A deafening silence and the longest week of my life

I sat in silence the entire van ride back, shoved in the far corner, unable to meet any of my teammate's eyes. Did they know? They had to know… right? They told Coach, didn't they..? I was sure they had a private message all about what to do about 'me,'  me the problem,  me the anomaly,  me the girl that seemed lost to her personality, lost to the world.

I would later learn that yes they did have an entire private chat about me, and it did upset me at the time, it made the shame, feel 100 times worse, it seemed to justified every reason I had formulated as to why I didn't reach out and ask for help. That's the issue with eating disorders, the secrecy they foster festers and everyone in their wake gets drawn into a toxic stand off with the truth. I don't hold any resentment towards my teammates, they simply didn’t know how to help me, I didn't even know how to help me - they did what they thought they could to bring about change, and for that I am thankful.

Two of them hugged me and said they’d always be there for me. The rest didn’t know what to do. I walked back into the locker room touched up my makeup, didn't say a word or meet anyone's eyes, and away I went, to battle out my day as though it was nothing.

But it wasn't 'nothing,' I had to see the psychologist that afternoon, and I had to get more blood tests. 

The shame I felt walking up those stairs to the councilors office was like nothing I’d ever felt before, will they all think I'm mentally deranged … why is this office the only one that’s upstairs … that makes it so obvious that the reason I'm going upstairs is because I'm nuts!

I can still feel the staggered breathes, the counting in my head, commanding my body to breath and not cry, you mustn't cry Hannah, you really mustn't. I can recall how the faux leather seats felt against my sweating legs as I nervously waited to be seen. Would this person think I was as mad asI did?… what normal person tries to not eat?

"Hannah…"

I walked through the rabbit warren of hallways to her office and sat down, I had to sign all the release forms giving my athletic trainer, coach and doctor disclosure to what was being discussed in my sessions. I was told this was, of course, my own choice to make, but I figured being as open as possible would be the best option, they would believe me more when I said I was getting better if I wasn't hiding anything right …? So I signed them all. Then I proceeded to deny all my problems - said I had only purposely restricted food and attempted to get rid of it once because I felt grotty and overfull, feed the psychologist all the information I wanted relayed to my coaching team and then left realizing I had buried myself in a bigger web of lies.

I walked to my room praying no one was there, walked into my wardrobe and threw myself against the wall, I looked out the window as the tears blurred my vision, I was so very alone and out of control, I thought, as I slid helplessly down the wall. I lay on the ground desperately shaking as the pain of the unknown consumed my body, had you done this to yourself, could you have stopped this entire chain of events… why did this happen to you, had you just thrown away the American college experience you had worked so hard to get in the space of a month? I cried and I cried, this time biting my bottom lip wasn't going to hold it back, I had lost it all, I thought this was it, this was the end, I had no idea who "Hannah" was anymore.

I pulled myself together enough to crawl to my bed. I saw the scales beneath the bed taunting me… ‘see how much water weight you’ve lost with all the crying’ - what an irrational and absolutely stupid thought I thought. Yet I still had it… I didn’t weigh myself, instead, I sat by my bed typing out endless messages to my family, my Coach, and my old dance teacher, I tried to explain the situation and ask for their help, but I couldn’t. How do you tell someone on the other side of the world that you have a major eating disorder and you can’t escape it? How do you even begin to explain the irrational process that your daily life consists of? -- realistically what were they going to be able to do for me? And so I thought it would be best not to burden them. 

My teammate came into my room to comfort me, clearly, my tears had not been as silent as I had hoped. She had her own issues with food and so we were often distant with each other the first semester, not able to talk or recognize our problems together. But in that moment she cared, and her consoling hug allowed me to pull it together for the rest of the evening.

Looking in the mirror that night I decided to just make it through to the next day no matter what, to face whatever it might present, to not be perfect or feel great but to just make it through. This was quite a sad thought but also perhaps an empowering one. For me, it might have been the first moment in time I had set a goal that wasn’t oriented around perfection instead it was simply a matter of getting a task done, completing a day, basic social survival. Without Coaches support that morning or my teammate’s brave hug, I might not have been so courageous to look forward, I'm not a quitter but I might have wallowed in self-pity for another day or spontaneously got an uber to the airport only to never come back.  But I didn’t. I decided to stay, to battle what I must, and to fix it.  To make a change. To be the best me I could in that given moment and to move forward courageously not aiming for excellence but rather normality. 

The next day I got a message from Lance my old coach at home. 

“Excited to see you race a fast flat five km this weekend”

My stomach sank - I hadn’t asked coach Casey if I was racing again this weekend but I knew it was a no.

“Hey Lance, hope all is well, I’m actually not racing this weekend, Coach wants to sit me out and save my legs for the bigger races later on in the season. I’m excited to watch the other girls kill it though, and I can’t wait to travel to Virginia for our first travel meet. Training is going well. Talk soon!”

My reply was brief and resembled the happy go-getter, always-positive girl I wished the world to see. I didn’t want people to think I was failing at my goals of ‘having it all’ - being the straight A student, and the top runner. After all, I'd only been in the states for a month … it couldn’t all be falling apart already!

I can recall many other moments of near edge breakdowns that week. A few professors asked me what it’s like being so far from home and I would pretend it was fine,  “oh I went to boarding school so I’m used to it”  and this wasn’t exactly a lie, I was never homesick per say, but the extra competition and the pressure I forced on myself to be the best here in the US had tipped me over the edge. My eating disorder which had developed at home was now seemingly impossible to control, I had only wanted to drop weight to be of the ‘normal’ distance runner physique. But in doing this I had forgotten how to eat normally and now it was 'all or nothing' - nothing for days then everything all at once, then the guilt, then the only out I knew and so went the vicious cycle. I couldn't stop the need to restrict, but all of the American food intensified my insatiable hunger and the temptation often became too much, I was on a whirlwind track spiraling out of control, and the more I tried to fix it the more lost I became to myself. I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the girl behind the broken eyes.

The day of the UTA race came and with it so did all my self-loathing. I wanted more than anything to be out there racing. I remember dragging my feet as I walked to the water station with our athletic trainer, I hate attention seeking behavior. But right then and there, that was me, I was sulking and grieving my lost dream, I really thought I was about to become a sidelined college drop-out athlete whose dreams of National representation on the world stage were over before they even began. I was slingshot back to all those emotions at the end of year 12 in high school when nationals was not at all what I wanted it to be, I was a failure, but moreover I was stupid for allowing myself to dream that big, why did I think as a small country girl from Southland I could be anything special, I should have set my sights lower and maybe just aimed to be normal, mediocre, at least then I wouldn't have to watch my heart break all alone as I saw my future crumbling to the ground ...