Colby's open letter
Photo credit: Danika Karolinski
Dear mental health,
When I say I understand, it’s because I do.
I used to avoid movies like Jaws and Gravity because I couldn’t stand the thought of being weightless. I’d only ever known the weight that was always with me, there in everything I did or said or thought. I’d only ever known the anvil pressing on my chest, the one that had a voice. And the crushing starts to feel safe when it’s the only thing you’ve ever known.
Long before I knew what to call it, I knew what it felt like to be gripped by an invisible hand that made it hard to breathe, see, hear, or speak. All I could do was listen. I was grateful for the days when all I could hear was roaring silence, instead of the accusations my subconscious would throw at me.
Around age 6 or 7, the accusations shifted into something different, something tangible. Something that I could physically do to make it better. I was willing to accept the task. All I had to do was make my body as small as possible - then I would know peace. My life would be exponentially better when I looked less like me and more like the women I saw on TV and singing on the stages that I so desperately wanted for my future, even at that young of an age.
Smaller. Smaller, I could do.
This task was supported by those around me, blindly supportive of my quest for “health” though I was already healthy, lean, athletic, and strong. So with their help, I trained myself to drink water when I was hungry and wait as long as I could before caving and eating anything. I learned to say no to foods that sounded good, and opted instead for those that would and could never satisfy my growing adolescent body and my athletic pursuits.
I lived in a cycle of starvation, then slipping up, starvation, then slipping up for years. “Slipping up” for me meant listening to my hunger and eating a larger portion than I thought I should have. Anything over my arbitrary caloric goal was a mistake I punished myself for on the inside.
With the help of a breakup, alcohol, and the popularity of elimination diets, I got to a place as a young adult where I could eat just one meal a day and yet never feel hungry. I stopped slipping up. I began to answer every strong emotion, happy or sad, with starvation. I felt powerful when I was denying my hunger. I got to a point where I didn’t feel it anymore, and I was proud of that. My body had changed some, not enough for my liking, but I was in control.
The bottom fell out when I started blacking out when I ate, my blood work started showing signs of extreme health conditions, and I was called out by a healthcare provider for my dangerous behaviors. I had never once considered that I could have an eating disorder.
I still didn’t look like the girls in the movies, though I had lost almost all muscle tone in my body, and I still stood out as the 5’10” girl with broad shoulders in a crowd. Nobody around me had thought anything of my habits. I was constantly told how amazing I looked, and congratulated on my progress. And that day that the doctor named what I was so oblivious of, I fell apart.
I still hated how I looked. Even as the smallest version of myself physically possible. Something snapped in me. The floodgates opened and I finally realized that I had been starving myself. And it was working. I was slowly killing myself. And the physical hunger was just one symptom of the starvation that plagued my entire life. Starving felt safe because it’s all I’d ever felt. I was starving for love, for attention, for belonging, for home, to be known. And no amount of physical starvation had cured me of that. No amount of control over my body had given me control over my emotions or my desires - it had only numbed them.
I entered recovery under the supervision of a therapist and a nutritionist. Their words shocked me to my core as I gradually took in the scope of what I’d been doing to myself. I struggled with deep, deep shame, and still do sometimes, especially as I found the need to explain myself and to justify that no, no, I really do have an eating disorder. One with a name. Something that goes beyond having food issues or struggling with my weight. Some people did not and still don’t understand.
And though recovery has changed my life, I still miss my eating disorder every day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always there. It never left. I catch myself using behaviors all the time: at the grocery store, out to dinner, alone in my house. I read labels like a hawk, I feel the need to justify nourishing my body, and, at my worst, I am an apologist for my physical form. I still want to respond to great news with withholding and lack. I still want to drown my lows in the pit of growing hunger in my stomach. But I am fighting back.
I began writing “Starving” just a week or so after my first appointment with my nutritionist, in January of 2020. It was just a note on my phone that said “I’m starving / Didn’t know it.” I didn’t. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was doing the thing that would bring me joy and fulfillment and love. All it ever did was keep those things at arm’s reach.
It was an exercise in self-love, self-trust, and a bit of recklessness to make this music video. I knew the hardest part wouldn’t be finding a director who wanted to run with the concept or booking locations or even people liking the song. I knew the hardest part would be seeing myself on film, after almost two years of avoiding mirrors in order to break the habit of using them as a weapon against myself. I’ve had just enough time to sit with it, to watch it with one eye closed, holding my breath, to begin to love the girl immortalized on that film as much as I’ve learned to love the girl I know myself to be on the inside.
So when I say I understand, it’s because I do.
-Colby