Ever since I was a young child, I have fought my body. I was raised catholic, and at at least two different moments in my childhood, I developed a pious fervour. Once, it was after reading a book about the real-life story of a girl stricken with a terminal illness. Pure and possessing a faith more profound than any of her family members, she lay on her bed, consoling her family with her precocious wisdom. 

The book is full of spiritual connotations, and in the end, it is implied that the girl became a saint or got close to being a saint. I was confused by the story, but I was also fascinated by it. I was terrified, too, of falling ill and having to demonstrate my goodness through my faith before dying.  

The other time was when I was preparing to do my first communion, which you do around age 9 or 10. In the months before this most sacred event, a group of kids in my class, including me,  received formal catechism classes at school. Even if I never entirely understood what “taking in the body of Christ” through Eucharist meant or how it worked, the idea that I would be a purer, less guilty person afterwards enraptured me. With all my might, I wanted to believe I could achieve a more permanent state of grace. I also vaguely understood that my body would betray me at some point by growing up and disrupting this state of grace. I did not want to become a teenager.

***

I was 13 when I became anorexic. It started with a diet that slowly developed into the horror of that eating disorder. 

It’s complicated to explain the knottiness of the reasoning behind my illness. It was both physical and psychological. As I lost weight, I started associating food with impurity. I have always been physically strong and was already energetic and tenacious at that age. I started to intertwine the two: I was stronger than everybody else. I knew this because at the peak of the disease when I was eating one piece of bread at lunchtime and perhaps some fresh fruit juice, I started to believe I could live without food.

It was a nightmare. Food was my most coveted and hated object on earth. I considered people who ate–my family, my school friends–weak and undisciplined. Meanwhile, I could still go to school, bake cookies to sell for extra money, and go on long, strenuous walks with little to no food in me. I had anxious dreams where I would be in front of a table full of food and start to eat, only to wake up and experience the relief I had not broken the state of purity I had nearly achieved after so much sacrifice and effort.

But that day would invariably arrive, a day of weakness where I would be convinced to eat. Those minutes only provided a brief respite from my self-punishing thoughts. The penance started immediately after. I would cry in desperation, lacerated by guilt, knowing that I would need to climb that mountain again. I knew I would have to punish myself physically. And I did for many years. Most of all, I wanted to attain a perfect equilibrium between my body and mind. I wanted a body that functioned without food, without giving in to its physical needs. I wanted a body that moved through life unsoiled, unspoiled.

***

I lived like that for over ten years, anorexia turning into bulimia, an even worse insult to a body that wanted to remain untouched by the base needs of an ordinary human being. I never loved my body. No matter how thin or fat or healthy, I would never be clean enough. 

By sheer will and a nascent inkling of self-love, I started eating more when I turned 25. But it was not without consequence. I began to be more and more disturbed by messiness. I maintained a spotless apartment. Just a flash of some object out of place, a sink of unwashed dishes, or an unmade bed threw me into extraordinary rampages of anxiety. I would scream and fight and desperately try to maintain a sense of order that I could only achieve in the absence of normal human life.

Because a world untouched by humans is an impossibility, I punished myself. I would wake up earlier and earlier, add more items and tasks to a perpetual list, and establish cruel standards. I could not rest. I had to achieve a state of purity in my surroundings before I had the right to rest. I did not deserve to rest. For decades, I could never take a nap, not on a lazy Sunday or a day off from school or work. I knew that as soon as I closed my eyes, somebody would find me and tell me, “See? you are as lazy as everybody else.” To admit I was tired, that I was human, and to acknowledge my inner calls for compassion was a privilege denied to me; it was something I certainly did not deserve.

***

Self-hate is sometimes most acute during beautiful days—when it’s bright and warm, which means I should be out, doing activities outside the house with my son and my family or seeing friends. But truly, self-hate is one of my closest friends, one of the constants in my life.

I have joked for many years about my need for self-punishment. How, if I were to become a nun, as I thought I wanted to do during my period of religious fervour, I would belong to a severe order where every afternoon I would need to kneel on stones and self-flagellate. I would be so, so good at it.

I have overcome both the fear of physical need and of pristine surroundings, so my self-hate has increased. As I don’t have an outlet for self-punishment, the reminders are all in my head. They are as sharp as ever, genuinely admirable in their ability to transform and come up with new ways of reminding me how I should pay for being alive. 

The body has always been my enemy. And yet, it’s the vessel that bridges me to the things I love: the intimacy of music on my ears through headphones, 18th century Dutch still lifes, the smell of fresh blossoms in spring and of rain in the fall, the taste of umami and all complex flavours. 

I entertain a blasphemous fantasy: To be only consciousness and, in that state, perhaps experience those things, at least intellectually. To be only consciousness and not run the risk of being an out-of-control body. An excessive body. A loud body. A euphoric body. A needy body. An ugly, dirty body. A careless body. A selfish body. An ordinary, mortal body. To be only consciousness, away from this body.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a “serious, psychiatric illness.” (Borderline Personality Disorder Association of BC). Click here to learn more.