ariana sexton-hughes: recovery

the "i, ana" project

“Anorexia is a disease, not a diet plan.”

True enough. But, anorexia is also, to a certain degree, a lifestyle choice. We might be powerless over the over anorexia, “the disease,” but to many of us “ana” is a way of life, a choice. We choose to restrict our caloric intake. We choose to workout incessantly. We choose to measure every bite. We choose enslave ourselves to our scales. We choose to monitor every momentary fluctuation in our weight. We choose “thinspire” ourselves with imagery of emaciated models, actors, and “real girls.” We choose to fast to starve to purge. For many of us, these choices are not the simple compulsions, driven entirely by the unsettling combination of faulty brain chemistry and disfigured cognitive development. When we choose ana over health, ana over family, and ana over all else, we are exercising control.

Ana is, at its core, an exercise in self-control for those who believe their lives are entirely devoid of control. We may not be able to control our parents’ alcoholism, our family finances, our rapid and unrelenting mood swings, and unwanted sexual advances; but, we can certainly control how much, when, and if we eat. In that feeling of control, we often find a sense of strength, stability, and empowerment. And, for the most part, society rewards us for our efforts. Our media idealizes the ectomorphic human form. For so many of us, it becomes a horrifying irony that our endeavors to remain semiandrogynous children to avoid further abuse as womyn often lead to greater objectification as adults.

I’ve come to believe that this tension between disease and empowerment is precisely why anorexia is so challenging to treat. To treat anorexia, the disease, the standard of care attempts to obliterate ana, the choice, and ana, the aesthetic. To many of us, this represents a horrifying conundrum. In order to banish the disease, we must contend with two very frightening life changes: the lost of “control” and, more painfully, the loss of a body aesthetic, a physical identity we have often worked years to achieve. And, in losing our identity as “the skinny girl,” we lose a part of ourselves that we came to love. Ana is our frienemy in that way. She gives us a sense of strength, even superiority, even as she steals our health, our mental and intellectual capacity, our physical strength, and our spiritual well-being. In many ways, ana reminds me of Shakespeare’s description of jealousy: “Oh, beware my lord of jealousy, for she is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat on which it feeds. She dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet fondly loves.” Ana gives us the superstrength–– the willpower to accomplish great things––even as she saps the marrow from our little, brittle bird bones.

During the course of the past year, my understanding of my dueling afflictions, anorexia nervosa and biopolar disorder, became increasingly clearer as I left home to become a first-year student at an Ivy League university. The pressures of physical illness, bouts of mania and depression, extreme cold, isolation, loneliness, and a devotion to perfection combined to take my anorexia to new levels of intensity.

My poetry is an attempt to reconcile a range of deeply personal experiences in coming to grips with anorexia, biopolar disorder, perfectionism, abuse, family crises, even sexual identity.

Thank you.

ariana

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