that the longer somebody goes without being treated, the more and more irrational one becomes and the longer it takes to convince them of otherwise. Looking back upon some of the beliefs I held about myself, I am only now able to be see how irrationally I was thinking.
“Just eating a single MnM will make me gain weight and I then I can no longer consider myself ‘healthy’”
“Yes, I know the average person needs upwards of 1800 calories a day, and the average runner upwards of 2200+, but me? I’m not like everybody, (insert number lower than that here) should cut it…”
You cannot ration with somebody who thinks irrationally, you can only try to understand. These thoughts and beliefs may not leave my mind completely, and I know that I still have a long way to go, but on my road-trip to recovery, I have at least started the engine and gotten on my way. To reach my destination, I know I will run out of gas, probably blow a tire or two, have to ask a few people for directions, and cry and punch my steering wheel because WHY CAN’T ANYTHING JUST BE SIMPLE?... Everybody has their challenges and struggles in this world. It’s important to acknowledge these hardships so we can better our relationships with other people and with ourselves, but it’s even more important to be able to acknowledge these challenges and not view the individuals that may be struggling as lesser than or different than before. I am still the same person I was at the beginning of this post despite you having this new information. Knowledge changes. Beliefs change. Opinions change. But in the end, I’m still Sara.
