Get off the ceiling
The upside down world of eating disorders and the topsy-turvy world of recovery.
Bath, 2024
I don’t want to be here. Not in this job, and not on this stupid course that my stupid job is making me do. I also don’t want to be here in a more existential way. I don’t realise how much better life will get when I start taking Fluoxetine this time next year. In the meantime, here I am. A place I do not want to be.
I do not want to be.
The entire reason I am on this course, flanked by teammates who have committed an identical sin, is because I don’t want to be here. Or rather, I made the mistake of letting it show. And by letting it show I mean I sat at the front desk and wasn’t smiling for half a millisecond. Some wanky old professor walked past and said the vibes were off, or words to that effect, and now we are all collectively being punished, like a class of naughty schoolchildren when the culprit won’t come clean. We don’t believe there’s a culprit among us. This is precisely why we are being punished.
The course is run by an external company, and the facilitator is totally impartial. This is a chance for us to have our say! I feel like I’m at an AA meeting, all of us sat around in uncomfortable chairs, told to be as honest and as open as we see fit. The honest, open truth is that the director should be on this course. She should be here to hear us out, but of course she’s too busy for that. I blink at the whiteboard. Some exercise about seeing things from another perspective. So, the director’s perspective. Got it.
In front of us is one of those optical illusions: a face with a beard which, upon rotation, morphs into a face with head hair. I can’t see it. G can see it, so the facilitator asks her to show me where to look. G articulates herself perfectly, pointing out little details to map out the location of this hidden image. I squint and turn my head and step back and move closer, but I can’t see it. Everyone else can see it — or says they can — but to me, it’s just not there.
I’m not getting anything out of this exercise, so I let my mind wander. I catch myself thinking about eating disorders. Everyone around you sees one thing and you see another. At my lowest weight, I could look at what were objectively shadows in my face — sunken eyes, hollow cheeks — and convince myself that those shadows were fat. No matter what other people told me, no matter how much I believed in the coveted logic they seemed to possess, I simply could not see it any other way.
Here, now
When I started Read My Spine, I felt like I was stating the obvious. Sometimes ‘the obvious’ is what resonates with people; other times, you might put a different spin on it. Point out how things look from different angles, offer up a fresh perspective. There’s no reinventing the wheel here. Anorexia is a diagnosis, and a diagnosis is simply a collection of clinical observations that fit one category better than another. But within this category, people are so different. Outside of it, the onlookers who have no direct experience with eating disorders see all manner of behaviours that hide in plain sight. Not to brag about my 16 subscribers (I love you all), but I’ve had people tell me they’re actually learning things from my blog. Like I’ve presented an optical illusion to them — ‘How on earth can you think you’re fat?’ — and I am helping them see what I do.
Which is not to say I have convinced people my self-image is accurate, and it is actually their view of my body that’s distorted. If you spent all your life walking on the floor and you saw me walking on the ceiling, you’d probably tell me to get down, weirdo. But to me, the ceiling is the floor; your floor is my ceiling. I could get down to your level or you could come up to mine. We could, in theory, see things from each other’s perspectives. It would still feel strange to go from a floor to a ceiling or a ceiling to a floor. You might be seeing things my way for the first time and still be thinking, how can anyone live like this?
That’s sort of what recovery feels like for me. Completely unfamiliar, topsy-turvy, upside down, makes no sense whatsoever, but everybody else is convinced their way is normal and mine is utterly insane. And it is, don’t get me wrong — I know logically that I have a problem. What I’m saying is I don’t feel like I do. I certainly don’t see it.
By definition, empathy is more than just recognising someone’s feelings — it’s vicariously experiencing them, too. I think that’s kinda overrated, though. I think the truly emotionally intelligent thing to do is to admit that you don’t have a clue. To walk with someone on their ceiling that they think is a floor, recognising that even though you have put yourself in their situation, you still don’t really get it. That’s not a crime. That does not make you unempathetic. It just means people are different. You’ll never know exactly what someone feels, or how they feel it, because they have lived a unique life up until this point, and so have you.
You don’t need first-hand experience of eating disorders to support someone with an eating disorder. You don’t have to see the hidden picture or feel comfortable walking on ceilings. Simply acknowledging that that person has a different experience, through no fault of their own, goes a long way.
I never did see that face in the optical illusion. I never understood why the director blamed my team. Nor did she ever come around to my point of view. I didn’t expect her to — not fully. Not ‘you were right, I was wrong’. But I expected her to try, and that was the bit she didn’t do.
I can’t bring you down from the ceiling, but I can see you up there. I can acknowledge that, to you, it’s the floor. I can understand that, from where you’re standing, my position looks unfathomable. And I hope you know that as scary and unfamiliar as the floor may be, it gets less scary and more familiar over time. If I can make it down here, so can you.
— my recovered future self, hopefully
If you need help
Always seek medical advice in an emergency. In the UK, you can call NHS 111 option 2 for mental health support. Find a list of helplines around the world here.
