My Story

I’ve been very hesitant to tell my whole story on here, frankly because I’ve never shared the whole thing with anyone. This is by no means meant to flaunt my disorder and struggle. ED has ruined my life. I will not mention numbers, as I think that is helpful to NO one and I’ll do my best to be honest, and raw, so please do not read further if you feel this will not be helpful for your own recovery. 

I don’t exactly know where to start so I’ll begin with the early years. From what I remember I was a very happy baby, I’m told I was always smiling, very social and friendly to everyone. As a young child I was a little tom boy. I loved sports, and was always outside our apartment, in the court running around with the boys. I played every sport known to man, in boys leagues. Basketball, baseball, football (flag), and soccer. I loved competition and from a very young age, I hated to lose. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved my baby dolls, and when not on the field, I could be found playing “house” with my girlfriends. Soccer quickly became my number one sport, and I pretty much loved every minute of it. I played on a boys travel team until I was about 13; by then we felt it was time for me to play with the girls, more for social reasons than anything else. I continued to excel in soccer while playing basketball on the side with an inner city team. My commitment to soccer grew, it was definitely my passion but being so committed to something from such a young was not very easy. There were days after school where I wished I could just go over to a friends house but instead there was soccer. Most days I loved going to practice, but there were a few days, far and in between where I wanted to be just a typical middle schooler. Nonetheless I continued to pursue my passion, not yet knowing where it would take me but simply for the pleasure I got from competing and spending time with my teammates.

Freshman year of high school, I was determined to make the varsity basketball team, and play basketball in the winter. I had trained all summer privately for basketball, when I was not playing soccer of course. I decided to run cross country in the fall for my high school, and quickly fell in love with the track team. When basketball tryouts rolled around, I made the team but the coach said that I needed to be at practice 5 days a week. Because soccer was my main commitment, as I was now playing on the olympic developmental teams, and premier club soccer, I had to say no to basketball. My track coaches and teammates saw so much potential from my first cross country season that they convinced me to run indoor track, with the rule that I could come to practice whenever I could make it. This worked out perfectly, I fell in love with track and field, and my freshman winter track season was awesome. I surprised so many people, and myself included, qualifying for states in the 600 meter and Nationals, in the sprint medley (I ran the anchor leg 800 meter run). Soccer was still most important as I was now being recruited to play division 1 soccer in college. I was traveling a lot for soccer, and track but genuinely enjoyed all of it. I did have some days where I wished I could have just have one day off, but my competitive nature and commitment to what was now two sports drove me to go above and beyond in my training. By my sophomore year, my commitment to both sports grew and it became very difficult as each of my coaches saw so much potential and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just quit the other sport to focus on one. I began going to two practices a day, mind you I was an honor/ap class student and worked extremely hard in the classroom as well. I’d go from track practice in the city, to soccer practice in long island, get home by 10pm and do homework until I couldn’t keep my eyes open and wakeup at 5 30am to complete what I hadn’t done the night before. Then do it all over again the next day. It seems like so much looking back but I was so used to my schedule that it just became a routine, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately being a double athlete at such a high level began to take a toll on my body. I was small framed to begin with but with all the exercise I was doing for my sport I began to lose weight and when I didn’t get my period for 6 months, along with some serious hip and joint pain, we decided it was time to go to the doctor. Mind you I had no issues eating at this time. It was the exercise that put me into a deficit. I enjoyed food and always had a big appetite, from childhood. When I went to the doctor he was very concerned about my weight (and lack of period) and told me that I needed to put on X amount of pounds if I wanted to continue my activities and that I’d have to pick one sport to focus on. This was very difficult for me to hear, soccer was “my sport” all along, and it seemed like the obvious answer but I loved my track team and honestly just loved to race and run. I chose soccer and said goodbye to track for the time being. Here is where I believe Ed stepped in. Losing weight was definitely the trigger for me. I began having to write down the food I was eating and show it to my doctor at the next visit. This caused me lots of anxiety and I didn’t quite know why at the time. This is also when my body dysmorphia began, being unable to see the reality of what my body actually looked like. However soccer was taking off. I made the U17 US women’s national team and was traveling a ton with my club team. By my junior year I was committed to Duke University on pretty much a full scholarship. I began eating healthy, and cutting out desserts. It was an innocent attempt to be the best player I could be on the field, that wouldn’t spiral out of control until my sophomore year in college. I maintained my life, soccer and school, excelling in both athletics and academics. My parents were a little concerned with my body image as I would cry in front of the mirror occasionally, so they had me see a therapist briefly. He did not recognize a problem and so off to college I went.

