Therapy likes to compare the anxiety to the up-and-down motion of waves. Though I cringe at my tenth grade attempt to embrace this metaphor, now that the oceans have mellowed and I have begun to reflect, I see a girl, over and over, drowned by the force of her impropriety. I feel an indifference—unwilling to grasp her hand as she is unwilling to reach her for mine. But even just five months ago, I had felt the same—my emotions rose to the breadth of incoming tides and crashed with a force of a thousand wails against an infinitely tall cliff; they shattered into innumerable beads of white ultimately reordering themselves into yet another tsunami. But just as the water retreats back into the ocean, nothing seemed to change between each instance of terror. Yet the cycle continued with a stubborn tenacity—something that I wish I have now, but for another cause. 

The story begins the summer of 2019. In short, over the course of two months I went from a girl of 120 lb, filled to the brim with ignorance and vitality, to one of 42 Kg (92lb) with the vitality siphoned from my body and the eighth grade ignorance left behind. Why 42 Kg, because that was the weight I surmised as the standard for an East Asian girl such as me. 

I had touched on two opposing extremities. The first was embodied by my middle school self that was hellbent on the idea that my ability to articulate my thoughts and apparent self-reliance elevated me to a position that stood above my peers whom I had deemed the “liberal snowflakes.” I firmly believed in the idea that I had perfect control over my life—that irrationality could not skew my judgment and my slipping grades were a product of an attitude that would miraculously do a 180 before high school started. I had spoken to my mother in rabid dinner conversations of how democratic leadership handed our hard-earned tax money to perpetuate a culture of laziness. Back then, I acted like the malfunctioning water fountain at school, in that from my mouth, flowed a constant stream of garbage by way of recycled bigotry. 

This persona, luckily, was the first to go after I had dramatically failed at a dance competition. Shame had numbed me, and to deny any opportunity for that shame to consume me, I transitioned from throwing up my food to restricting my food intake. In my head, I laid claim to an image of perfection. I wanted to look like Lisa from BlackPink, I wanted her smooth and pale skin, and especially, her figure. From that failure, I realized that there are no such things as miracles, that the attitude I crawled through middle school with couldn’t drag me past ninth grade. So with my aspirations set on becoming the 42kg Chinese Lisa with straight A’s, I walked into ninth grade with my skinny jeans barely clinging to my hips. 

Leading up to my first therapy appointment, mom had whispered many words of denial. And in retrospect, each careless phrase struck at my ego which had swelled beneath my shriveling exterior. I remember that it was a grocery trip with my mom, but I don't know what propelled me to do what I did that day. Did I want her attention? Yes. Did I want her pity? Yes. But did I think that she was going to give them to me? No. Either way, as I reached for the shopping bag in the back trunk of the car, I asked, “Mom, do you think there is something wrong with me? I’m throwing up every day.” She laughed, chuckled in a way that she always did when she found something amusingly stupid, and retorted, “Do you think you’re special?” She said exactly what I thought she would, and accordingly, I responded with another plea that would instantly be shut down with the words “Are you trying to BE something special?” I firmly denied her claim, tossing the phrase “you're being insensitive” at her. Now and even in that exact moment, I knew that she was right. As much as I wanted to be that image I deemed to be perfection, the truth is I had yearned for novelty, an excitement that could interrupt the monotony of my eighth grade life. And that novelty just happened to be becoming thoroughly anorexic. 

