Living with Regret
Mike Kraft is a former sport journalist and member of The Emilee Connection- Adult Eating Disorder Support Group. He is intelligent, witty, kind and determined. Mike’s talents and attributes shine through and enlightens us as he openly shares reflections about his journey with Anorexia.
Mike can be reached at: mkraft418@gmail.com
I have been living with an eating disorder for 18 years. It’s hard to fathom that my eating disorder is old enough to vote and would be a freshman in college. But that’s the reality. As a 32-year-old male just a couple months away from his 33rd birthday, I’ve lived with my eating disorder longer than I have lived without it. For years, it was my only “friend.” It was the only thing that understood me. It was my safety net. It was my shield. It was my shadow. We were inseparable. It’s the only relationship I’ve had that’s lasted more than a few months. It promised me happiness and I believed it; I just had to do everything it said without asking questions. And I did.
I’ve had a very love-hate relationship with my eating disorder. I loved that it shielded me from the pain that life can hand you. Being devoid of any emotions kept me from experiencing the heartbreaks that come with rejection, whether it be relational, societal, or work related. My eating disorder made me risk-adverse. But I hated that my eating disorder kept me from enjoying life. I don’t have the memories that most people my age have. While others have traveled the globe, met their significant others, started their own families, landed a dream job and became homeowners, I’m still trying to find my identity. Eighteen years dealing with an eating disorder has left me well behind schedule for someone my age. But despite all the pain that my eating disorder caused me, I always found myself crawling back to it. We’ve broken up several times only to have me on my knees begging for it to take me back. I broke up with my eating disorder for the first time in 2009, only to return in 2014. We split up again in 2015, only to rekindle around 2018. After a brief break in 2019, we had been going steady since the fall of 2022. We have again gone our separate ways, and hopefully I’m mature enough to know that nothing good is waiting for me if I’m ever enticed to go back down that path.
Even though I’ve viewed my eating disorder as a relationship partner, it’s also been my biggest enemy. I’ve been fighting a war with my eating disorder for the better part of the last decade. To make matters worse, I’m not fighting the standard war where the enemy can be defeated through conventional methods. This isn’t like trying to overcome an addiction to alcohol, cigarettes or drugs where you can claim victory by avoiding those items altogether. For me, it’s the exact opposite. I have to face the discomfort multiple times a day every day for the rest of my life. Unlike sobriety, I can’t ever have a social media post saying, “today marks 10 years since the last time I’ve eaten” because I’d be dead. War against an eating disorder is like going up against the Predator from the Predator franchise. You’re overmatched from the beginning and you’re not going to be able to beat it through shear brute force. A 1-on-1 battle of strength is never going to result in victory. It takes the help of others and strategy to take down this monster. And if you do manage to defeat this beast, another will eventually take its place, learning from the failures of its predecessor. For some, the war never stops. For others, the monsters eventually stop coming, but you are always on guard for the day they might return. Even if you eventually win the war, you never feel comfortable announcing your triumph. That’s where I found myself right now. I’ve defeated the enemy in front of me, but now I anxiously await to see if another stronger foe will take its place. Having fought this war for so long, I also know that even if I’m able to win in the end, I’ve lost some key battles that I can never get back. War never changes, but it changes people, and my war has left its share of wounds that have yet to heal and may never.
My eating disorder has left permanent physical and mental impressions on me. Even if I never again succumb to its temptations, the damage has already been done. Thankfully, many of the ailments my eating disorder has leveled on me can and has been reversed. When I went into the hospital, I had every physical issue you could imagine that would come with having a dangerously low body weight. Internally, my pulse was low. My heart had literally shrunken in size. There was fluid around my heart. Blood tests had shown severely elevated liver enzymes and dangerously low glucose levels. Externally, my skin was gray. My eyes were lifeless. My hair was brittle. My muscles were too weak to lift grocery bags or climb a flight of stairs without holding onto the railings for support. I was alive, but not living. Through months of proper nutrition, all of those issues have dissipated. My pulse and blood pressure are normal. My heart is clear. My liver is once again functioning properly. And my glucose levels are no longer a concern. My skin is back to its normal pasty white complexion. My eyes have life in them once again. My hair is thick and growing way too fast. And I can lift bags of heavy groceries and climb flights of stairs without any issue.
Those are the positives, but that doesn’t mean that I got away unscathed after years and years of abusing my body. I still have a debt to pay and my eating disorder will come to collect eventually. I’m only 32, but the wear and tear I’ve put on my body puts me real age closer to 70. A bone density scan I had last year showed that I have the bones of someone between the ages of my parents and my grandparents. I feel fine now, but I worry about my quality of life by the time I hit my 50s. I worry about the possibility of needing knee, hip and ankle replacement surgery in order to stave off the crippling arthritis that is coming my way. With all the exercising I’ve done in the past, I worry about how much cartilage I have left in my knees. I worry about the bones in my spine and if I’m going to experience nerve pain as a result of slipped discs. I know modern medicine has made advancements in the area of bone health and osteoporosis may not be as permanent as it was once thought to be, but I still worry about just how much my bones can take moving forward. Am I ever going to be able to play any recreational activities moving forward? Am I even going to be able to walk without pain in 15 years? Drinking 4.5 cups of milk every day doesn’t put my mind at ease either. I may be preventing further damage to my bones, but I’m not reversing it.
