I Wanted to Be Thin Until I Realised I Really Wanted to Disappear.

Caroline Huckeba
2 days ago
4 min read

On anorexia, recovery, and learning how to want things again.

I’ve been in recovery for three years. I’ve had anorexia before, and for a disorder so often glamorized, it can feel like there’s a gluttonous fat demon living inside you. Every day is spent trying to keep it trapped, terrified that one day it will tear through your skin and reveal itself.

So when you look in the mirror, you don’t see yourself. You don’t see the pale, sick person staring back at you. You see a growling beast, filling the mirror edge to edge.

Anorexia was the most gluttonous I have ever felt in my life. Depriving myself of basic needs made me obsessed with food while simultaneously afraid of it. I was consumed by hunger. I felt feral. Yet outwardly, I wanted to appear controlled, disciplined, and rigid.

I think about this now while thinness is on the rise again. Whenever I hear people say, “Everyone is thin” or “Everyone is on GLP-1s,” my first question is always: Who is everyone?

I’m sure there are many people like me, people who have spent years healing, only to feel reminded that the world still seems to value them more when they’re smaller.

Lately, I find myself asking simple questions:

What do I like to eat?

What do I like to do?

They’re questions that sound easy until you realize how much space an eating disorder takes up. I can have hobbies and interests because my brain is no longer consumed by “the big thing,” food, comparison, my body, exercise, calories, and all the other things an eating disorder convinces you are worth becoming sick for.

When I was focused on “the big thing,” I let myself suffer through almost anything. Difficult people. Uncomfortable clothes. Temperatures that made me miserable. Schedules that exhausted me. Events I didn’t want to attend.

It felt more natural to endure discomfort than to do something simple to make my own life easier. I think that’s because I wanted to be small. Not just thin, small. I wanted to take up no space. Be no inconvenience. Be no burden. Go unheard. Bother no one. Be seen by no one.

And somehow, at the same time, have my thinness acknowledged by everyone. Recovery has forced me to acknowledge my own suffering and act on it.

Without “the big thing” constantly occupying my mind, I can read a book and decide whether I actually like it. I can decide whether I like the people around me. I can decide whether I enjoy my job or want to quit. And sometimes that freedom is terrifying.

There’s a quote from Fleabag:

“I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning, what to eat, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about... I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, and who to love, and how to tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong.”

For so long, I let “the big thing” tell me who I was. It told me how to behave. It told me what mattered. It told me to suffer through discomfort rather than advocate for myself.

Recovery gives you freedom, but freedom can be overwhelming. There is no handbook for a life after an eating disorder. There is no certainty. There are only choices. How do you navigate a relationship?

How do you know if you’re in the right career? How do you manage a UTI at work when you’re only allowed a seven-minute bathroom break every hour?

And I enter these situations with a new sense of trepidation. Because I’m finally living.

One of the biggest misconceptions about eating disorders is who they belong to. While I was in treatment, I became friends with a man who had the same illness I did. We spent afternoons talking about Fortnite updates and laughing over things that had nothing to do with calories or recovery. It reminded me that eating disorders are not illnesses of vanity or womanhood. They are illnesses of humanity. They don't care about your age, your gender, or whether you look "sick enough." They are astonishingly common, touching millions of people every year, though many suffer in silence because they don't resemble the stereotype. I think that's part of why so many women talk about eating disorders as though they're not a matter of if, but when, another rite of passage alongside puberty or heartbreak. But it doesn't have to be inevitable. Not for women. Not for men. Not for anyone.

Recovery isn't a finish line you cross. It's waking up every morning and realizing you get to decide what kind of person you want to be. Some days that freedom feels exhilarating. Other days it feels terrifying. The life that waits on the other side of an eating disorder is confusing, ordinary, and wonderfully unspectacular. You'll have arguments with people you love. You'll wonder if you're in the right job. You'll get UTIs at inconvenient times. You'll make terrible decisions and wonderful ones. In other words, you'll have a life again.

And somewhere underneath everything the disorder convinced you to become, the person you were before all of this is still there. The little kid who knew when she was hungry, who played until she was tired, who laughed without wondering what her stomach looked like. Recovery isn't becoming someone new so much as learning to hear that voice again. It takes practice. It takes patience. It is messy. It is sometimes heartbreaking.

But it is also, without question, the most inspiring choice I get to make every day.