The drive to Dr. S's office felt like the final step to the podium where I would receive the gold medal acknowledging my advancement. Mom, who, at the constant pestering of the receptionist’s office, finally acknowledged the extremity of my condition, buzzed in the background of my acclaim to glory with phrases emphasizing my need to be honest to the therapist. Did I actually want to get better? Yes. Believe it or not, food suffocated me on an hourly basis. The moment I woke up, it would, without fail, haunt me until I fell back asleep. If I skipped a meal one day, to maintain my advancement, I had to forgo that meal the next day. It snowballed. At the time, my favorite food was these Sargento snack packs. It was deliberately portioned so that each packet contained 180 calories. One side of the packet contained mixed nuts and dried cranberries, and the other side had small blocks of cheese. Every morning, without fail, I would trim the sides of my toast, and spend a good two minutes lining up each rectangular block of cheese onto the bread. Each time I toasted the bread, I’d survey how much the cheese had melted, and if the melted cheese overlapped, well, next time I would make sure it wouldn’t overlap. Phrases such as “there’s more cheese than bread” or “I hate crust” would be used to justify my increasingly peculiar behavior. Eventually, the crust I maniacally shaved off swelled to half the volume of the original slice. The cheese decreased proportionally. Of course, I, at the time, could not see things as they were. Like a broken record, I recited my copy-paste menu of foods to my therapist in each impending visit. I was illuminated by self-pity—had pride in the fact that I’m still alive and kicking after months in this condition. I remember the doctor scolding me; she didn’t tell me I was stupid, but I definitely walked out of the office with the verdict that I was, indeed, stupid. And to overcome this stupidity, I had proclaimed, as the elevator unceremoniously funneled me and my mother down to the empty lobby, that I would eat a whole bowl of Chipotle before returning to school. That excited remark riddled with willful ignorance to the terrors of public indigestion will spark one of the most unique experiences in my sixteen years of life. 

Funnily enough, nothing about that bowl of Chipotle tasted especially good. The actual eating part was no rediscovery of lost joys, merely the stuffing of face. However, after I finished the bowl, it was like flood gates had opened—as if the glittering ideal of myself had lost its luster. This feeling, something I still cannot identify, propelled me to buy a giant chocolate chip cookie from the neighboring Peet’s Coffee. Now that cookie, that cookie, was what stimulated my taste buds. It’s sweetness contradicted everything that I’ve come to be, it's sheer sugar content made me feel the eighth-grade fat on my stomach overlapping. In hindsight, a part of me wanted to thoroughly ruin myself—destroy that persona like I had crumpled the BlackPink posters taped to my bedroom walls so that even if I wanted to I couldn’t replicate it's original appeal. 

With a proverbial pat on the back from my mom, I was dropped off at school in time for French class. While our Belgian French teacher hollered to gather our attention, I sat in my corner quivering while the two girls beside me parroted each other’s “are you okay.” The Chipotle oscillated between the corner of my lips and the pit of my stomach. I salivated uncontrollably, but this pain only reaffirmed my conviction of overcoming stupidity, so I swallowed that saliva. But my promise couldn’t hide the fact that I felt fat—as if fat were an emotion, and this feeling guided my eyes to my stomach. I can only compare it to a ripe pimple. Not only did it look like one, I also wanted to treat it like one—pop it and then watch it deflate with the puss rushing out in the form of partially digested sour cream and beans. Still conscious and capable of evaluating my situation, I pushed past the girls who had quieted by then and made my way out of the classroom. Eventually, I had landed myself right in front of one of the only two doors that opened to the front of the school, where, when the final bell rings, teenagers would gush out like water from a broken pipe. And that’s exactly what I got, a splash of cold water that lingered as it ran down my spine.

Eventually two campus patrol agents found me curled up in the midst of a passing crowd, and after a failed attempt at walking me into the nurse’s office, they unfolded a wheelchair. I distinctly remember signaling my limbs to position themselves in a way that was more presentable (more pitiful than ugly) but to no avail, so with my head tilted upward and my mouth open like a dead fish washed ashore, I was wheeled into the nurses office. Anorexia knew what I looked like, she screamed at me but not louder than I did. I begged, prayed, and even swore that if I had 20lb of fat rolls suddenly drop from my body, I would be happy, if it meant never experiencing this level of pain again. I bargained with the god I didn’t believe in—promised him that I would never throw up again in exchange for a moment of reprieve. 

