Maggie Bertram, Senior Program Manager for Student-Led Initiatives and Speakers Bureau member at Active Minds, talks about her struggle with an eating disorder and how we all play a role in keeping each other here.
When I was 22, I didn’t really care whether I lived or died. I didn’t intend to die; I didn’t believe I would die, but I also wasn’t trying to live, and as each day passed I lived a little less.
I was struggling with severe anorexia nervosa, which was jumbled up with major depression and OCD. My illness had fully taken over. Physically, I was just a shadow of what I used to be, and I didn’t recognize or like the person who looked back at me in the mirror. See, being thin was never what my illness had been about. It was about compensating for failures; it was about proving my mettle; it was about having control.
At first, anyway.
Eventually, it couldn’t be any of these things because the illness took control.
My eating disorder poisoned my mind not only against itself but against my body. It kept me from feeling hunger, from sleeping when I was exhausted, from taking a day off from my exercise routine when every muscle and joint was screaming for me to stop. It made me feel faint. I was cold all the time. My thinking became one-dimensional; I became irrational; I became someone I didn’t recognize both inside and out, and that’s what made it so easy to withdraw.
I just wanted to disappear.
My most important relationships suffered because I was always irritable, and I couldn’t do anything about the one thing all of my friends wished I could change. My eating disorder became my only friend as well as my master. It was the kind of friend my parents probably always hoped I’d avoid making—the friend that always got me into trouble. The friend that alienated and scared all my other friends away.
There are few things stronger than an eating disorder that has taken root. It takes a very persistent sort of love to kill the disease before it kills the person. I was blessed to have parents and friends who exercised that love without fail through arguments, treatment, recovery, and all of the struggles since.
Friends and family members who are concerned about someone they love come to me all the time. They ask me what they can do when that person is shutting them out, getting angry, and turning into an entirely different person. My first answer is: be there. Let them know you’re not going anywhere, and you’ll be there when they’re ready to talk.
This is the point at which folks thank me and turn to leave. If I have my wits about me, I stop them and tell them there’s one more thing.
They have to talk to each other.
They have to share all the little bits of information they each hold. They have to create the support network that the person who is struggling can’t. They have to decide who among them is willing to be the “bad guy” when that person needs to be pushed to make a change; and they have to decide who among them is strong enough to listen to the fall out from a confrontation like that and never defend the “bad guy.”
It takes a team to pull someone back from the edge. My family, friends, and advisors wove that support network, they talked to each other, and they played their roles. They spoke up, they persisted, and they led me to the place in my mind where the desire to live had gone to hide. They supported each other, they supported me, and love lived on as did I.
I will never cease to be grateful for the life they gave me the chance to live.
I’ll never cease to be grateful for the life I chose to live.
If you're in crisis, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
When I was 22, I didn’t really care whether I lived or died. I didn’t intend to die; I didn’t believe I would die, but I also wasn’t trying to live, and as each day passed I lived a little less.
I was struggling with severe anorexia nervosa, which was jumbled up with major depression and OCD. My illness had fully taken over. Physically, I was just a shadow of what I used to be, and I didn’t recognize or like the person who looked back at me in the mirror. See, being thin was never what my illness had been about. It was about compensating for failures; it was about proving my mettle; it was about having control.
At first, anyway.
Eventually, it couldn’t be any of these things because the illness took control.
My eating disorder poisoned my mind not only against itself but against my body. It kept me from feeling hunger, from sleeping when I was exhausted, from taking a day off from my exercise routine when every muscle and joint was screaming for me to stop. It made me feel faint. I was cold all the time. My thinking became one-dimensional; I became irrational; I became someone I didn’t recognize both inside and out, and that’s what made it so easy to withdraw.
I just wanted to disappear.
My most important relationships suffered because I was always irritable, and I couldn’t do anything about the one thing all of my friends wished I could change. My eating disorder became my only friend as well as my master. It was the kind of friend my parents probably always hoped I’d avoid making—the friend that always got me into trouble. The friend that alienated and scared all my other friends away.
There are few things stronger than an eating disorder that has taken root. It takes a very persistent sort of love to kill the disease before it kills the person. I was blessed to have parents and friends who exercised that love without fail through arguments, treatment, recovery, and all of the struggles since.
Friends and family members who are concerned about someone they love come to me all the time. They ask me what they can do when that person is shutting them out, getting angry, and turning into an entirely different person. My first answer is: be there. Let them know you’re not going anywhere, and you’ll be there when they’re ready to talk.
This is the point at which folks thank me and turn to leave. If I have my wits about me, I stop them and tell them there’s one more thing.
They have to talk to each other.
They have to share all the little bits of information they each hold. They have to create the support network that the person who is struggling can’t. They have to decide who among them is willing to be the “bad guy” when that person needs to be pushed to make a change; and they have to decide who among them is strong enough to listen to the fall out from a confrontation like that and never defend the “bad guy.”
It takes a team to pull someone back from the edge. My family, friends, and advisors wove that support network, they talked to each other, and they played their roles. They spoke up, they persisted, and they led me to the place in my mind where the desire to live had gone to hide. They supported each other, they supported me, and love lived on as did I.
I will never cease to be grateful for the life they gave me the chance to live.
I’ll never cease to be grateful for the life I chose to live.
If you're in crisis, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
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