Queerly Embodied

By Shelby Yaffe

It was the summer of 2016, and I was at the hospital again. My nurse was eyeing me warily as I explained what I was feeling – “I feel like I’m living in a dream. I wake up and it never feels real. I look in the mirror and don’t even recognize myself. I look down at my hands and they aren’t my hands. Something is wrong with me.”

The nurse insisted, as other nurses had several other times when I had presented at the ER that summer, that they simply could not help me. “Your symptoms sound psychiatric, but non-emergent,” she said. “Follow up with your psychiatrist and continue seeing a therapist.” I went home dejected, twitchy, and afraid. What the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I snap out of whatever state I was in?

The summer of 2016 was not only significant because it was the first summer when I was completely dissociated. It was not only significant because it was the summer I was diagnosed with PTSD. 2016’s summer was also the very last season during which I would ever sleep with men.

I had been living outwardly as “straight” my whole life up to that point. I was twenty-three at that time and had never had a girlfriend or any significant relationship with a woman. I was constantly jumping from one entanglement to the other, always with men. I didn’t realize back then that I was self-punishing, continually attempting to relive my trauma, and experiencing deeply internalized homophobia. But I did realize that summer, even in the midst of dating and having sex with men, that I was a lesbian.

But I did realize that summer, even in the midst of dating and having sex with men, that I was a lesbian.

Shelby

When I was thirteen, I started experiencing symptoms of an eating disorder. I looked in the mirror at my then-tiny body and hated that my stomach stuck out. I also looked at the out-of-control nature of my emotions and thoughts, and quickly realized that I could numb myself by restricting my intake of food and controlling how my body looked. It started with throwing away my lunch at school instead of eating it. Then I started eating smaller and smaller dinners and breakfasts, pleading with my mother not to make me eat too much. Eventually, my restriction went full-blown, as did binging behaviors. My mother would find me in the kitchen late at night, eating everything in sight, and ask me why I hadn’t just eaten more at dinner instead of gorging myself on “junk food” after the fact. I didn’t have a good answer for her, as I had no name for my eating disordered thoughts at the time. I simply knew that my eating patterns had become out of control.

The same year my eating disorder started taking hold, I had my first real crush – the kind of teenage crush marked by butterflies in your stomach, a zoom in your chest, a desperation to be around the object of your affection. My crush was, to my dismay, a girl in the grade below me. I was at a Christian school and had been raised in a conservative evangelical Christian household, and I believed back then that being gay was sinful and wrong. I could not understand the feelings that I was experiencing. How could I possibly be so attracted to this girl? What was wrong with me? Why were my thoughts so sinful? Why was I so bad? I didn’t realize until much later in life that my eating disorder had developed as a way to cope with my raw fear and self-loathing in the face of my blossoming sexuality, that much of what I was trying to numb was a reality that I was not ready to deal with.

My eating disorder had developed as a way to cope with my raw fear and self-loathing in the face of my blossoming sexuality.

Shelby

Throughout my teenage years and early twenties, my eating disorder became a prominent part of my life. I started purging regularly at fifteen, but occasionally experienced times of remission that lasted for months. Because I often felt that my behaviors could be overcome by sheer willpower, I was always refusing to seek any real help. My eating disorder reached a new peak in 2015 – the year that I attempted suicide. I had reached a point of helplessness and hopelessness and despair. It wasn’t until I was lying in a hospital bed after my attempt that I determined that I needed to go to rehab. I realized at that point that I had completely spiraled out of control and that I needed to address whatever pain had led me to my eating disorder in order to stay alive.

Throughout this dark time, I was constantly in a relationship with a man. I forged deep and meaningful friendships with the men that I dated, and often enjoyed their company and their attention, but I always knew that something about these relationships was “off.” I couldn’t understand why I felt numb and separate from my body during sex, and guilty and filled with dread after each sexual encounter. I had a child when I was twenty, and though I was happy being pregnant and absolutely in love with my daughter when she was born, I always had a sense that I was going the wrong way about being in relationships in the wake of becoming a mother. I wanted so desperately to be with a woman but felt I owed it to my daughter to give her a father figure. I was experiencing such a confusing mix of internalized homophobia, compulsory heterosexuality, guilt, and shame. I never figured out how to deal with any of this, other than running back to starving myself and purging every time these feelings came to the surface.

When I was engaged at twenty-two, I confided to one of my best friends at the time that I desperately wished that my wonderful fiancé could turn into a woman. He was a dear friend and someone I loved and cared for, and yet I knew in the deepest part of my soul that he was not right for me. Even as I looked through Pinterest at pictures of lesbian weddings while I was planning my own, jealous of the women I saw who were in love with each other, I did not comprehend that all of this was because I was gay, and I still did not connect this feeling with my eating disorder behaviors. It wasn’t until that summer of 2016, when I was dissociated at a constant rate and learning in therapy about how trauma affects the brain, that I put it all together.

