Anorexia’s Destructive Priorities

By B, AKA The No Nonsense Guide guy

Where I live, springtime means severe weather. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail — it’s wild for a few months. I was recently sitting inside, waiting for the power to come back on in my house, and remembering storms from the past. One stood out in my memory because of how it interacted with my anorexia. Here’s the story of how it went, versus how it could have gone.

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It was a Friday night. I was checking the weather forecast obsessively, as I always did, to determine whether rain might interfere with my exercise routine. I had several obligations on Saturday, so if I didn’t get to work out early in the morning, I might not be able to at all — a terrifying possibility.

Storms were being predicted for the night, but they were expected to have passed through by 5am. I went to bed, but didn’t really get much rest — I was too nervous about missing my opportunity to exercise to let myself sleep too deeply. I listened to the rain instead, willing it to go away.

When the time came, I crept out of the bedroom, trying to be as silent as possible. I didn’t want to wake the sleeping baby while I got ready to go out. The sound of wind from outside covered most of my movements, however. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the updated forecast had the storms staying in the area for a few more hours.

Just as I was about to leave the house, the wind outside got stronger. Suddenly, the power was out. I heard the ceiling fans turn off, saw the various devices with clock displays go dark. I wondered if this would affect my plans for later in the day, but decided the important thing was to get going — I needed to start jogging.

It wasn’t a very pleasant run. Nobody else was outside at this hour, and for good reason. It was cold and dark and wet. Strong wind gusts kept blowing me off track. I kept having to dodge storm debris — overturned trash bins, fallen tree branches, one toppled mailbox. I didn’t see a tree limb that had landed on the sidewalk, however, and I ran straight into it.

My shin took the brunt of the impact, which did not feel good. I found myself caught in a tangle of branches that were scraping and scratching my legs. I nearly fell on my face trying to get out. It was too dark to make out much detail, but I could tell that I was bleeding. I should have gone straight home, but… the run wasn’t finished.

I eventually did go home. The power was still off when I arrived. I tried to find a flashlight to assess the damage to my legs — I’d been too preoccupied to remember to set one out the night before. Eventually I got into the shower, figuring that I ought to clean my wounds before attempting to bandage them.

As I was doing that, the lights came on. It was 6:30. An hour later, the rest of the family woke up, and I had to explain why I was so beaten up.

*

Here’s how it could have gone: On Friday night, I checked the weather and noticed that there were storms coming. I put out some flashlights in case the power went out but otherwise didn’t worry too much about it. At seven I woke up and noticed that the clocks needed to be reset, and deduced that the power had been out. I reset the clocks and had breakfast before the rest of the family woke up and the day started.

Nobody else in the house (or the neighborhood) had a problem that morning — just me! Few people even noticed the power outage because they were not obsessively focused on waking up before dawn to make sure they had the opportunity to exercise.

At some level I knew that this behaviour was unhealthy. My anorexia was in control of me, overriding my common sense. But it didn’t matter that I could have been struck by lightning, caught in a flash flood, or pelted by hail. The only thing I cared about was ticking the ‘exercise’ box for the day. Exercise was the only way I could justify food, and I feared starving more than I feared the storm.

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If you’re reading this and you haven’t had anorexia, I hope that this gives you a little insight into the ways that it can warp someone’s priorities.

If you’re reading this and you’re struggling with anorexia now, I hope I can get you interested in recovery by letting you know that: It’s possible to sleep past dawn. You don’t have to ritualistically perform exercise whatever the weather. You can just relax, and sometimes things will work themselves out.