I had an eating disorder.

And I haven’t talked about it enough.

To be 100% truthful, I shouldn’t really even say “had”. In many ways, I still have one.

There isn’t a single bite of food I put into my body that I don’t actively think about. Sometimes even, obsess over.

How many calories was that?

How much fat?

How long do I have to exercise to burn off that movie popcorn? How many miles on the treadmill? How many crunches?

So, while I’m no longer intentionally starving myself, and I’m no longer having a single can of peas for an entire day’s worth of meals (yes, it was a seriously disgusting choice, of that I’m fully aware, but clearly, I wasn’t in a good headspace, and it felt like a wise choice at the time, but I digress) and I’m no longer running 4 miles twice a day to make SURE I’ve ended with a caloric deficit, I still do not have what might be considered by some to be a “normal” relationship with food.

But who really does, right?

So many of us spend so much of our time thinking about food. And not just how food tastes, or what we’re going to cook that night or order at a fancy restaurant.

Specifically, at least from my personal perspective, about food and WEIGHT.

Whether it’s severely restricting calories or unconsciously overeating, the truth is that the older we get, the less food is just food, and the more complicated it becomes.

For me, there has ALWAYS been an inescapable connection between weight and self-esteem. I think that’s true for many of us.

I think it’s because no matter how much society evolves, no matter how inclusive we strive to become, being “fat” transcends other “cultural” differences.

Across the political spectrum, even with the myriad of things which divide us, “fat” jokes, and commentary on weight and size, are part of the dialogue. On “both sides”.

I’m guilty of it myself. Using words like “flaccid” and “slovenly” to describe someone like Steve Bannon.

(I won’t apologize for anything I call Steve Bannon, just so we’re clear, so I’m gonna have to ask for a hall pass on that one).

Obviously, there are still lots of people out there in that great big world of ours who truly do feel comfortable in their own skin without ever feeling self-conscious about their weight. People for whom food is just food. People who don’t obsess. Who don’t overthink. Who haven’t harmed themselves or tangentially those they love because they cannot control how they interact with food.

But I’m not one of them.

And the truth is, I don’t talk about it enough.

None of us do frankly.

If you’ve been following me on here, you know that most of the week I write about politics. About Republican baboonery. About the evil that is donald trump.

Sunday is typically reserved for something a little different. Sometimes it’s a funny story about yelling at Bono, and sometimes it’s me sharing something personal.

This one is very personal.

This is my story, it’s one I’ve been extremely reluctant to talk about publicly, largely because I still get called fat by those who don’t like me (from both sides of the aisle to be truthful). And I’ve always worried that if I shared my truth about my journey with weight, that it would embolden my attackers to go even lower. To make my weight the focus of their ire. And it scared the shit out of me.

I was afraid. Afraid of what it would mean for ME.

Without ever thinking about what sharing my story might mean for SOMEONE ELSE.

For young women and men out there on the scale 10 times a day. For a woman in her 50’s who is obsessing at the gym over every calorie because of a Bumble dinner date gone terribly wrong. For shockingly young boys and girls out there exposed to social media 24/7 and who can’t just eat a handful of Chex-mix without asking their mom if it’s got “a lot of calories in it?”

10 year old girls who beg to join their mom at the gym but won’t say WHY it’s soooo important.

Girls who needed to hear that being “skinny” doesn’t equal “value”. Wearing a small clothing size doesn’t equate to their “worth”.

But never heard it. Or couldn’t hear it.

Girls like my own daughter.

I am very worried about my daughter.

And the truth is, that by not sharing my story with her, I have let her down. I didn’t talk to her about my struggles because I was afraid it would make her aware of their very existence, and I thought, foolishly, that I could completely shield her from reality. If she didn’t KNOW about anorexia, she’d never suffer from it like I did, I thought like a big ol’ dumb dumb.

And like every parent who has ever parented knows all too well… that just ain’t possible. With anything. Ever.

In my case however, eating disorders were, for a very, very long time, the topic of regular conversation. I was quite young when I realized that my mom, the one who had left me when I was only 4, the woman I went 7 years without even seeing, was, as my mind thought of it at the time “heavy-set”.

The truth was she was extremely obese.

For the entirety of my youth, people who didn’t know me well, people who had known my mom, people who didn’t know quite how to navigate the whole, ‘their mom left, then wasn’t allowed to see them for years, and their dad got full legal custody of all 5 of them because she was such an atrociously abusive woman’ situation, would awkwardly try to make conversation with me by saying things like, “well, you are the spitting image of your mom, aren’t you?” Or “wow, you’re Kathleen’s TWIN!!”

And at some point, I had the dreadful, prepubescent lack of rational thought “realization” that if I were her twin… then that meant that I would also end of being “heavy-set”. That I was destined to be “fat”.

Just like Kathleen.

And that was right around the time my own sibling, a teenager a few years older than I, began her journey with eating disorders.

And while we “talked” about what was happening with her, we never really TALKED about it. We never talked about what it meant. Or why it was happening. Only what it “was”.

The what it meant and why stuff would have helped. Because when I found myself at the age of 21, living with family in Michigan, deeply depressed, and feeling more hopelessly alone than I’d ever felt in my life… my thoughts landed on that which I could control.

My weight. Food. Calories.

My boyfriend lived in NYC and didn’t want me there all the time, so I couldn’t control seeing him.

