Jump to: Introduction, Part One, Two, or After the Bugging Bug

After the Bugging Bug

By Leonel Zorilla
with Ron Estes (BAFTTA representative)
Fremont High School

Homosexuality in High School

After being arrested twice, going to two psychiatric hospitals, one group home, and a corrective school for two years. I was finally comfortable enough to admit to myself that I don't mess things up, I'm not a menace to society, I am a more sensitive boy living in a society that is not equipped to deal with me. I now attend Lynbrook High School. The recent incident in Colorado does not surprise me in the least bit. As I walk by the rooms of my school, students call out fagot, homo, and fudgepacker. I didn't ask to be gay, I just am. We are taught to hate rather than respect minorities in this country. Sometimes when teens or children learn this they make the wrong decisions through fear. And until teachers, administrators and other adults intervene in our schools, the hatred, name calling and abuse will continue. But although it breaks my heart every time I am called fagot in school, I refuse to have hatred towards others as they do for me; after all then I would be just as bad as them. I only wish to educate people in their mistakes. And guide them if possible. . I am working on anti-prejudice group to combat many of these issues. All we need to fight fear is education on the subject.

Sometimes the name calling and the gay bashing from other kids gets so bad I still want to die. I attend a gay youth group in San Jose with gay and lesbian kids from other high schools around the Bay area. One of my best friends there is very feminine and is beaten up at school on a regular basis. Another one of my best friends there is afraid of such beatings; he holds all his sensitive feelings and emotions inside and because of this he is depressed almost constantly. And me, I'm just trying to let people know what's going on, and I won't stop until things change but don't get me wrong, although I am strong, the endless taunting in the hall ways, and having to take crap every time I show my feminine feelings hurts me more than words could ever express. I only have one thing to say to the ones at school who are so afraid and hateful of me. You didn't choose how emotional you where going to be, or who you would or wouldn't be attracted to; neither did I.

By Martin

Developing a shield of peace against anorexia

Somehow anorexia convinced me that if I was skinny, I would be less shy, I would feel more confident in my work, in myself and that my parents would be proud of me. So I started exercising more, at least one hour per day and tried to deprive myself of food as much as possible. Initially I was pleased that I could limit myself to just a banana and a salad in a day but anorexia progressively made the diet more and more demanding and would require that I don't eat for entire days, sometimes up to two or three days. After that time, if I started eating a bread roll in a day, anorexia would say "you've ruined it now, you may as well just binge and then starve yourself tomorrow". Or if I took a sip of juice, anorexia would make me focus on it for hours and feel terribly guilty: "you've ruined everything", "you've ruined everything", "you've ruined everything". I would spend enormous amount of time counting the calories that either I would eat or that I would see others eat. Anorexia would tell me: "if you lose a little more weight people will like you better, you'll be happier with yourself, you can never be too thin". Anorexia was particularly hard on me in school because it would constantly get me to negatively compare my body to others' and to not listen to anything teachers said.

As I progressively became more and more weak and depressed from the starvation, anorexia got me to use increasingly sophisticated tricks to avoid eating. For example, anorexia got me to tell my worried Mom that I would eat if she cooked a particular meal which was actually a meal I hated; it got me to drink phenomenal amounts of water to not feel the hunger; to not bring any money to school to make sure that I could not buy any food and to avoid the kitchen , groceries and restaurants. The rare times that I would eat, I would do so secretly and completely stopped spending dinner time with my family. I became more isolated with anorexia and angrier at myself because I could never reach the goal of being skinny. Strangely, I was never thin enough even thought I lost 25 pounds when my goal was only 10. Anorexia completely distorted my perception of my body. I actually hated myself even more than before because if I didn't eat, I felt grumpy and if I did then I'd feel angry at myself. In other words it was like a trap, whatever I did I felt bad: if I didn't eat my body felt bad and if I did eat I mentally felt bad. I became really desperate and tried diet pills, slim fast, and purging (especially when my mom ordered pizza which I love). "You messed up again" would say anorexia. I could not even enjoy eating what I liked any more, it was all torture. I felt light-headed, dizzy, always tired, short tempered and I just couldn't concentrate in class. But anorexia used those bad feelings to convince me to starve myself even more: "losing weight is the solution to all your problems", "losing weight is the solution to all your problems","losing weight is the solution to all your problems". It even got me to chart on my calendars the days I had succeeded in complete starvation. I realized later that anorexia brought the worst out of me; my mood was constantly going from one extreme to the other depending on whether or not I had eaten. Anorexia was monopolizing my life, stealing all my energy, it was always there like a strict over- bearing parent. School became incredibly hard because of my lack of energy and inability to concentrate when I was starving. But instead of abandoning anorexia, I abandonned my dreams of being a doctor! I didn't even really think about it or decide to do it, anorexia just blinded me, and convinced to give up everything for thinness. It would make me dream of modeling school instead and crave for people's compliment about how thin I was... And at the same time it would never allow me to believe any of the nice things anyone would say...

