A Picture Speaks a Thousand Lies

I have been thinking about writing this for a while. Since just before Christmas actually. Christmas is a bit of a weird time for me. 95% of me just loves it, I love buying gifts (and receiving gifts is good too, let’s not pretend), I love watching Christmas films and getting excited, I love playing Scategories with my family and laughing with them uncontrollably because Grandma though Venezuela was called Benezuela (true story). And thankfully now, I love Christmas dinner and just the whole food scene around Christmas. Give me all the food.

But there is 5% of me that remembers those two consecutive Christmas’s not long ago. Those Christmas days that felt like any other day because I was kind of incapable of being excited. While I suffered with anorexia, two years of my life went by where I wasn’t myself and things were very different.

It was Christmas 2014 and I was at the beginnings of my eating disorder. I hadn’t really admitted to anyone, including myself, that I had a problem. I’d lost an extreme amount of weight and my family knew I was unwell, but nothing had really been formally said or decided. Every year, my Dad buys my Mum, my sisters and me a “Christmas dress” that we chose ourselves and wear for Christmas dinner (after taking plenty of pictures, of course). This year was no different. I had my new dress on and asked my sister to take a picture before we sat down for dinner. I think she was uncomfortable about taking the picture… I didn’t look like myself, and it was like we were pretending that everything was ok. But nothing was said, she took the picture, and I posted it on Facebook. It didn’t take long for that picture to get more ‘likes’ than I’ve ever had on a photo before, and I got several comments about how amazing I looked. The illness hadn’t fully taken hold yet so I looked small, but still pretty good. I’m smiling; I look happy.

What happened after that picture was taken was a completely different story, though. I sat down ready for Christmas lunch and my plate was put in front of me. It was a child’s plate with a tiny portion of food, just a few vegetables and a slither of turkey. It stared up at me, and I stared back. I felt that familiar lump in my throat and got up out of my seat, rushed through the next room and headed for upstairs. My Mum followed me, apologising. She didn’t mean to offend me, she didn’t think that I could handle a bigger portion, she still wanted me to be a part of our family Christmas dinner without feeling threatened by a big plate of food. I sobbed because that wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t offended by what she’d served me, I was just horrified that it was even happening. I couldn’t believe or understand how I’d got the point where, at the age of 20, I was being given a half filled side plate for my Christmas dinner.

My Mum convinced me to come back to the table, where my grandparents comforted me by telling me they had small portions too, which only made me feel worse; it felt like everyone was watching me, like I was trying to keep a secret but everyone already knew.

We pulled crackers and put our paper hats on and tucked in to our food. Except I couldn’t. I picked up my fork, moved some vegetables around my plate, cut my turkey into bite-size pieces and watched as my lunch went cold and uneaten. The rest of my family carried on eating and smiling, while I sat at the end of the table feeling like I was about to have a breakdown. I remember so well that sense of panic and fear.

When everyone finished their lunch, the plates were cleared away, and my beautiful sister, who had seen this whole thing coming, brought out a plate of fruit she’d prepared for me “just in case”. I cried again; partly with love for her, and partly again in disbelief. Why was I so scared to eat my lunch, why could I only manage an apple, what was happening to me.

But the positive comments kept coming on my photo. The likes count went up. In a few months time they would all be able to see the cracks and realise I had a problem, but for a moment, everyone outside of my home was fooled.

Reflecting on it now makes me sad. I regret that I missed out on Christmas, that I put my family through a horrible time, that I tried to lie and pretend that everything was ok, even to myself.

Pictures are moments in time, but not always moments of truth. They are constructed and they tell whatever story we want them to. I think that’s worth remembering when we see pictures of other people, maybe people that we envy because their lives seem perfect. But what I think is more important to remember is that we can’t hide from our own truths. We can create whatever digital life we like but our lives carry on way after the pictures are taken and the ‘likes’ accumulate. Whether you want to create a false impression or not doesn’t matter, what matters is that if you do, you don’t believe it yourself.