Choosing Isolation-How Stigma Normalized Loneliness For Me

TW: Extensive mentions of eating disorders.

“I have an eating disorder. It’s called bulimia nervosa.” As the words spill out to my friend, I feel my hands shake and my mouth get unnaturally dry. She stares at me, unblinking, and shakes her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

I feel my blood freeze. I think: The only thing worse than struggling with an eating disorder is having to explain what it is. How do you tell someone that you force yourself to throw up after eating without them assuming you’re crazy?

Nonetheless, I explain eating disorders and bulimia to her. The reaction I get is expected, and yet it stings.

Her face scrunches up with disgust. “You what? You force yourself to throw up? Dude, that’s disgusting.”

That was back in June of 2017. The last time I ever told someone about my eating disorder. After that, every time I wanted to tell someone—every time I felt like I couldn’t stand dealing with everything alone anymore—I held back. Every time I wanted to tell someone, I was scared I’d have to explain what bulimia was to them and, again, watch their face contort in disgust.

My eating disorder began at 14, and I was 15 when I decided to tell someone about it for the first time. But I was in for a shock. You see, I hadn’t expected everyone I told to not even know what bulimia was. I hadn’t expected to cross my fingers every time in hopes that they didn’t find me repulsive.

So after that incident, I stopped telling people. I slowly isolated my eating disorder—and myself—from everyone around me. I pushed it to the back of my mind and pretended that I wasn’t struggling with it. Most of my conversations with my friends shifted to light-hearted topics that were void of anything with mental health or any other difficult topic. I put on a façade of positivity that only came off when I was alone.

Though I didn’t realize it then, ultimately, the only thing this succeeded in doing was building a wall between my friends and me. It isolated me and slowly turned most of my close relationships superficial. What this, in turn, resulted in was me feeling really lonely. I remember thinking once that I was the only person in India who had an eating disorder. I had no support system and no one with who I could be open and honest. I was at rock-bottom, hungry for literally anyone to just listen and understand.

Three years later, I’m not lonely and sad anymore. But I carry an anger that fuels a lot of my advocacy. Anger for my fifteen-year-old self, and how the world failed her. Anger at how wrong the entire ordeal was, and how I ended up with the shorter end of the stick. I don’t expect anyone to have the WebMD of eating disorders memorized, but tenth graders should at least know what they are. They should be educated about them and other mental disorders in school and in society. They should know the appropriate reaction to have when a close one tells them they’re struggling with one. They should, at the very least, know not to tell them that they’re disgusting.

Nearly 1 in 12 people globally struggle with an eating disorder, and that number becomes 1 in 4 for mental illness. Education on mental health isn’t just vital to inform people; it tells them that mental health is OK to talk about in the first place. The more educated we as a society are, the more comfortable people struggling with mental health can feel and be about opening up to others.

And this sense of comfort is critical. Though many with mental illness close themselves off for fear of rejection, having a strong support system during recovery is very important when struggling. I know for a fact that if 15-year-old me had a more supportive environment, I wouldn’t have been as lonely as I was back then. Recovery would’ve been a much less rocky road for me, and I would have had a much easier time talking about mental health with those I loved.

I don’t want anyone else struggling with an eating disorder to have to suffer—even more than they already are—because of a lack of education. I don’t want anyone else to think there is something wrong with them because they have a mental illness. Our world needs more mental health education. For the sake of 15-year-old me, for anyone suffering under the crippling weight of a mental disorder: I hope we succeed.