My freshman year of college for the most part was great. I started for Duke Women’s Soccer as a freshman, loved my teammates and was passionate as ever about playing at the collegiate level. I began restricting food, but ate enough to maintain my weight and at the time I was not doing it to lose weight. It was much more of an unconscious thing, still concentrated on being healthy for my sport. I became very close with my teammates who became family very quickly. I missed home a lot as I have always been a home girl, but I was living my life and excelling. I felt so accomplished when I finished my freshman year but had some difficulty with the very few lbs of muscle weight I had put on from lifting and fitness. My coaches were happy with the tiny bit of weight I gained as they thought I was too thin to begin with. When I got home, summer after my freshman year, friends/family/teammates began commented on how I looked great and wasn’t so scrawny anymore. I think this really sent me into the eating disorder. I was overexercising and had developed a stress fracture in my back. I took a few weeks off before my fall season with Duke Soccer began but couldn’t prepare for preseason like I had the previous season. I wasn’t eating enough from the start of the season, and was still having a significant amount of back pain. I began to feel depressed, as my coaches felt I was not playing up to the standards of last year. I was beginning my downward spiral into Ed and my best friends and parents knew something was not right. My best friend at the time encouraged me to make an appointment with caps (counseling services at duke) as she saw my behaviors were getting worse and my mental state was declining. I eventually did just that and was sent to an eating disorder specialist doctor who worked at student health. She was actually a really great doctor and I liked her a lot. She understood the eating disorder very well, and saw the seriousness of my illness right away. I think however at that point the weight loss had triggered my brain to fear food so much, that I began trying to eat more to get my weight up, but a scary behavior developed in return. It was the weirdest thing at first because I had never made myself throw up (meaning I never stuck my finger down my throat) but my anxiety produced this reflux every time I tried to eat. The weight came flying off and before I knew it was christmas break. When I went home my doctor told me that upon my return I must weigh X amount of pounds if I wanted to continue playing soccer. At home things got worse. My parents were so worried about my physical state and simply did not know what to do. They panicked and I freaked out begged my best friend to let me come stay at her house in Texas for the rest of winter break. She agreed to help and her parents flew me out the next day. It was a really tough trip as I did not exactly see the severity of my illness. I was crying all the time and knew I was miserable but did not realize how sick I really was. One night that I will never forget was when I asked my best friend, before we went to bed, “is it really that scary, am I really that sick”, she started crying and I started crying and I think that was when I knew I was in too deep. When I got home I begged my parents to let me go back to school for the spring of my sophomore year if I would agree to doing the Duke Outpatient Eating Disorders program. I agreed and off I went. Soccer was out of the question as my weight was well below where it needed to be. Telling my teammates that i wouldn’t be able to play until my health improved was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Things continued to decline and my doctor told me that I was too sick to be treated as an outpatient. I went home and began various treatment beginning with partial hospitalization. Nothing seemed to help and in the summer of 2010 I entered residential treatment. I spent 6 months in residential treatment and it helped me to restore my weight which was a huge first step. I was however not cured, and had a lot of hard work ahead of me. My parents were extremely supportive, but I wavered on relapse for quite a while when I left residential treatment. Eventually I started fighting for my own recovery. I don’t know how or why, but slowly I started to regain my life back and I could finally see a light at the end of this dark tunnel. 

I started coaching soccer, a U9 travel team, and slowly but surely joy began to creep back into my life. I become really close with another friend who was working on recovery and we did it together. We cried, laughed, cried some more but encouraged each other to keep fighting for the life we so much deserved. Having Annie, to fight this battle with changed my life. I began playing soccer again and working my way back onto the Duke Women’s Soccer team was another one of my big motivators for recovery. By the summer of 2011 I had achieved that goal. I made it to preseason, but I still had exercise restrictions which increased my anxiety and decreased my confidence out of the field. I got through preseason but my anxiety was so high, that I gave into my fears and decided to quit the team, at least for that season and focus on my recovery. The idea behind my decision was good but I think I reacted too quickly to the anxiety thoughts of not being the same player, or not being able to be as fit as I wanted or could have been. I honestly believe that was the biggest mistake I could have made, but everything happens for a reason. Trying to just do school/academics, at a University where I was so used to being a part of something more, my team; proved to be really difficult. Depression began to rule my life again, and I was overwhelmed with loneliness. I think my friend Annie, being a freshman at Duke, really saved my life, but it wasn’t enough to fight the horrible anxiety and depression thoughts. My team was doing better than ever and I was so proud of them, but I watched my dream of making it to the final four happen and the sadness that came over me became unbearable. I’m terrified to admit this, as only my closest friends and family know about this, but I took my first overdose. It scared me and I didn’t want to die but I couldn’t handle the thoughts and pain any longer and it was only cry for help I could think of at the time. This of course sent me home after a week of hospitalization. I was so sad and depressed. Ed began to rear his ugly head. I started restricting and purging again, to cope with my feelings of despair. It just made things worse.

I went from hospitalization after hospitalization, I overdosed two more times, I seriously didn’t want to deal with the pain. I don’t think I wanted to die but my actions showed otherwise, as I came too close too many times. Eventually ED was out of control again and physical state began to deteriorate. It seemed like no treatment on the east coast could stabilize me, physically so my mom took, my wasted body to the Kartini clinic. The doctors there were amazing and they saved my life. I was fed through a tube until I was capable of eating, and my body became more stable. I had a grand mal seizure which ended me up in the ICU and from the trauma I many many more non-epileptic seizures. It was scary and I felt like a crazy person. I did well at kartini but struggled through as ED tortured me. My depression lingered and my motivation went up and down. I came home from kartini in september and since then things have been painfully difficult. 

I’m terrified to move forward and feel tormented by ED thoughts, I’m relapsing and I don’t want to take the actions to stop it. I hate this illness and the way it makes me feel like I haven’t suffered enough. Haven’t I suffered enough? Truth is there is never too much suffering with ED. When will I be able to pull myself out of this mess. Will I ever. I tried to write this piece in hopes that it would help me to fight just a little bit. I hoped it would make me get angry at my eating disorder for all it has taken from me. My friends, my family, its a terrible feeling when ED feels more important than the things in life that really matter. Alright ladies and gentlemen thats all I have left in me for now. 

-Cody