Sabira Solanki
How actually are you? What’s your story? What do you struggle with? Sapphire loved asking these questions, or rather thinking about asking other people these questions. You see, just like how the sun attracted the Earth, making it orbit around itself, the unfortunately stigmatized world of mental health and psychology pulled her closer.
Nights and nights spent doing what she loved, days spent being the best she could be, the best student, the best friend, the best daughter. What else was important other than being the best and being happy, enjoying life, right?
Good food was her comfort, and sometimes just another task to be completed. Until one day it wasn’t. That one day when a comment strung her deep. Deep enough to send her down a spiral of her own machine, her own home hating her.
Her own body hating her.
Eating wasn’t eating anymore. A daily struggle where a strange voice rung in her head, telling her all sorts of stuff you’d not even want to tell your enemy. That’s what eating had become. As she became more and more disgusted with herself, all that in her head was hate. Hate for how useless she was, hate for how she wasn’t meant to be existing.
The day started with her wanting for it to end already, for the time to pass quickly so she could finally get the voice to stop, once she was shrunken enough. These thoughts were new, horrifying and confusing, Until that day when she confessed online what she had been feeling.
Eating disorder. That was what flashed in the answers of all those who read a part of the thoughts in her head. So, what was it? Wanting to be skinny, be a model? Being picky and choosy just for the sake of it, for attention?
These were the answers that most people would give whenever asked about the definition; but boy could they be any more wrong! It was the “mental” disorder, the one with the highest mortality rate, the one that never came alone but rather with it’s army of depression and anxiety, the one taken so that only 1 in 10 people ever received treatment, the one that was so normalized in the society, the one where the body screams to be saved while the mind tries to shut it up, by shutting it down.
As days became weeks, Sapphire’s life had become hell. A sickening cycle of lying, crying, being dizzy and hating herself. But the ED wanted more. It
stripped her of her identity, leaving her nothing but a bag of bones with a disorder. No hobbies, grades tumbling down, she was isolated, away from everything and everyone she loved. It was a hard time.
Everyone has different experiences of this, and hers was deadly. Until she chose recovery. Until she smiled the first time after eating. Until she chose to nourish her body, kiss it and love it. The voice was still there, but guess what? For the first time, she was there too. Alive and fighting, talking back to the voice. Of course, not all days were the same. She went from being a fighter to drowning in tears within seconds. But one thing was sure, she wasn’t going back, ever.
She wasn’t going back to the dark, lonely, haunting place she once got stuck in…
Just because someone thought it was okay to tell her that she looked fat in the only shirt her absent father had given her. Her only memory of him now stained with the tears of self hate.
Just because of one comment…
