Does anyone out there in recovery from anorexia nervosa, or from a restrictive eating disorder, have a problem with the term “average”? The etymology of “average” reveals that the word originates from Arabic and, later, French terms meaning “harm to goods.” Way back, in the days when transport of wares depended on seagoing vessels, reimbursement for damaged merchandise on ships required a look at the losses and the remaining assets; ship proprietors and cargo owners would come to an agreement on the value of any money owed, and in time, the word “average” came to mean…well, the mean. Yet the word itself refers back to the original harm that befell any assets. (What a mean start to this whole blog!)
Perhaps the etymology of “average” explains why I have always sensed something negative about the word. I especially have a problem with the term “average” if applied to myself. All of my life, I have fought to avoid the average tide. Even before anorexia set in for me at age nine, I craved distinction; as an immature kid, I feared that I could get lost in the chaotic world, and, without distinguishing traits, no one would find me.
A restrictive diet works well with such a childlike mindset. If extreme weight control represents noteworthy asceticism, then pursuing such a goal successfully should distinguish me, at least a little.
After two months of dieting at age nine, I had definitely stepped into the household starlight, because I had transcended average (or so I thought) and put myself into the half-freak, half-poor-thing-so-ill zone. The freakish part bothered me a bit, but the poor-thing-so-ill stuff I could handle.
Over time, however, my loved ones and friends grew weary of the poor-thing-so-ill characterization, and they changed their views of me to obstreperous-devious-troublemaker. While my main goal was (and remains to this day) to be noticed (and preferably liked), the troublemaker hat balanced well enough on my head. At least people knew I existed. I had not quite achieved the “well-liked” status for my food/weight obsessions, but I did forge temporary friendships with the crew of the different hospitals I entered through the years.
As I grew up, I never learned or understood that my very existence was distinctive, period. Each human being is unique; we may share strong similarities, but we all possess one-of-a-kind characteristics that make us our unique selves.
Since I did not believe in or conceive of such a simple – yet true – concept, my desire for overt distinction grew stronger with time. Anorexia enhances any dissatisfactions we feel in life to the point that we perceive them as unacceptable. Once the diet ignited my predisposition for anorexia, the childlike wishes to do things my way, but get noticed for how well I did them, grew exponentially. And over the next 40 years, as I matured, these fundamentals seeped into all endeavors I undertook.
As a student in high school and college, I was way above average, academically. Anorexia actually assisted in my scholarship, despite the fact that I probably would have thought more clearly with more nutrition. I worked hard, with an obsessive-compulsive element to my studying. I delved into every project using all fibers of my being, and in doing so, I often avoided eating.
Unfortunately, anorexia sabotaged any further distinction I could accomplish with career, relationships, and the like, because I repeatedly kept landing myself in treatment centers throughout college, to the point that, at age 30, I just thought, “Hurry up and graduate already!,” and I hastily changed majors without any future plans for myself.
Attempting to readjust my compass and to distinguish myself beyond undergraduate college, I applied to several law schools. I wanted to attend Stanford Law School, but Stanford rejected me. That rejection still haunts me to this day. I felt as if Stanford said directly to me, “Eh, you’re too average. We want brilliant.” Vanderbilt University, however, happily accepted my application, and I started law school there.
However, while in law school, my grades did not achieve the over-the-top excellence I had known throughout undergraduate college. I received “A”s as well as “B”s. The latter caused so much turbulence and anxiety in me that I quit law school mid-way through my first year. “A”s and “B”s meant “average,” and that was as good as “F.”
You can see that I had no idea that I could graduate with an attorney’s degree just as myself, with whatever passing grades I could muster. Unfortunately, many of my peers struggled with imperfect G.P.A.s, too, so I thought my reaction to my own lower-than-usual-G.P.A. fell into the radius of “normal.” Unlike my peers, though, I simply did not have the stamina to continue studying in the face of academic disappointment.
