People laugh when I tell them that law school is a lot like the movie "Legally Blonde." No, it's not that exciting. And no, nobody EVER would get to be counsel at a high-stakes murder trial during law school. However, the part where professors make a fool out of you when you can't answer questions on the spot? The competition of coveted internship positions and class ranks? The backstabbing classmates? Real. All so very, very real. For the first time in my life, I was thrown into a pool of kids who were just as smart, just as hard-working, and just as dedicated as I was. And I was drowning. I always loved the line by Winston Churchill, "We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow worm." My whole life, I had been a glow worm.
One of the smarter kids. And if I wasn't smartest? I made up for it with hard work. Well here I was in classes with all these freaking glow worms! And they were all way glowy-er than I was! And there was just NOTHING I could do about it. I would work work work. But someone else could work harder. I would read read read. But someone else would read further. I would study study study, but someone else would study more. And I'm not sure when or why it happened, but I somehow realized that there was something that I could do better than all of those little overachieving glow worms. I could be the skinniest of them all. Ha. Take that.
And so it began. It was a competition. I had to eat less than my law school classmates. Because yes, Andrea may be getting a better grade in Property. But I was having a smaller lunch. And yes, Ashley may have gotten that internship that I would have killed for. But I wore a smaller size. At the end of the day, we were ALL going to be lawyers. But only one of us could be the skinniest. And that would be me.
I was still in Weight Watchers at that point but I just kept dropping my goal weight more and more. When I finally reached the point where they told me that I wasn't allowed to drop my goal weight any more, I got a fellow law student who was also medical doctor--showoff--to actually write a doctor's note to the organization to tell them that in his professional opinion, I was fine to lose 5 more pounds. So I did. And then some. I remember being in class one day and a friend walked by me and said,"You look really, really skinny." I remember smiling and just saying, "Oh, thanks!" I was just beaming with excitement at the compliment. It's funny because now I look back on that and I can see her face, clear as day, and I can see that it was not a compliment. Her comment was dripping with concern for me. And I didn't hear it. In my defense, I didn't hear the concern because I didn't think I was skinny at all. In my mind, I was still fat. A "cow" as I heard over and over. I would just stare at myself in the mirror and think, "cow." If my jeans fit even a bit snug, I was a cow. Never mind the fact that they were size 0s, a truly skinny girl wouldn't have ANYTHING pinching--even in size 0s. I was clearly a cow.
Understandably, I was taken aback when my mom's best friend told me that she was concerned that I had an eating disorder. Her daughter's friend had gone through the same struggle and she said that she recognized the same things in me. I was pretty shocked when she told me that she was concerned. But mostly? I was proud. If someone thought I had an eating disorder, that must mean that I was skinny! Yay me. When she encouraged me to get help for my problem, I did NOT think I had an eating disorder. However, I knew that I clearly didn't see myself the way other people did. If everyone else seemed to think I was skinny and I thought I was a cow, obviously something was wrong. So after much debate and conversation with my husband, I decided to call the number I had been given. Not because I thought I had an eating disorder, but because I thought that I may get one eventually if I wasn't careful. Plus, I was fairly certain that they would turn me away as soon as they saw me. they would take one look at my thighs and say, "No no, this must be some mistake. You are too fat to have an eating disorder."
So imagine my surprise when at my first meeting with the Eating Disorder/Behavioral Health program, they told me that I was clinically anorexic. I'll admit, my first reaction was sheer joy! I had made it! I had made it into the club of anorexic girls! I was one of them. My second reaction? If I have an eating disorder, that means I have to get "better." And "better" can only mean one thing: fat.
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