The first time my family doctor mentioned the term anorexia nervosa, I was 23 years old and I didn’t really believe it. In my imagination, anorexics weigh 30 kg and have skin on their bones. At the time, I was not yet aware that this disease was an eating disorder and that there were several stages.
It all starts with involuntary weight loss. In 2016, I was on an internship as a graphic designer in a small creative studio in Milano. This is the first time that I have left my family cocoon in the Paris region to live alone. Italy is kind of THE country when it comes to food. There is this tradition ofappetizer, a small cocktail/buffet that we take at the end of the afternoon. All that to say that I take advantage, without excess, but I don’t deprive myself. However, surprise, I lose weight. It may be because of the scorching temperatures or because I walk a lot. I don’t know. What I do know is that I see the needle of the scale gradually descending. In two months I lost seven kilos, and I like it.
For a long time, I have had a complicated relationship with my weight. As a child, I was dumpy and made fun of for that. For my entry to college, I had therefore forced myself to lose 20 kg, to go down to a weight that I considered more suitable. So this new line acquired effortlessly in Milan, I want to keep it. And slowly, I put in place my “ritual of the balance”. Nothing very alarming, I just watch my weight regularly.
“Something I can control: my weight”
It was on my return to France, at the end of August, that things got complicated. I am defending my master’s degree in communication strategy at the Ecole de Condé, in Paris, in November, and I get along badly with a professor. Stress builds up and to compensate, I turn to something I can control: my weight. I start watching my food. I count calories. The water is felt on the scale, I drink less.
I push the vice as far as medication: apart from my contraceptive pill, I no longer take anything, not even a Doliprane, for fear of getting fat. Eating becomes painful, so at home with my mother, I do it quickly. In public, when I don’t dodge outings, I develop creative subterfuges to deceive such as “chew-spit”. Social isolation begins. It was my shrink who pointed it out to me long after, but the number of social ties that revolve around consumption, whether food or drink, we have no idea.
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