Alas, I would quickly go back on my word as the moment I stepped out of the car, the Chipotle crawled its way up my esophagus and spilled onto the driveway—and I let it. But the real betrayal was the thought that ran through my head: “Damn, I should’ve thrown up sooner.” I saw no reason not to, and I still don’t. Throwing up had three benefits: the first was quelling the conflict in my stomach; the second was that the regurgitated food would taste less like stomach acid and maybe, just maybe, I’d get to relive that chocolate chip cookie; the final, and primary reason, was that my body couldn't have absorbed as many calories if I had thrown up sooner rather than later—but again, my self-pity couldn’t acknowledge this; I was supposed to be a helpless little girl at the whims of Annorexia’s demands. I remember latching onto this idea that there will come a day when these pointless battles against food will have a point. “So long as I can learn from it, if I can do something with it, write about it, share it, then recovery is worth it.” I lied. 

I would say such convictions born of catharsis are like the sand castles my brother and I erected on our sparse trips to the beach. They eroded with each passing of the ocean water, and within hours there will be no trace of our excavation. This theme of forgetting outlined the course of my journey from recovery to relapse to recovery.

Mom and I had had a special way of documenting my progress: anticipating the menstrual cycle that had stopped due to malnourishment. My first period in forever came six months after that Chipotle, and I was never more excited about the fact that blood was leaking out of that place. I remember skidding through the cramped hallway of our house yelling “Mom, I got my period back!” And my mom, the person who had once told me to throw up in plastic bags rather than toilets, hugged me and told me she was proud of me. She told me that she was happy that her daughter was getting healthier. She told me that she didn’t want anything else from me. And every subsequent time I got my period back I would hug her and ask “Mom are you happy?” 

It was the summer of 2020, exactly one year after the initial onset of Anorexia, and I had resolved myself to relapse. The me who hadn’t seen a scale since my very first therapy appointment had stepped on it once again; the number had returned to what it was in eighth grade. Once again, over the course of two months I lost 30lbs, but this time, I knew exactly what I was doing. Like the bargain I had with god that day, I went back on my word. The heat that had returned to my fingers gradually faded; the layers of sweaters I had shed slowly found its way around my body; the acne that had resettled on my forehead decidedly left; my monthly period announcements came to a screeching halt. Once again, it was September, and once again I found myself sitting in front of my therapist as she listed my options for treatment. Seven months and six doctors later, someone finally placed my self-pity in a choke-hold or maybe mom’s “insensitive” phrases finally carved out my ego or maybe the novelty grew old. Either way, I acknowledged that I never cared to recover and that in an attempt to salvage my self-image, I had displaced my lack of conviction onto the easiest target. 

Mom, who had an ongoing issue regarding her weight, had been dieting throughout my recovery. While I was forced to stuff food in my face, I watched her remove spoonful's of rice from her bowl. I wanted her to prove that she cared more about me than herself—that she can put me before her “vanity.” Of course she continued to diet, and I came to the conclusion that my mom didn’t love me—she just wanted me to get fatter. This was the second extremity, the idea that someone else was responsible for my torture and for the decisions I made to cope with that torture. I held that because the circumstances of my life and the predetermination of my genetics pushed me into an ocean of riveting tides, there exists a futility in trying to resurface alone—that my mother, whom I believed was primarily responsible for my misfortune, didn't deserve to see me get better without making an effort to assist me. 

It was the summer of 2021, the third anniversary of Anorexia and tradition stipulated that I’d renew my promise to relapse and I did. With the conviction to reignite the anxiety that had propelled my perfectionism and drove me crazy, I quit my antidepressants without telling my doctors. If I could hold out another two years and make it to college, then maybe I can save myself some regrets. It didn’t work, and I don’t think it ever will. Not next summer, not the summer after that . . . because—

Now that I can see the sun rise beside the shoreline, it is as if the storm had never happened even though the silent beaches are the product of eroding cliffs and raging tides. And sometimes, it reminds of one particular visit to Half-moon Bay where my brother and I tested the high tides. We walked so close as to touch our toes against the line that traced the movement of the water, let our feet gently sink into the damp sand, and waited as the waves washed ashore. As the quickening foam drew closer, I ran as if those beads of white could consume me as it did the sand beneath its path. It never washed into the indent where my feet once were, but each time my brother and I approached the shoreline, I’d take an extra step back, and run faster.