Soon after quitting law school, my primary care doctor admitted me to a local hospital for refeeding. While the “average” stay in law school plagued my self-esteem, I had concurrently (and nearly unconsciously) restricted to very little, and in the space of a few months, my weight plummeted. The weight loss provided me with an excuse of sorts for poor law school performance, despite the fact that I had been able to achieve academically on next-to-nothing sustenance throughout undergraduate days. In my head, I kept repeating to myself that law school proved how stupid I really am. The undergraduate distinction, I told myself, was a sham; my average output in graduate school exposed my failure in life.
Looking back on my history in education, I realize that, either way, whether I achieved academically or not, anorexia anchored the experience. In other words, no matter what I did, anorexia supported and even directed all affairs in my life. These “affairs” included my thoughts about myself. All that gossipy self-talk about my stupidity came straight from a diseased brain. My neural pathways always consigned me to the brig when I faced discouragements or difficulties of any kind. The disease has striven to become my life’s greatest achievement, and it has encouraged all these attempts at distinction while disguising itself as ambition.
If some great scientist one day could figure out why a brain self-destructs in this manner, I would like to know. I can only make an experienced guess about this phenomenon: a true brain disease lies behind all of these complexities, and that disease involves outdated migration instincts, for sure, but also something else – something ineffable that right now is not worth plumbing, but which all anorexics probably understand on a fundamental level. Once set into motion, the disease quickly rearranges the brain to make every sick action/idea/motivation seem necessary and actually quite reliable. Plus distinctive, let’s not forget. And those of us with full-blown anorexia also face a confused world where restriction plays a huge role in human organization. Hmpf! How to recover (and navigate) with all of our broken down parts, in a world that is itself rather rusty?
Certainly, I thought I had successfully combatted (and won against) anorexia plenty of times in the past, with numerous treatments and therapies. None of those methods of recovery endorsed unrestricted eating, however, and all of them, variously, warned against overeating, encouraged target weights in the lower “BMI” range, and praised exercise as both a manner of gaining weight (through “putting on muscle”) and achieving optimal health (“getting stronger” with exercise). In short, all previous methods of treatment had not really addressed the anorexia – instead, they asked that I gain enough weight to count myself as healthy, and, once at that magic weight, to eat only enough to maintain that weight, and to exercise for weight maintenance and strength, as well.
While a lot of the therapists/psychiatrists I had seen in the past wanted to extirpate and quell my anxieties, these practitioners all worked with me at times when I still lived and breathed anorexia. No matter where my weight had ended up in treatment – and I gained a lot (which I later lost) in the many treatments I tried – I still feared weight gain, and I still believed I needed to control food to the morsel. I have now learned I cannot change much unless I am living unrestrictedly; my brain cannot do any kind of work on this “average” problem as long as I am reinforcing the “average” problem by maintaining some kind of “distinction” through anorexia.
Of course, I realize I came into this world with high anxiety and fear of “average,” and anorexia suited my natural disposition. Therefore, as I address the disease with its opposite at this point, i.e., no restriction, I realize that my own being requires a bit of tinkering, as well. Luckily, the requirements for anorexia recovery also confront my inborn, anxious nature.
I will return here to the etymology of “average” that I mentioned many other words ago. If “average” comes from a more negative term meaning “harm to goods,” I have to ask myself, what is more “average” than anorexia, itself? Anorexia provides such a perfect model of “harm to goods.” What a joke for my worn-out body and brain – I have lived a life of average to the best of my ability!
Unrestricted eating, rest, and a boatload of pretense make up my world today. If you have reached this point in the blog without skipping anything, you are a brave, patient soul. All that I have just written rings real and true, but it describes mostly puzzlement and convolution that, frankly, I am too tired now to solve. Anorexia has barnacled my brain and damaged my body in the attempt to outrun average, and here I am, aboard the USS Average. All fears about obesity and weight gain and ugliness and stupidity – those of course emerge from the fogs of a diseased brain. I started with a fear of average, so, now, what better way to overcome that fear than by doing all that I can to liberate myself from the apogee of average (oxymoron, I know): anorexia? And, yes, I must do so in the midst of an average world, bent on doing so much harm – though to be sure, beacons of light await all of us in recovery, if we sail steady on.
