getting sick, being sick, and being “sick enough”
a guest essay on getting COVID-19 and having an eating disorder
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hi, friends!
This week’s edition of weightless features the newsletter’s very first guest essay (!!!!!) In the piece, the author (who is a subscriber-turned-friend 💛 ) thoughtfully unpacks the intertwined relationship between getting sick and her eating disorder. I can relate to so many of the feelings and thoughts she describes, and I’m so honored to share it with you.
P.S. If you are interested in telling a part of your own story in an upcoming edition, send me an email juliegall95@gmail.com.
getting sick, being sick, and being “sick enough”
by K.V. Morris
“On the bright side, if you’re gonna be stuck here you can totally lose like, at least ten pounds if you’re out of commission for two weeks,” my eating disorder said, the instant I received my positive COVID test result. “How much do you even need to eat if you’re stuck inside all day? You should order a new scale so you can track exactly how much. Even if you can’t go out, you can still get it delivered.”
If you are thinking this train of thought might be a little fucked up, you would be correct. But it took me far too long to realize how disordered this attitude towards getting sick is. It’s simply been how I’ve operated for years. Any time I got a fever or a stomach bug or sometimes even just a cold, I’d relish the sudden (if short-lived) drop in weight I’d see after a few days out of class in college, brought on by a lacking appetite and my inability to stomach much other than the emergency three-day supply of chicken noodle soup and ginger ale I’d stocked my dorm room with. I’d emerge a couple days later, feeling noticeably skinnier, intoxicatingly overjoyed by the rush that comes from pulling on your tightest jeans without worrying how they look.
But last year, when COVID hit, the fear of getting sick was enough to fully drown out the voice of my eating disorder for the first time in a very, very long time. Rather than anticipating the prospect of hopefully dropping a few pounds if I got sick, I worried that I was in no physical shape to fight off a serious illness. I’d been sick more often than ever throughout 2019, and upsettingly relished in those bouts of illness, but could tell they were different. Just a few weeks prior to COVID hitting, the flu had knocked me out cold. I’d gotten a flu shot, been trying (or at least, thinking about trying) to take better care of myself, and still I’d barely been able to stay upright to the point of being unable to drive myself to the pharmacy.
At the time - I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t shake an illness as easily as I used to. I know now that my eating disorder was affecting my immune system, and not for the better.
It started - as almost all eating disorders do at one point or another - with a diet that spun my disordered behaviors out of control. One that I would have said I had gotten back under control until halfway through 2019, when I felt terrifyingly close to collapsing while struggling to inch my way up a mountain I could easily have summited the year prior. The gulf between what my body used to be capable of and what it currently was motivated me to pay greater attention to how much I was eating, but I still wasn’t keeping the weight on, or admittedly truly trying to. I spent the next eight months gaining and re-losing the same few pounds, just enough to give me the plausible deniability to convince myself I was doing alright.
Despite these months I spent making half-hearted attempts at recovery, it was just two weeks before COVID shut down the world that I finally admitted to myself that I might have an actually diagnosable problem, finally admitting to myself ‘I might actually have an eating disorder’ instead of just thinking ‘my eating is a little fucked up.’
(Denial’s a bitch, if you haven’t heard.)
After all, it’s hard to recover when you can’t even admit to yourself that you’re sick enough to need to. And for a long time the fact that I didn’t actually want to be skipping meals or lying to the people I love, the fact that I wanted to get better made me think I couldn’t possibly have an eating disorder.
I had mentioned to friends, vaguely, that I was having trouble with my eating, but I hadn’t been able to concretely name what was happening to me. The first time I used the word anorexia I could barely even bring myself to write it down, let alone speak it. I typed it out, in a note on my phone I promptly deleted, so I could show it to a friend while huddled on the couch as we waited for SNL to start. We’d been talking about how COVID (at that point in time at least…) really only seemed like it’d be a problem if you had an underlying pre-existing condition when I was overcome by the fear of what my eating disorder had done to my body.
That fear allowed me to realize that even if I didn’t think I was sick enough to need help in that moment, I might be very soon. In which case I decided it might be fine to properly do something about it, even if I still felt like I was claiming a diagnosis I didn’t have any right to. After all, I didn’t need a medical degree or an official diagnosis to tell me that what I’d been doing to my body wasn’t healthy, that it wasn’t a great sign that I hadn’t gotten my period in months, that it was probably an even worse one that I felt dizzy and lightheaded every time I stood up.
Even if it never made it on an official list of medical conditions more likely to cause someone to have a severe case of COVID, and even before I felt comfortable claiming a diagnosis for myself, I still knew in my gut that my eating disorder would do me no favors if I got sick.
Despite how much I’ve hated these past nineteen months at times, (you can ask any of my friends, they will tell you I do not thrive in isolation) they may have helped me save myself. I started eating enough, I sought help, more help when that wasn’t enough, and spent months going on far easier hikes while I built my stamina back up. Slowly, I felt my body recover.
Recovery can be a terrible double bind though. Making it through a hard hike or a hot yoga class helped me start trusting my body again. It also told me I’d recovered quite enough now and could I please, please stop and go back to those disordered patterns we loved because that was so much easier. My eating disorder tried to double down on this once I got vaccinated. After all, couldn’t I now safely return to my old habits without the threat of a serious case of COVID hanging over me? I do my best not to listen, but when that voice gets too loud it’s hard to remember this was exactly where I wanted to be nineteen months ago: healthy enough that I’m no longer deathly afraid of getting sick.
Some days I can silence that voice, and some I can’t. I know that for certain, because I didn't eat enough the day I got my test results back. Or, if I’m being real with myself, the next day. And now, as I write this, I’m still not sure if I’m putting that on paper in the name of honesty or because the competitive edge of my eating disorder is coming up for air again. But I ate enough the next day, and the day after, because I’m relearning that when you’re sick you should keep taking care of your body, not stop.
And I did eventually figure out that yes, I’ve actually just been sick enough the entire time.
resource corner
I want to give some love to some newsletters I subscribe to and love. If you like getting weightless in your inbox, check out these incredible newsletters about mental health, diet culture and more:
My Sweet Dumb Brain by Katie Hawkins-Gaar
Foreign Bodies by Fiza Pirani
Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith
Quit Your Diet by Christine Byrne
Food Psych Weekly by Christy Harrison
what nourished me this past week
what nourished my soul: Reconnecting with a childhood/high school friend over brunch. It’s comforting to be with a person you haven’t seen in years, and be able to talk as though no time has passed.
what nourished my body: Walks, walks, walks! It’s the only form of movement I feel excited about and capable of doing these days. Walking with friends makes it twice as nourishing.
what nourished my belly: My mom’s chicken parm. There is nothing better.
Thank you for the shoutout. And yes to walks! I'd be lost without them. <3