Not a lone struggle: Maryam's story

My heart dropped. Did they just call me fat? There must be something wrong with me.

This is the thought that clasped onto my mind for almost 2 years. Little did I know that not only was fat not a bad thing, but also that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I was diagnosed with anorexia at 14 years old. I thought what I was doing could change my life for the better, but what truly changed my life was recovery.

Walking into that cold treatment center, I initially thought they were simply going to give me some medicine and tell me some therapy things (they called them coping skills there) I should do daily. On the contrary, that place ended up being my home for 10 weeks. I remember the thoughts I had when I went to see the psychiatrist at the treatment center for the first time. He was Indian, so I was extra worried that he would judge me for being a Pakistani girl with an eating disorder. "He's probably thinking 'how could this Pakistani girl get an eating disorder, something must be wrong with her,'" I thought.

I reflect back on that thought and grimace at my ignorance about eating disorders. I treated myself as if I decided I wanted an eating disorder. I remember when I first began doing behaviors my mom had come into my room and asked me if I had an eating disorder. My dad was there and he said something along the lines of, "Stop saying things like that. Eating disorders happen to skinny white girls. Have you ever seen an anorexic?" I quickly agreed with him and became defensive. That line stuck with me for a while, so being diagnosed brought up a lot of shame. Of course, it wasn't my dad's fault, but rather the fault of a society without awareness. I wonder sometimes that if my family knew what eating disorders really were, maybe I could've stopped before I got to where I ended up. But I've learned the 'what ifs' don't change the past. Rather, it's important to remember that the 'I wills' can change the future. So instead, I tell myself now that I will try my best to decrease the amount of people things like this happen to, and hopefully one day it won't happen to anyone anymore.

When I finally began to accept that my disordered eating behaviors were in fact disordered, my family got a letter in the mail. It was from our insurance company. In the past, these letters were bills that detailed what insurance had covered for my treatment and what we had to pay. I looked at them from time to time and was always shocked at how expensive treatment was. Lucky for me, I thought every time, at least we don't pay all of that. But this letter was different.

I opened it, expecting the same bill as always, but instead I found a list of reasons why I was perfectly healthy. "Patient is compliant with care." "Patient's weight is stable and sufficiently restored." "Patient has a regular menstrual cycle." It's important to remember that I had been in treatment for about a week and a half at this point. How did they know that anything was regular at that point? Not a single professional in the treatment center agreed with the statements in that letter. But for some reason, an insurance company was allowed to make statements about my health that over-rid even those of professionals in eating disorders. Nothing had ever baffled me as much as this fact. For the next few days I went to treatment, many things were happening in the background.

For one, my parents were paying for treatment out of pocket. I felt the stress in my parents voices everyday I got home, and I listened as they quietly whispered to each other at night wondering how they would maintain such expensive treatment. The second thing was insurance negotiations. All of the people that were on my case at the treatment center, in collaboration with my parents, worked on contacting my insurance company and attempting to convince them to restart coverage. They told me that they were experienced in this and that I didn't have to worry. How many times had this happened before for them to be experienced in this? I couldn't even imagine. And the third thing that was occurring in the background was my thoughts. I had already been comparing myself to the people that were at the center with me ever since I came in. I felt that if I was going to have an eating disorder then I might as well do it "right". Right being that I make sure I fit the stereotypical image of an eating disorder. But now, it seemed I wasn't even worthy of comparing myself to them, because I wasn't sick at all. For someone like me, not anywhere near recovered, the only answer in my mind was to go back to my disordered behaviors so I could get "sicker".

On certain days, we would go outside behind the treatment center to enjoy some fresh air. There was something like a river (I think it was a bayou) behind it with flowers on the ground in front of it and a little bench that sat behind the flowers. The day after I had made my decision to return to my behaviors, I sat on that bench and thought about it. What did all of this mean? Did I really not need recovery? Was what I was doing okay? I had one group of people telling me one thing and another group telling me something else and I was in the middle, all alone. I had always been a pretty logical person, so it made the most sense that the ones who were actually professionals in eating disorders were correct. Then what was wrong with that insurance company? At this point, of course, doing something on the scale of creating a nonprofit had not entered my mind. But what had was that something was not right with this system, and it couldn't stay this way, especially if I wasn't the only one that had to go through something like this. Lucky for me, after countless negotiations with our insurance, they restarted coverage. But my decision while sitting and feeling all alone on that bench stuck with me all throughout the rest of my recovery. And that's how I ended up where I am today.