Specified). An EDNOS is an eating disorder that does not meet the criteria for anorexia nervosa (defined as: the inability to maintain one’s body weight within fifteen percent of their ideal body weight, based on height and age; and the absence of a menstrual period for 3 consecutive cycles), or bulimia nervosa (defined as: binging and purging at least twice a week for at least three months, or purging by vomiting, excessive exercise, fasting, or misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications). To have an EDNOS means you have some of those anorexic or bulimic traits, whether it is the obsessing over food, the periods of restricted food intake, or the occasional binging-purging cycle. Fifty-two percent of ED sufferers fall under the EDNOS category, and EDNOS have the highest mortality rate of all the EDs, whether it is heart failure or suicide. EDs are sneaky, quiet, and destructive.
I had strategies. I told myself I wasn’t hungry, that the rumbling in my stomach made me stronger. I became a liar. I told my parents I had already eaten when I didn’t. I didn’t have to tell my friends anything, since I had shed my friends as though they were extra weight, keeping me down. My anxiety of school made it impossible for me to eat until the school day was over. If I did eat before school, I would feel nauseous and out of control all day. So I daydreamed my way through high school, mostly of sandwiches, milkshakes, and desserts, sometimes of Thanksgiving banquets, but mostly of things easily obtainable on the lunch line or nearest drive-thru.
Psoriasis began to plague me my sophomore year in high school, bad breath, my junior year. My breath would often smell metallic, like I had been sucking on a penny. Years of skipping meals and dehydration were catching up to me. The end of my senior year in high school, I weighed 112 pounds. I was going away to college, an eight-hour drive from home, where I would know no one. There would be no one to make excuses to. My plan was to starve myself in peace, and finally earn that anorexic badge of honor. I still felt sick, but I was getting more comfortable with my appearance. I realized that, in a certain light and from a certain angle, I was kind of pretty. When I could speak to them, boys liked me. It was a true coming-of-age period in my life, but not more important than my food preoccupation. Nothing was. I let the numbers on the scale determine how I felt about myself. If I wasn’t the thinnest person in the room, I was not happy, and took it out on my present company.