Confessions of a well nourished woman (i’m not crazy, i’m hungry)

Malnutrition affects the function and recovery of every organ system in the body. In addition to these physical consequences, malnutrition also results in psychosocial effects such as apathy, depression, anxiety and self-neglect.

I read a quote the other day that said in periods of malnutrition or starvation, the body takes significantly longer to process and heal trauma. I read another study chronicling the effects of having a lack of sleep on the body. For the first 23 years of my life, I had both. Despite my body being pumped full of ‘nutrition’ almost constantly, this treatment was also killing me. And I remember one of the first times I truly ate post transplant, it ended with me in tears because all along I’d thought I was crazy, and it turns out I was just hungry.

I was so hungry, despite being ‘fed’, that my body had shut down all non essential functions, and the extent of this malnutrition had caused permanent damage to my brain, among other things. And I was so, so tired I could have been proven clinically insane.

Ask me again why I think metabolic diseases are so cruel. Ask me again why it’s a miracle I survived.

I got better, briefly, and then I got worse again. There were literal holes through my digestive tract, and my diet reduced to juices and things easily digestible. And I never realized I was repeating history. I didn’t realize I was starving until I was well fed again.

One day pre-transplant, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, and we were discussing my history of disordered eating. I made a comment about not being able to justify eating, to which she asked if the only valid reason to eat was to maintain blood sugar. I remember laughing at her, because of course it was. I didn’t eat to nourish my body, or my soul. I ate to prevent extreme cases of hypoglycaemia, a job currently done for me via a tube in my stomach, which meant eating served essentially no purpose to me.

I really want you to hear me for this next bit - I knew my medical team wanted me to eat more and rely less on the tube. I knew my body was so fragile, that I was on a very strict diet, and that abstaining all together was safer mental and emotionally than wanting something I couldn’t have. I knew my health was suffering, and still I couldn’t make myself eat. My brain had become so damaged by years of trauma I didn’t know how to heal and experiences where my autonomy was stripped from me that I knew (felt) I was killing myself and couldn’t do a thing about it. And it wasn’t a lack of will. Healing was absolutely unaccessible to me in my starved state. Its like knowing you’re drowning, and people keep telling you to just use the life preserver, except you physically cannot get to it because you’re freaking drowning.

Prior to my abdominal surgery in November, when my diet consisted of protein shakes and little else, I became frantic in an attempt to escape my own life. I was anxious all the time, incredibly depressed and passively suicidal, and I made a lot of choices just because I wanted to feel something. I wrote in my journal one day during one of these long months: I don’t care how many bridges I burn if I can use the sparks to catch a glimpse of myself, even for a second. And I meant it.

I’m 2 months out from that surgery now, and my body is healing, and so is my mind. I realized all that time maybe I wasn’t crazy, maybe I was just really hungry.

This past weekend I shared a photo dump on instagram, which essentially turned out to be pictures of what I ate all weekend. The moment one of those photos was taken, I was eating chocolate cake in a bubble bath, and I remember feeling so incredibly happy. I wasn’t eating to nourish my body, I was eating to nourish my soul, and it felt so good.

There is a quality of life that simply wasn’t accessible to me when I was hungry. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. I was starving, body and soul, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it to save myself.

I still have a long way to go to repair my relationship with food, with my body, with what it means to be well nourished. But I’m closer than I’ve ever been before. I’m happier, healthier, stronger. I can reach for a life preserver where I couldn’t before.

And I no longer have this crushing desire to escape my life. Let me tell you about how the fog started to lift when I began to become well nourished. Let me tell you how my symptoms of anxiety and depression decreased, how I started to see possibility where I hadn't before. During my years in the medical system, starving and sleep deprived, they called me crazy. Years of deprivation taught me the glorification of struggle and the separation of the mind and body.

I’m learning, now, what it means to be fed.