As I mentioned in a previous post, my mum is anorexic. She's had periods of recovery but for the most part, she has been sick for the past 20 years. It might even have been longer than that, but that's when I started to notice.
At first, I was jealous. Jealous that she was thinner than me. She'd give me her old clothes that were too big for her, pay me to lose weight and sent me to Weight Watchers before I could drive. We fought constantly over food. Over who ate what or how much the other person was eating. A particularly vicious argument over an apricot danish led to her telling me to stick my fingers down my throat. A bout of tears over my weight gain once my body lost its ability to starve itself and I resorted to binge eating was a catalyst for "you've got to stop eating, that's the bottom line".
We'd subtly brag to each other about how thin we were by sticking receipts from the scales at the local drug store to the fridge. 9 stone, 8 stone 7, 8 stone. The numbers went down but her's were always lower than mine. I was desperate to be thin. To be thinner than her. To win.
After my initial bout of jealousy came worry. Fear. She got sicker and sicker and I obsessed over what she was eating. Not because I wanted to eat less, but because she wasn't eating anything. She got thinner and thinner and eventually had to be hospitalised due to chest pains. Her body was eating itself but she was still in denial. She came home that evening but I'll never be able to forget the image of her standing in her room, bone thin and frail, crying over the pain she was putting herself through.
After than came a brief period of recovery where she actively attempted to gain weight and since then my own eating problems have lessened. Aside from a few relapses at university and during the heights of my addiction, I maintain a pretty functional relationship with food and my body. I'm still afraid of doing any sedentary work, and my desire to quit drinking is deeply rooted in a desire to maintain my weight. I also love when people tell me I look thinner. It's a dopamine hit like no other.
This has changed over the past few months. My mum is very, very ill and once again won't admit it. Bone thin, suffering from arthritis in her feet and unable to walk without a cane, she's still running multiple 5 Ks a week. She's obsessed, it's all she talks about and she's in complete denial over her food and body issues. I'm over worrying at this point though, I no longer care if she wants to hurt herself. I'm angry, and back to being jealous.
I make a point of not weighing myself. Having reached low points of running off to the chemist in the middle of work to weigh myself and constantly checking for a thigh gap, I've realised absolutely no happiness can come from using, or even owning scales and so I avoid them at all costs. I close my eyes at doctors' appointments, step backwards onto medical scales and ask people not to tell me how much I weigh if they need to know my weight.
A request that was completely ignored when I was being prepped for surgery. Now my obsession with my weight is returning. Why does she get to be thin but I don't? Why could she fully have anorexia and I couldn't? Why am I not thinner than her?
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