The more Marie-Nathalie and I would talk about anorexia however, the more I realized how untrue and distorted some of its ideas were. We spend a lot of time dissecting it's insidious tricks and exploring what I thought of anorexia's ideas. And actually, a part of me did think that looks were not so important. Once that became clearer to me, I tried different strategies to minimize anorexia in my life. For example, I convinced my mom to bring me to the health food store and buy soya milk and tofu; I was hoping that eating super healthy would be a compromise with anorexia and resolve my mental battles. But it didn't work. The part of me which was more accepting had to grow stronger regardless of what I ate. So I kept on saying "this week I'll try to take care of my body and eat everyday", and I wouldn't always succeed, especially at school where there was so much pressure to be thin, but I was trying. What also helped was that one day I met another girl in one of my classes who also felt like I did with regards to acceptance: "it's okay to be different, you can be your own person, you don't have to look a certain away" she said. Meeting her and then other people who didn't care about looks made a difference: I wasn't alone with anti-anorexia ideas. I progressively developed a Shield of Peace from anorexia: a part of me that didn't care about being thin, that didn't care about what people thought and that made it okay to stand up to social images. That part of me usually didn't last very long at first because anorexia gave me such a sense of accomplishment (it made me feel so proud of myself when I was able to survive without eating). But the debate continued in my mind between the voice of anorexia and the new louder voice of acceptance. Every time I talked about them, I realize how untrue some of anorexia's ideas were. Even if it was hard to believe that anorexia could actually kill me, I still started to worry about my health. Once in a while I had flashes of concern about the damages people were saying anorexia was doing to my body. It was hard to even be clear about those health dangers since anorexia got me to eat before my blood test and my visits to the doctor.

One day as the two voices were debating in my mind wether to use diet products, I decided to read the warning sign on my diet pills and realized that there was a risk of death. I immediately had a really big flash of concern about my health. I threw the diet pills away, quickly taking them one by one out of the foil to make sure anorexia would not get me to change my mind later. I had to act really fast because I could hear anorexia's voice saying "why don't you just keep them, maybe you'll want them later, don't you want to be thin?" I didn't let the debate go on in my mind because I knew anorexia would win. I had had a good day, had fun and was relaxed; so I intensely concentrated on my desire to be healthy. It was like a quest for a new beginning. For a couple of minutes there, I didn't care about what people thought, I was less self- conscious, and happier. I was proud of myself.

But anorexia hadn't given up on me just yet. Even if I wanted to start eating more healthy, I was very confused about how and when to eat. For example, when I felt hungry, anorexia would say: "you just want to eat for comfort, you can't deal with your emotions, you don't really need to eat right now, you'd be fine without it, it's just food, you don't really needed it "; when I would notice my lack of physical strength and stamina, anorexia would say "you're out of shape, you need to do more exercise"; when my aunts and uncles talked to me only briefly, anorexia would make me think "being skinny is the best way to get attention, they'll be more interested in you if you lose weight" (when really, starvation made me lifeless and grumpy). It was amazing how anorexia made certain ideas seem reasonable when I was alone with it and how when we talked about them in therapy, they looked so completely illogical. I realized that anorexia had much more power on me when I was alone and isolated because it would get me to dwell on it. It was so intense at times that I just wanted to numb myself and escape anorexia's nagging ... so I drank a couple of times.

The concerned part of me however grew stronger every week. There was now a constant battle in my head: anorexia would say "everyone is better and prettier than you; if you were skinnier, you'd be happier" and then the other part of me would say "it doesn't matter how you look, not everyone looks the same, I don't care what people think ". Even activities that were supposed to be fun triggered major battles in my head. For example I registered to a dance class at school. I thought I would enjoy dancing. But unfortunately there were mirrors in the classroom and anorexia got me to constantly compare my body to others, it got me to hide in the corner of the class so that my body wouldn't be seen in the mirror, to obsess about how everyone looked and in particular to feel very critical about my inability to be elegant. Of course given that I was so involved with anorexia thinking, I would always end up missing out on what was being taught. Anorexia would then repeat in my mind "see, you're making a fool of yourself, you're so fat and not elegant". It was awful.

