How Vegetables Almost Killed Me (Part 5/5)

By the summer of 2022, I was both over this and terrified. I just wanted somebody to sew fifteen pounds on me so I could go back to normal life. I was having nightmares on almost a daily basis about going back to the hospital. I won't say who, but in a heated moment someone extremely close to me had told me just before the end of the semester that I looked scary, that people were afraid to be around me because my body was so disgustingly skeleton-like. As devastating as this was to hear, I didn't think they were wrong. I hated the way I looked, I longed for muscles, for the youthful plumpness in my face that used to make me look five years younger than my age rather than the grey straightness that made me look fifty years older. The physical effects of being underweight were impossible to ignore: I was freezing all the time, it hurt to sit because there was no padding on my bones, I was too tired to enjoy most of the things I used to love. I was ready to wipe the slate clean, come up with a new plan, and get this thing over with once and for all.

My parents and I sat down together and we created a course of action. One of them would look at my meal plan with me every night, and we'd make exact estimations of portion sizes so we could all be on the same page of how much I needed to be consuming at a given time, whether my mom was preparing the food or I was. We brainstormed every way we could think of to add extra calories: fruits and vegetables would have to be slathered in peanut butter or hummus, tablespoons of protein powder snuck into baked goods, Carnation Breakfast Drinks and Bolthouse Smoothies replaced chocolate milk and fruit juice. I made a series of goals to work on, suspecting that it would take more than just the amount of food I was eating to get on the track of sustainable weight gain. I would work on eating faster, I would increase the amount of fats I was eating each day, I would get more sleep so my body had the energy to heal. Long term, I told my parents I desperately wanted to heal my relationship with food, to regain the ability to feel hunger and enjoy food the way I did before the hospital. Of course, the weight gain had to come first, but we decided there were little ways, like one-on-one trips out to eat, that I could begin to work towards eating normally.

My relationship with my parents was a lot better over the summer. I had always been super close with them, and though that hadn't changed when I was in the hospital and the weeks after, I was definitely projecting a lot of the stress and trauma I was feeling onto them. Now, I was much more comfortable talking about these things, and we were working so closely on my health plan that it seemed more like we were on a team than that I was needing to please them. In the past, I often thought of my mom and I as akin to Rory and Lorelei from Gilmore Girls; we did everything together and our conversations were always full of witty banter and inside jokes. Our relationship felt more like that again. My dad and I scheduled time every Thursday that we'd spend at least one hour together, no matter how busy we each were, and this became the thing I most looked forward to each week. Always the kind of person who wants to solve every problem, he became really good at just listening to me, and we also had lots of fun discovering some of the best ice cream shops in the state!

On the other hand, I would be remiss if I didn't address mine and Ashley's relationship, which had reached the point of seeming irreparable. If some of the pressure to prove myself to my parents had been relieved, it was replaced tenfold by pressure to prove myself to my sister. Food had become a major source of tension between us. I don't want to go too much into Ashley's story, because it's hers to tell, but I'll give the gist. From my perspective, I felt that Ashley's eating habits changed a lot when I gave up processed foods. This was understandable; we had eaten similarly our whole lives but our parents, who followed a low-fat diet, wouldn't eat a lot of the foods we deemed "fun" as kids: chips, chocolate, packaged cookies. She admitted to me later that she felt a little bit self-conscious when suddenly she was the only one in the house eating these things. But I felt a tremendous amount of guilt for making her stop eating the foods she liked, so after Lent I felt almost as if I needed to give her permission to eat these things again by eating them as well. This, of course, made eating around each other feel super uncomfortable: if I wanted oatmeal for breakfast instead of Reese's Puffs, I didn't want to feel like I was somehow preventing her from having the Reese's Puffs if she'd prefer. In the same way that I became fuller much quicker and got used to eating a lot of high volume foods like fruits and vegetables, she began to develop similar patterns from her change in eating habits. So when I started the excruciating process of trying to gain weight, it seemed like she was eating far too little, but with no consequences.

