“You're starting to look good.”
Those were the words issued by my abusive boyfriend when I was 18 years old.
Those were the words that suddenly lodged questions about my shape in my mind. Those were the words that started me down the path of an eating disorder.
He issued those words the summer after my freshman year. My parents were no longer able to financially support me for college so I was working 60 hours a week trying to save money for tuition; the stress was getting to me and I started to drop weight.
I'm not sugar coating things when I say that this ex was a really bad boyfriend. He preyed on me when I was working as a temporary receptionist the summer after I graduated from high school. He was about 25 years my senior (I know, GAG). And he clearly had issues. He set fire to or blew up (I actually can't exactly remember which) a family home. After coming North, he fell in with the Boston mafia. He had guns under his bed and was periodically sent on “assignment.”
One would think all of this would be enough to send me running and screaming but I just didn't have the capacity. I was young, unsupervised, insecure, and my childhood was replete with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which meant that my baseline for crazy shit was definitely off kilter. And quite frankly, I was starved for explicit affection. In high school, with one brief exception, boys only wanted to make out with me in private ("you're so exotic"…again, GAG) but not date me publicly because I was Asian. So when this person – at the beginning – started showering me with attention, even though there were a million red flags, I stayed. I stayed through the creepy stalking when we weren't together (he would later tell me about the various places he tracked and observed me). I stayed through the suicide threats and attempts when I didn't visit enough when I left for college. I stayed as he warped my perception of my relationships, which led to me growing bitter and hurting people I cared about. I stayed as he encouraged me to starve myself so I could someday, eventually, look good. I stayed for nearly 3 years.
It wasn't until junior year of college that I finally broke up with him with the final words, “If you don't stop calling me, I will kill you myself.” (Bold words, by the way. I had no idea how to do such a thing.) He stopped calling but he proceeded to stalk me and send evidence that he was doing so to six different addresses across North America for nearly 20 years. He grew bolder once I became a public-facing person via my blog Boston Mamas and went so far as to email me to inquire about my daughter and let me know he had adopted an Asian child (again…GAG). When he learned via my blog that I was moving, he started sending me real estate flyers with his face on them; both to my former and new addresses. I need to credit my therapist with saying something that put an end to my freak-outs and calls to the police whenever a piece of mail arrived: “Treat his correspondence as exactly what it is: JUNK MAIL.”
This is a very relevant yet roundabout way to get to the point that words matter. Sometimes when I think about the immense work it took to heal and free myself from this abusive relationship I cannot believe that those five words, “You're starting to look good,” had such a massive impact on who I was. Eating disorders are pernicious bastards; they trail and burrow and make you question one of the most beautiful gifts we have in abundance in the United States: food. Though I give myself grace and accept that I was doing the best I could at the time based on who I was at that moment, oh, how I wish I had treated those words and his toxicity for what they were: JUNK MAIL.
Last week, when my piece on radical self-acceptance was published at Boston Globe Magazine I only briefly referenced my eating disorder because I was already struggling with my word count, but in the context of that particular article on embracing my pandemic weight gain, that tiny mention felt like such beautiful, fitting closure to one of the saddest and cruelest periods of my life.
It's been a long road. I'm grateful that I now have the confidence and power to issue the words that shape my present and future.
