The Story of My Recovery

Judy Avrin, founder of Someday Melissa, who lost her daughter Melissa to bulimia, asked that those of us who have recovered or are in recovery can share our stories to give a message of hope to people who are struggling.

I suffered from an eating disorder (ED-NOS, more strongly identified with anorexia than bulimia, but more often identified by outsiders as bulimia due to purging and weight) for a long time, maybe eight years, before I was treated. It was on and off, but the eating disorder was always there somewhat. Since I was overweight before the start of my eating disorder, and my weight never dropped to a dangerous place, I flew under the radar virtually the whole time. As time has gone on, I have learned that maybe my family wasn't completely oblivious of everything, but they were unaware, for the most part, of what I was struggling with. However, although it wasn't outwardly obvious that I was sick, I was mentally getting to worse and worse places.

My journey toward recovery should have begun one day in April 2007, when I sought help at my college's counseling center. However, the counselor I saw said that I didn't look too sick and probably didn't need much help, that it's really no big deal - his wife "was bulimic and still purges sometimes," and that maybe I should look for a workbook. Maybe it was that my weight was fine. Maybe it was that it was just weeks before the end of the school year. Maybe it was that the guy knew nothing about eating disorders, and knew even less about mine. But that appointment only made things worse.

So it was June 2007 when I was driving home from Long Island, up the Cross-Island Parkway - a road where cars are always speeding and cutting you off - and was freaking out about the lunch that I had with a friend and decided that I would try to purge while driving since there was really nowhere to pull over and time was of the essence. After maybe ten seconds, I stopped myself. "What do you think you're doing!? You're going to DIE doing that on this road!" (apparently, it wasn't enough in my mind that purging could kill me, but at least I was cognizant of the fact that purging while driving on a crazy highway could)
About 20 minutes later, I called Renfrew.

The woman I spoke to that day, Jaime, made all the difference. She was sweet and understanding, and even when it turned out that my insurance at the time was out-of-network, she gave me continued encouragement to continue to seek help. I was rejected from an IOP program at a hospital because I was told that I would be uncomfortable since the rest of the patients are all underweight (again, what a horrible way to explain things to someone with an eating disorder!), but they offered me outpatient services. Shortly after that, though, my insurance company changed and I called Jaime back and eventually (though this was actually a 4-6 week long process) I got into the day program at Renfrew.

Renfrew didn't work out so well. I had started to get better but then insurance dropped me from day, and then I had a week off before I stepped down to IOP, and after that break in treatment, I just couldn't get myself back together. I ended up getting kicked out of the IOP program, due to miscommunications, with conditional readmission.

Renfrew had told me that I wasn't at a critical weight so they weren't even going to try inpatient/residential for me. However, I felt like that was what I needed. I searched some other treatment centers and found one, Cambridge Eating Disorder Center that was willing to take me.

I did well at CEDC, but due to insurance issues left prematurely. Less than two months later, I went back to CEDC, in the worst physical condition I had ever been in. However, it was this round of treatment when I really started to get somewhere.

I began to realize that I did not want a life in and out of treatment centers. I did not want to constantly be dehydrated to the point that my head was spinning. I wanted to be successful in graduate school (which I put off first for a semester and then for a second semester), working toward my Master's in Social Work. I couldn't become a therapist if I was sick, that just wasn't right.

My motivators were all external at the time and I think that's how it has to be in the beginning. By the end of that stint of treatment, I said to myself, "I never want to go through this again. I am SO SICK OF TREATMENT." I sped through the Renfrew day and IOP stepdown programs (at a different site than the one that had kicked me out) and my therapist at Renfrew discontinued our outpatient therapy after a few weeks, saying that it seemed that I really did not need therapy.

So I thought that I was done with treatment and therapy and had accomplished a full recovery. But really, my recovery was just beginning and a few months later, I would enter into a relationship with my current therapist, who I have been seeing for more than three and a half years now, since June 2008.

Recovery has been a lot of things for me. It has been trying new foods, learning to eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full and know that doing that will not "make me fat," learning that nothing is off-limits. It has been becoming aware of my body through yoga, developing a healthy relationship with exercise, and eventually becoming a runner and completing my first NYC marathon. It has been uncovering memories of traumas that contributed to my eating disorder, and taking some of the power away from those memories. It has been making new friends with eating disorders, separating from those friends whose eating disorders were bringing down my own recovery, reconnecting with some of those same friends after we took care of ourselves and came back stronger, and realizing that I am a complex person and can have fulfilling relationships with those individuals who do not have an eating disorder or other "issues", as well as with those who have struggled with those issues. It has been using my voice in friendships, work, and school, as well as in creative outlets. Recovery has been eating, drinking, laughing, running, jumping, crafting, bonding, crying, screaming, fighting, working, playing, gaining weight, losing weight, becoming whole.

I consider myself fully recovered now. I possess a level of recovery that, five years ago, I did not believe even existed. I am finishing up my last semester of graduate school and will graduate in May with my MSW from NYU. I ran the NYC Marathon. I have great friends. I have dreams of getting married and having a family one day soon. I am not tied down by my eating disorder history. If anything, it propels me forward, reminds me of the strength that I had to have in order to recover and that I still possess.

Recovery is different for everyone. What works is different. But what is the same is that every moment is a new opportunity to recover. You're never too far gone, whether you've struggled for 3 months or 30 years. It's important to believe in yourself though, and to truly believe that you have it in you to get through this and come out stronger. It may not be enough to just want it - you need to believe that you can achieve it. And when you believe that, it is absolutely possible.