On the one hand, I worried about her, I couldn't possibly express to her how much she did not want to end up in the hospital like I did. On the other hand, as the weight gain process grew more and more difficult, I started to become resentful. When she ate half a yogurt container and put the rest back in the fridge at the same time that I was eating a protein bar and a yogurt parfait piled with honey and granola, I couldn't help but thinking it was unfair. I was longing for some kind of recognition at how hard I was working, and my constant feeling of failure made me so desperately wish that somebody would judge her instead of me. It's an awful thing to say, I know, but you have to remember that I was operating on a whirlwind of trauma, stress, and a malnourished brain: this was me at my worst. Too often, I'd let my frustration get the best of me, and comment on what she was eating. She understandably hated this, and I don't know if it was out of spite or self-consciousness or misguided compassion (or maybe a little bit of all three), but she began to scrutinize everything I was eating in return. Eating was already monumentally difficult at times for me, so feeling like she was challenging everything I was doing only added more stress.

Right as summer of 2022 began, she started having stomach issues. Ashley's had chronic stomach pain on and off for a long time, but it's never been resolved and usually goes away on its own. But this summer it seemed worse than ever before. At this point, though, she was also underweight and supposed to be gaining a few pounds, but instead she was eating next to nothing because of her stomach pain. You can imagine my frustration, though, when she'd subside on nothing more than a bag of Cheerios the entire day, with the entire family agreeing to the excuse that she couldn't eat more, her stomach hurt too bad. My stomach hurts too. I feel like I'm going to throw up if I swallow one more bite of food too. But I have to keep eating. She'd claim, "I'm trying," but then ask for sugar-free Jello and pudding, claiming her stomach couldn't handle sugar, or refuse to eat the non-fat free cottage cheese, and I'd question whether she really was trying. Looking back, I feel terrible for thinking that way; I hated when I felt others were doubting me, so how did I think it was fair for me to doubt her efforts? I was so exhausted of the discomfort, of the planning my life around eating, of constantly being stressed and worried for my health, and I took it out on her. Of course, this was just one small aspect of the troubles in our relationship, but there were times where we couldn't go even a day without fighting. It was miserable and upsetting for both of us, and feeling like I was losing my best friend during one of the hardest periods of my life was terrible, almost indescribable.

As fall approached, I had gained some weight over the summer, but not as much as I'd hoped. In May, I was optimistic that I'd be close to a normal weight by the time school started, but I still had a good 12 or 13 pounds to go. My parents began dropping hints about me staying home for the semester, and I started to panic. I still felt like I hadn't had a normal college experience yet, but this was going to be my year. I had declared my two minors, I was excited about all the classes I'd be taking, I was in the process of starting my own club, and I'd just signed with a new agent and manager in L.A. I was so ready to start my life again. So, it was back to the same stress I had felt 9 months ago: I had to prove myself, prove this semester would be different, I couldn't mess up.

I returned to USC in August, and in many ways, it did feel like it was "my year." I had one of my favorite theater professors on campus, and I was being challenged more than ever in his class. I booked three pretty significant acting projects, and I was accepted to my dream study-abroad program for the spring. I got a job where there was so little to do that I was basically getting paid to work on my homework. Ashley and I had tickets to go to Disneyland in October, and I was counting down the days.

The problem with it being "my year" in all of these aspects was that it made focusing on my health much more challenging. I knew my health needed to be my priority, but my routine had become so unpredictable that even the best of intentions were difficult to maintain. When I was in the makeup chair for three hours and an entire crew was waiting on me, there wasn't much I could do besides chug a Gatorade and grab a handful of gummy candies from craft services as I walked to set, and try to make up the lost calories later. I made a valiant effort to schedule group project meetings and class rehearsals around my meal schedule, but inevitably someone was always running late or needed to reschedule last minute, throwing me completely off course.