I had been rejected by the two colleges I had applied to, so I couldn’t control that.

Eating 500 calories a day and burning off twice that number? That I could control.

Only, as anyone who knows anything about eating disorders will tell you — while it IS 100% about control, it’s about the food controlling the person.

Not the other way around.

By the time I went home to visit my dad and my boyfriend a few months later, I had nearly vanished. I was down about 40lbs from when I had left. I knew, because I weighed myself 10 to 15 times a day, and if the number on the scale didn’t go down, I’d get back on the treadmill until it did.

I didn’t understand why they looked at me the way they did. They kept staring at me. They seemed shocked but I honestly didn’t know why.

Neither one of them was able to say anything to me about my weight. Not that visit. They were terrified, but didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. So they said nothing.

And I only got worse.

By the time I moved back to my dad’s in Jersey that summer, I was nearly literally, skin and bones. My back was riddled with bruises from my spine. My hips and shoulders were bruised too. I had stopped getting my period (as the body shuts one “superfluous” function after the next when it thinks you’re starving). I had extra facial hair, leg and arm hair (not enough fat to insulate, so the body does what it does, again). I could touch my ankles together and no part of my legs would touch. All the way up to the top.

I weighed 83lbs and was still losing.

And I thought I looked great.

To everyone else, I looked like I was dying.

Because I was.

My boyfriend by that time, was pleading with me to stop. My dad too.

It made me angry. I was fine, I said.

I was far from fine.

But I wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t hear anything from anyone above the noise of my own mind telling me that skinnier was better. That I was “winning”.

Until one day, my dad - who I talk about often - sat me down and said the following:

“I am watching my daughter kill herself. And I can’t stop it. I can’t do anything to make it stop…”

And then he said this: “… and it hurts so badly to be so powerless to save my own daughter, that I worry it might kill me too.”

He had never said anything like that before.

For the better part of a year, he had made every single effort to get me help. To “fix me”. Doctors and psychiatrists, he even asked about hypnosis. He would buy bags of food he thought I might eat. Canned peas, yes - but also sweet potatoes, shrimp and corn. To “feed me”.

Nothing worked.

But as I sat across from my dad, my DAD, the person I loved more than every other human on earth combined, the man I couldn’t imagine living without, the man who had rescued us from mom, and listened to him tell me that I WAS KILLING HIM, I finally heard him.

I had spent so much time thinking only about how I was living the life that I thought I wanted, that I never stopped to think about the fact that I might be killing someone else in the process.

Specifically, my dad.

How could I do that to him? How could I have been so selfish?

As stubborn as I am, and I’m a damn mule believe me, I am not unreachable. And I would never intentionally hurt anyone I loved. Never.

But that was exactly what I had been doing. And I knew that I needed to stop.

It didn’t happen overnight. I didn’t go out and get a pizza and a cheeseburger after our talk. It was a day by day effort. Work. Work ongoing as explained above, which continues to this day.

Work, I now realize, I’ve been selfishly afraid to talk about. Because once again, I haven’t been thinking about how my actions impact others.

Work I now realize, I need to talk openly and honestly with my daughter about.

I need to talk to her about what anorexia is, but much more than that, about why it happens, and about how it can hurt her and those of us who love her.

I need her to understand, as I try to get better at understanding about myself, that her worth is her heart. Her value is her brain, her wit, her humor, her kindness, her empathy, her spirit, her fierceness, her vulnerability and her fight.

Not some number on a scale. Not some clothing size.

But I also want her to understand, as I have in my life over and over again, that our actions touch those who love us too. Our choices can hurt them or help them.

And that it’s not always just about families and friends, but sometimes, it can be about strangers too.

Strangers who might feel alone. Unseen. Reluctant to share their pain. Their struggles. Maybe they feel like others will judge them harshly. Maybe they’re afraid of criticism. Maybe they don’t want to look weak.

And then maybe, just maybe, they’ll see someone they don’t know, and have never met, who too was afraid to share. Who was scared of putting their pain out there. Who felt ashamed of their own truth.

And maybe, just maybe, it will help them. Knowing they’re not alone. Knowing that in sharing our stories we can connect to one another. We can empower one another. And we can push back against the very ideas which confused us into believing things about who we were and what we were worth which simply weren’t true.

I regret not sharing my story sooner.

I regret thinking I could protect my daughter by NOT talking about this sooner.

Breaking bread is how humans have come together throughout the course of history.

A shared meal has brokered peace, sparked lifelong loves, made brothers and sisters of friends. It can even make friends of brothers and sisters (however temporarily lol).

At the same time, a seemingly simple calorie, so small that it’s invisible to the naked eye, has the power to destroy lives.

But we can strip so much of that power away, simply by talking about it. I truly believe that.

When my dad looked into my eyes, and shared HIS truth, it changed my own.

So maybe me sharing mine with others who might be struggling, can change theirs too.

I’m starting at home, with my little hurricane of a daughter.

And on here, with all of you.

I’m a million trillion miles from perfect. But I have walked a few walks and learned a thing or too along the way.

And one thing I know for certain is that you are not alone. None of us are.

Even when I truly believed I was alone, I wasn’t, but hearing it from someone else at the time would have helped a lot.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for making me feel safe enough to share my stories.

Someone once said that we were “stronger together”. And she was right.

She was right about a lot of things.