While I am not comfortable sharing the details of my trauma here, suffice it to say that I experienced a lot of it throughout my life. My therapist, who I have now been seeing for four years, helped me understand that I was using sex and relationships with men as a way to relive my trauma and ‍to feel like I could go back and control it. I won’t go into the meat of why this worked for me, but I will say that all of these behaviors were intertwined in a giant web of self-harm – my purging, my sex life, my relationships, and all of my other negative behaviors were all ways of hurting myself in the name of numbing and self-punishing simultaneously.

The truth is that my eating disorder was my way of escaping from myself. Bulimia was, for me, the lock on the door of the closet I was hiding in.

 ______________________________________

When I went to inpatient rehab for the first time at the age of twenty-four, I had just broken up with my first girlfriend. The relationship had been absolutely devastating to my psyche because, even in the midst of intense enmeshment with my girlfriend, I was not ready to admit that I was a lesbian. My relationship with her was different than any relationship I had been in before, and I could feel it. I was completely embodied when I was with her, not anesthetized or dissociated, and it was the most uncomfortable feeling I had ever experienced. I didn’t want to be gay, didn’t want the truth to be the truth, and so I ran from my strong feelings for her by diving deeper and deeper into my eating disorder. By the time I got to rehab, I was ragged and in the deepest pain of my life.

I finally, blessedly spoke the words I had needed to speak to a close friend I met at Eating Recovery Center on a beautiful March day. “I am a lesbian,” I said. “I have always been a lesbian. But I don’t think anyone is going to believe me.”

It took me several months to slowly parse out my guilt and shame around being out of the closet, and even longer to fully separate from my eating disorder, but the two went hand in hand, like inseparable twins that cannot be without each other. I couldn’t believe my relief as both of these issues left me, and even as my dissociation and symptoms of PTSD from my trauma began to ease and lighten. I was no longer stuck in a cycle of self-punishment and self-harm through pretending to be heterosexual. I was finally able to just be me, to be real and honest with those around me. It was like chains had been broken. I thanked God and still thank God every day for my freedom from my eating disorder and from the closet. The two were so unbelievably stuck together. In learning to stay in my body, to love and appreciate myself the way I was, I found freedom from the voices that had been telling me I was fat and out of control for over a decade. It was the most beautiful freedom I had ever felt.

It took me several months to slowly parse out my guilt and shame around being out of the closet, and even longer to fully separate from my eating disorder, but the two went hand in hand…It was the most beautiful freedom I had ever felt.

Shelby

Today, I have been out and proud for over two years, and I have an amazing life to show for it. I have a wonderful wife who adores me and my daughter. My relationship with her is so completely real and grounding, nothing like the psychologically traumatizing relationships of my past. On top of my newlywed bliss, I have been eating disorder behavior free for over nine months. I am the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been, and it’s all because I finally left the closet behind.

Eating disorders are found at absolutely astronomical rates in the LGBT community. Theories on why this may be vary, but I believe that the shame that society puts on LGBT youth is to blame. If we can come to a place where no one has to feel ashamed for being queer, where the closet is left behind early in life, where our families, churches, friends, and greater communities welcome us and our sexuality and gender differences with open arms, I believe that we can find a deeper embodiment and a greater love for ourselves. I know that this was true for me. I know that my liberation from my dissociation, my eating disorder, the effects of my trauma, and so many other issues came at the cost of being true to myself. No matter who accepts or rejects me, I know that this decision to come out and live as the lesbian woman I am was the greatest and healthiest decision of my whole life. This Pride Month, I am grateful to be proud. I am so, so grateful to be out of the closet and to have lived through everything that brought me here. Most of all, I am grateful to be free from my eating disorder. I cannot stress enough that this freedom is the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced. I hope that all of us suffering from eating disorders, especially those of us who are queer this month, can lean into more freedom and deeper embodiment every moment of every day.

Editor’s notes:

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please reach out to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Helpline. Call (800) 931-2237, or use the “Click to Chat“ option. If you are experiencing a crisis, call 911, or text “NEDA” to 741741.

If you are an LGBTQ young person in need of support, reach out to the Trevor Project’s 24-hour TrevorLifeline at 1-866-488-7386, TrevorChat, or TrevorText.

Thank you so much, Shelby, for contributing this vulnerable, well-written, and compelling personal story of finding freedom both in your sexuality and from your eating disorder.