For the first couple months, I gained no weight. Meanwhile, Ashley's stomach issues were getting worse and worse, and she was rather suddenly and unexpectedly advised that she'd need to be admitted to the hospital because of her low weight. She was only a couple pounds below where I was, and this was a major slap in the face from reality for me. As she was going through many of the same devastations I had experienced the year before, the pure terror I had of returning to the hospital came rushing back. Something needed to change, and fast.

Luckily, I was now on a student health insurance plan, which meant finding providers was much easier than my old insurance. I began searching for a new dietitian, and after a sleuth of phone calls and interviews, I selected a nutritional therapist who I was hopeful could offer some change. She recognized that I needed to focus on weight gain first, but also offered that she'd be able to help me work towards having an appetite and enjoying food again. Once I was working with her, many things began to click into place.

Initially, the progress was slow even with my new dietitian, I'll call her Dr. E. She kept reminding me that changes weren't going to happen overnight, but it was difficult to be patient when I felt like my health was teetering on the brink of being in danger. However, some of her insights and suggestions were things I wished I had known a long time ago. For over a year, I kept hearing and believing that it was all about food, all I needed to do was eat. But Dr. E dispelled this myth. While food was, of course, a major factor, just eating more wasn't necessarily going to translate into the progress I was hoping for. She predicted that my body wasn't optimally absorbing the food I was eating, largely because of my stress. If I was anxious and full of adrenaline every time I ate, my body was likely using up a lot more energy to digest the food. I needed to get rid of the all-or-nothing mindset that one bad day was the end of the world. While things like eating faster and getting used to foods I was sensitive to were important and something to work towards, she suggested I first focus on reducing the stress around eating. If I was anxious about finishing before my timer went off or miserable because my stomach already hurt and I still had a whole plate of food left, that wasn't putting my body in a prime position for using what I was eating efficiently. She also wanted to investigate further the GI symptoms I continued to have, thinking I could possibly have a lipid absorption problem or a vitamin deficiency that was making these symptoms worse. Up until this point, I had believed that there was nothing to be done about the pain and discomfort, it was something I'd just have to live with. I felt optimistic and a bit relieved with this new information: maybe I wasn't a total failure, it wasn't 100% my fault that I was gaining weight so slowly. I was grateful to have something else to try besides just increasing calories again and again and again, and hopeful that maybe this was finally an answer that would make a real difference.

At the same time, I was watching Ashley have her life turned upside-down as the same doctors from Student Health forced her out of school and into a hospital for medical stabilization. Again, I don't want to go too much into her story, because it's hers to tell. Her circumstances were different than mine in a lot of ways, another one of those weird twin-coincidences where we weren't sure how we could end up in such similar situations. Nevertheless, I could empathize with so much of what she was going through, and I just felt awful for her. The day she was admitted to the hospital and she texted me how badly she wanted to get out already, I sat in my room (actually, it was her room: she let me take over her single-person bedroom while she was away) and sobbed for her. I could remember so vividly the fear and the feelings of abandonment and desperation. I felt awful for the resentment I had towards her earlier in the year, as if somehow I had inadvertently wished this terrible fate upon her.

But as upsetting as it was that she had ended up in the hospital, I selfishly have never felt so relieved. Suddenly, someone else got it. She told me so many things she had not believed me on or thought I was crazy, she now understood. I would so often say to my parents that I just wished one of them could be me for a day. From the outside world, I couldn't imagine anyone could empathize with the constant feeling of failure, or the wanting so badly to be better but also being so terrified of doctors, or the excruciating difficulty of eating enough every day when eating seems so simple. But finally someone could understand what it was like in my shoes, and it was the person I loved and trusted more than anyone in the world.

So things were beginning to look up for me, and with each day of progress I felt more encouraged and motivated than ever. I would change everything I was doing. I'd set my alarm for the middle of the night so I could fit in extra snacks, I'd fill my pockets with candy and sneak into the bathroom during classes to eat it. I had my sights set on going to London for the study abroad program I'd been accepted to in the Spring, but I needed to be certain I could keep up the weight gain while I was there. I set strict goals for myself, and if I couldn't meet them, study abroad was off the table. But I succeeded, and it was the most weight I had gained since getting out of the hospital! Now, I was armed with something to look forward to, my new treatment plan, and my sister by my side, and I was sure I was on an unstoppable road to recovery this time!

