Art by Ashton Powers (me)
Eating disorders can be very deceiving. On the outside it can look like you finally have it all together and your emotions in check, but on the inside it’s a completely different story. It’s very easy to hide your feelings and trick yourself (and others) into believing that you are better. This is what happened to me. After a year and a half of recovery, I felt like I was ready to get back into modeling. I’m sure to everyone else it seemed like I had it all together, but that was all a mask.
Throughout my recovery, I didn’t want people to know how I felt and what I was going through, but I decided this time to be more open about my struggles. When I got back into modeling this past month, I made sure that I was upfront with my roommates in the model’s apartment and told them about my eating disorder. I was hoping to come across as someone that had it all together. It didn’t take long for me to see that I wasn’t as put together as I thought. I began to realize that even though my outside might be right for modeling, it’s what was going on inside my head that matters the most. This has probably been one of the biggest lessons I have learned and it took me flying across the country to figure it out. Even though my body was cooperating and I looked the part, emotionally I had to be ready too. So I decided to take a break from modeling and I feel like this is one of the best decisions I could have ever made for me.
I’m not saying that everyone with an eating disorder should hide out for the rest of their lives; that’s the complete opposite of what I’m saying. It took me getting back into the modeling industry, facing my fears, going through the measurements in the agency, castings with clients looking me up and down and judging me by my appearance, being around other models that were not very sensitive to what I was going through, and living with the pressures that I put on myself to admit that I still wasn’t ready. Modeling is a very intense and pressure-filled job…and two years ago I stuck it out and tried to work through all the pressures at the worse of my eating disorder. I’m so glad that this time, I was able to see that it wasn’t right for me right now. I was taking giant steps backward in my recovery. I started going backward in my eating, all of the things I never wanted to relive. My eating disorder had surfaced again and I wasn’t ready.
A few years ago, I put my outside before my insides and I didn’t care what was happening to me emotionally. Thankfully now, I saw it for what it was. These are lies from my eating disorder that were controlling me again and I knew that I had to get out of that environment so I could take care of me. This time, instead of just worrying about my outside, I for once, thought about my inside…I cared about me.
I went back into modeling not just to prove to myself that I could succeed in the industry despite my ED, but also to help other girls that might be experiencing the same things I have. But in my mind, I thought I had to have everything together in order to help people, but that is the farthest from the truth. One of the main things I’ve learned is that I can help others in my brokenness. I don’t have to be perfect and have it all together to make a difference. I thought this blog would be showing girls how I finally “have it all figured out” or how I completely overcame my eating disorder in just little over a year. The truth is that I am not anywhere close to being fully recovered in my eating disorder and I might not ever be. That doesn’t mean that I can’t try to help others while I’m still recovering myself. I know that I will always worry about my outside, but in order to start feeling free from ED, you have to first focus on the inside-out.
No Comments