As time went by however, I got stronger and stronger at resisting its' stupid ideas. Then came the unforgettable Inspiration Day. That day for the first time in over 3 months, I managed to eat three little meals in one day! Anorexia still got me to measure everything, calculate the calories and feel guilty but I kept on thinking "I CAN do this ". The best of it all was that I noticed all the benefits: at school that day I felt alive, I sort of re-connected with my brain and felt more confident, I even raised my hand in class and participated more; I was happier, in a better mood and able to reclaim my humor. I also didn't have my usual headache and I had energy... people thought that I was on drugs but I was actually being myself. I realized that when I fed my body, I felt better about myself and had more energy to actually fight anorexia thinking. I had fun, was participating in activities and kept myself busy; anorexia just could not sneak in. That day, even when I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw and thought that I looked normal. I remember thinking "I can be successful without being skinny, my friends don't care about looks. Being skinny does not necessarily mean you will be happy; I don't want to become someone who just tries to please others, I want to be happy based on who I am as a person not based on how I look ". Anorexia would get back to me and say "you're hypocritical when you think that way because you know that people will like you better if your skinny". I reminded myself that this wasn't necessarily true, especially if skinny made me grumpy. I knew that if I had succeeded in being healthy for one day, then I could do it again.

After that I decided to participate in the programs' body image workshop and was amazed to hear other people struggling with the same thing and the messages of thinness in our culture. Our group became united against the problem through different exercises and that was really powerful. Later when Anorexia would try to get to me, I thought of the other participants as invisible yet very real allies. I also started carrying around with me the list of negative effects anorexia had on my body and I stopped charting the starvation success days on my calendar. As I felt more and more alive with a better nutritional pattern, anorexia disappeared for patches of time. I slowly reconnected with myself, with the real Julia. Even my parents and friends noticed that I had more energy, that I smiled more, I was more interested in the world, nicer to be around, had a lot more stamina and that I took better care of myself. I decided that I wanted to enjoy life and appreciate eating. I even allowed myself to cook a pumpkin bread. At first anorexia didn't want me to eat it because I couldn't figure out exactly how many calories it contained but I ate it anyway! I discovered that it was fun to have energy! I progressively reclaimed my ability to listen in class and tried to stop focusing on other's bodies. I also made new friends, anti-anorexia friends. It was easier to talk to people and to make jokes when I had more energy. Anorexia was reduced to taunt me only in front of the mirror and at lunch times. And that was still a struggle. For example, it made my decisions of what to eat very complicated by filling my mind with all these questions: "do you really need all these extra calories? Everyone else will think you're a pig if you eat a sandwich, it's better to just take a plain piece of bread; why are you spending all this money for food, it's better to save it". But I stood up to it most of the time and I even bought juices instead of drinking water. I would just imagine the taste of the sandwich as compared to the taste of plain bread or I would compare myself to the others who ate more than me. Sometimes I would remind myself that I would do better on my test in school and that I would be healthier if I ate a real lunch. That worked!

Then I started having dinner with my parents again and debating the stuff I learned in school with them. I was still counting my calories but I felt less and less guilty. I would tell anorexia "I've earned it, I've done a lot today; I enjoy life; I shouldn't have to worry about calories, school is plenty of worry". By then, I really felt I had reclaimed 80% of my life from anorexia. I also got into this idea of returning to natural habits! I threw away the fat burning cream and slim fast and all of that into a big garbage bag and decided to eliminate chemicals in my life. I looked just fine even without makeup and without lipstick. I realized that real true friends would stick by me regardless of how I looked.

Now anorexia doesn't affect me anymore. I'm not always happy with the way I look but I don't care so much. I nurture and enjoy myself so much more. I also have much better friends with whom I can have deep conversations. I realized that anorexia was like an illusion, like another world where things were not true, where you had to surveil and compare yourself constantly against impossible standards. I don't weight myself anymore and I can't imagine ever being like that againŠI enjoy life so much more now! Anorexia lifestyle was not true happiness, it was just robbing me of my life. Now, I became one with my body. I think of myself as pleasantly plump and I laugh at anorexia when it tries to sneak in my mind. Some days it still tries to re-interpret my hunger and distort my perception of myself, especially if I had a conflict with someone or problems with my boyfriend, but it doesn't work because I focus more on my health and I know it's tricks. I treat my body like a good friend, like a little kid. I've learn that if you're good to your body, your body will be good to you. And that's what's really important: being one with your body.

By Julia