But then I found out that there were a host of medical forms I'd need approved as part of the process to go abroad. I was making progress, but my BMI was still underweight by kind of a lot, and the form was due in a week. I was confident I'd be healthy enough by the end of January when the program was supposed to start, but there was no way a doctor would sign off on me going in my current state. I was absolutely crushed, dejected. This was just one more thing I was missing out on all because I was underweight. Meanwhile, Ashley had been out of the hospital for less than a month, and had already gained more weight than I had over the past year. We suspect there might have been other factors at play, perhaps her possible thyroid or autoimmune issues that she's still trying to get addressed, as she admitted that she didn't think she ate everything on her meal plan once and was still gaining half a pound a day. Nevertheless, if I didn't feel like a total failure before, her success seemed like concrete proof that I was doing something wrong.

I became angry. When was this going to be over?! What I wouldn't give to wake up one morning and be XX pounds. I was dying to be healthy, but I just didn't know how I could possibly keep doing the work day in, day out. I was watching life pass by me and feeling like a runner training for a marathon, harder and harder every day, and barely getting any faster. I even started to question why God was doing this to me. I gave up processed foods for You in the first place, the unwanted thought would creep into my head at times. Why did you let this happen to me? Why won't you just make me better? Had I done something wrong? Was this some sort of punishment? I felt guilty for thinking such things. It's not like I had cancer or something that I couldn't control. But my progress had stalled again, the couple pounds I'd been able to gain so quickly seemed the result of a honeymoon phase. I needed a break, but I couldn't have one. I was grasping for anything to keep me going, something I could look to to force myself to take another bite or roll out of bed after a sleepless night in time for breakfast. This is probably extremely embarrassing for me to admit, but I had been wanting to go make a stuffed rabbit at Build-A-Bear for months. It had occurred to me over the summer that a rabbit was perhaps the one animal I'd never had a stuffed version of, and the nostalgia of making your own stuffed animal was undeniably endearing. After ranting my frustration on the phone with my mom one day, she offered that if I reached a milestone weight that I had been striving for before winter break, she'd take me to Build-A-Bear.

Again, I recognize the stupidity, but I was desperate. I made Pawlette (that's the bunny's name, according to the Build-A-Bear website) my screensaver on my phone, a constant reminder that I needed to keep going. I tried SO hard to reach my target. Not just to get the stuffed animal, but to prove to myself that my efforts were going to pay off. But I didn't make it, and I had no idea why. I was done.

The family vacation that we had to postpone the previous Christmas because of my health was to start the day after finals: a three-day Disney Cruise followed by three days at Disney World. My two favorite things in the world were Disney and Christmas, so you can imagine how much I'd been looking forward to this trip. I planned to eat everything, expected I'd spend all day on the cruise at the free soft serve station. By now, while eating was still incredibly difficult, I was able to enjoy some of my favorite foods again: Clif bars, animal crackers, fruit, and most importantly, ice cream. But I was going to enjoy the vacation, it had to be a break from the meal planning and the revolving every thought and decision around food. I of course planned to stay conscious of eating at least every couple of hours, of choosing higher-calorie options, but I didn't think it would be too big of a problem. There would be desserts and Mickey waffles and Dole Whips everywhere I turned.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and I shouldn't have done it. I was smarter than that, smart enough to know by now that I couldn't be lax for even a day. The cruise went fairly well, I was good about making sure to fit in meals and snacks around the often strange schedule of activities, even when it was inconvenient that the rest of my family had to wait on me. The parks, however, were a different story. My family's always been terrible about getting food when on vacation, often going the whole day without a real meal. Knowing this, I packed bags full of sandwiches and cereal and breakfast bars, and tried to snack in line for each ride. But time flies when you're having fun; one day it was suddenly five o'clock and I hadn't even eaten one full meal yet. On a day where we were walking 20,000 steps around Disney, you can imagine this didn't end well. The day after we got back home, I woke up with a nasty cold. Swallowing felt like knives in my throat for days, and I did my best to eat what I could, but after Disney I just couldn't afford this. After a week, I finally started to feel better, but I'd lost several pounds and was barely heavier than when I got out of the hospital an entire year ago. In a matter of days, all my work was down the drain. My dietitian would no longer work with me, and my parents said there was absolutely no way I was going to school next semester. How was I going to face essentially starting over? I wasn't sure, but somehow this phase of recovery would have to be different, because there was no way I could handle another year of the same.

I put together a thorough and multi-faceted proposal for my returning to school, ultimately convincing my parents to agree under the conditions that I met certain goals and would refrain from any activities outside of going to class. This post is already way to long, so if you want to read more about my decision to stay home, read my last blog post here.

So now I'm home for the semester, and nothing can get in my way of getting healthy. Things are going well so far, but I know it's a long road ahead of me. Nevertheless, I've come a long way in this journey so far. Mine and Ashley's relationship is stronger than it ever has been, something I'm eternally grateful for. I am in a much better place emotionally, and I think part of that is certainly the comfort of being home and the zeal I have from getting to wake up every day and work on things I'm passionate about: this and the many other projects Ashley and I are working on. I still don't feel hunger, I still feel sick and nauseous and rarely have an appetite, but I've started to be able to enjoy some foods again. I have the fortune of having some very wise people in my life, and after speaking with some of them I'm starting to work on forgiving myself and letting go of some of the guilt I'm carrying, of trying to accept that just because my recovery has been challenging that doesn't equate to me being a failure. The truth is, it takes strength to wake up each morning and face another day in this seemingly endless cycle of eating and feeling sick and having to plan my entire life around food, but I can look forward to this all being over one day and hope I will look back on it as nothing more than a blip in my life adventure. I know the next several months are not going to be easy, but I am optimistic. I'll keep you updated as my journey continues, but for now I want to leave you with a few final thoughts:

I so often hear people saying things like "I wish I loved carrot sticks as much as I love cake" or "I just want my child to eat more vegetables." I can't tell you how many people have expressed jealousy when they find out that I'm trying to gain weight; "I wish I needed to gain some weight," they'll say. I'm here to tell you that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Of course, I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't make your kids eat vegetables, or that you shouldn't try to follow a healthy lifestyle. In anything in life, you just have to be careful what you wish for. I loved vegetables too much, and I almost died because of it. It's easy to think that somebody else has it better: somebody is thinner or heavier or richer or poorer or has the job we want or the house we dream of. I implore you to remember that everyone has their struggles that you can't see. Whether you believe in God or the universe or any other kind of higher power, I believe we've all been given our loads to bear for a reason. The best we can do is accept them and be grateful for what we do have.

As I said at the beginning, I really wasn't sure if I wanted to share this story. I know there are parts where I don't come off in the best light, and those are accurate: I haven't been my best self through a lot of this process. But there are too many blogs and videos and social media pages and books where people try to inspire us with their amazing stories of overcoming challenges, except they as people stay perfect through whatever life throws at them. I don't know about you, but sometimes instead of feeling inspired I just feel bad about my imperfect way of dealing with struggles. When I read things I can relate to, when I find out I'm not the only one who has screamed awful things at the people she loves or questioned her faith in times of challenge, that's when I feel comfort. I won't lie, I'm still a little nervous about being judged for what I shared here, but this is my story, the truth as I see it. I sincerely hope that it can bring some comfort or at least a sense of empathy to even one person who reads it. Either way, I'm extremely grateful to you for taking the time to know my story. Whatever your story is, whatever trials and tribulations you are facing or will face in the future, I hope you know that you are not alone, and even if I don't know you, I recognize the strength it takes to face these things each day, and I admire you for it.