The one area I’m paying for the most is with my teeth. Fun fact: just because you’ve never purged before in your life doesn’t mean that your teeth aren’t affected by having an eating disorder. To date, I’ve had three teeth extracted, had another come out on its own and have two other partial teeth because parts of them broke off after biting into hard pieces of food. None of them have been replaced because implants are absurdly expensive without dental insurance. My teeth are riddled with cavities to the point that more than half of my teeth are not salvageable and will have to eventually be extracted. Throughout my childhood, I only had one small cavity that could be fixed with a small filling. I’ve always practiced proper dental hygiene by brushing my teeth and using mouth wash (OK, I didn’t floss, but who really does?). Apparently, when you starve yourself, your body is going to look anywhere to pull nutrients from, including your teeth. My body stripped away the enamel and the calcium in my teeth, leaving them unprotected and exposed to decay, and they eroded as a result. This is the physical ailment that has left me with the most regret. I have to be careful of eating certain foods due to the brittle nature of some of my teeth. At this point, I go into each meal half expected to finish my meal with less teeth than I did at the start. Every now and then my teeth will remind me of their cavities that need attention. There will be days where my mouth will throb in certain areas or there will be a tooth that is sensitive to the hot and cold.
But the physical scars from an eating disorder are nothing compared to the mental scars. Now that I’m in recovery and my body and mind are much clearer and free from my eating disorder, the feeling of regret is overwhelming. It’s not the regret of recovering – although that can surface some days too when I’m having a difficult body image day – but instead the regret of succumbing to an eating disorder in the first place. I’ve spent a lot of time recently struggling with what my eating disorder took from me. I’ve learned the hard way that time doesn’t wait for anyone. Friendships, relationships and jobs all move on. For me, I didn’t hit the pause bottom on my life these past six or so years. I wasn’t able to just hit the resume button and everything went back to the way it was before this all started. Instead, I feel like I was erased, that I didn’t exist during that time period. I feel like I’m starting over from scratch, that the first 26 years of my life have no value today. I feel like a phone that hasn’t had a software update in ages. I’m an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 in 2023. I haven’t held a job in the journalism field since 2015, and therefore my skills and resume in the field are completely outdated and my only way back into the field is to take an entry-level position like the one I had fresh out of college in 2012, along with entry-level pay and benefits. Some friendships I’ve had dating back to high school or college have evaporated due to my lack of interest in being social. Some of those friendships are salvageable, but others are not. Everybody has a different tolerance level when it comes to dealing with someone suffering from mental illness. I appreciate those that have continued to support me through all of my struggles and I don’t blame those that disappeared because truth be told I would have done the same thing if I was in their shoes. People have their own lives to lead and can’t pour energy into something that isn’t resulting in anything positive. People tend to have a low tolerance level for things they either can’t physical see or understand.
My eating disorder has left me lacking in some of the most basic of social skills. Holding a conversation is not something that comes natural to me. For years, I’ve been surrounded by others struggling with eating disorders as well as medical professionals who only talk to me about my struggles. I can’t remember the last time I participated in a social activity that didn’t involve family members. In fairness, I should shoulder the blame for that because up until now, I’d never agree to make plans with anyone even if I was available. There have been several instances in the past where I have lied about being busy just to get out of a social event. My eating disorder made me a creature of habit, and therefore I didn’t want to do anything that would break my routine, leading me to turn down just about any request that came my way. I was an extrovert growing up, but my eating disorder made me an introvert. I used to be the kid that would gather up the neighborhood kids after school to play baseball in the backyard or football in the street. I’d be the one responsible for coordinating trips to the movies or arcades. But now I’m the one who can’t even bring themselves to send someone a text message because I’m so out of practice with social interaction.
I’m envious of the lives of most of my friends on social media. While I understand that most of social media exists to just highlight the best moments, most people have what I want and haven’t been able to achieve because of my eating disorder. It’s hard not to compare myself to my friends. Many have gotten married. I haven’t even been on a date in over a decade. Many have one or two kids. I don’t think there’s going to be a Mike Kraft Jr. roaming this Earth (I wouldn’t actually call my son Mike Jr.). Many are homeowners. I still live at home with my parents. Many have traveled the globe. I have left the state once in the last four years. My eating disorder has always kept me from traveling because of my discomfort around eating at restaurants or eating foods that don’t have an easily discoverable nutritional label. While many of my friends have been a model example of the life anybody would want to aspire to, I have been the shining example of what happens if you aren’t quick to correct your mistakes.
Long story short: I regret my eating disorder and all the memories I’ll never know I could have had as a result. My therapist tells me it shouldn’t be labeled as regret because we can’t regret things we didn’t choose. I agree that nobody chooses to have an eating disorder. You don’t sign a contract stating that you’re going to allow an eating disorder to take over every aspect of your life. No one would sign that contract if an eating disorder had to lay out all the specifics it entailed. Even though we don’t choose to have an eating disorder, I felt like I chose to keep it. My eating disorder hasn’t been sneaking up on me for the last 18 years. It may have caught me by surprise in the beginning, but once I got an actual diagnosis at the age of 19, I feel like I actively chose to remain sick when I had every opportunity to get better. I brushed off concern and pleas from my parents to get help. I turned down many recommendations from my primary care doctor to go to residential treatment. Every day I made the active decision to remain sick despite knowing exactly what I was doing to my body. I chose every day to eat less than my body required and ignored all the hunger cues. I chose every day to exercise until I had nothing left even though I knew it was overkill. And it didn’t matter if I was sick or injured. I’d never seek help until the very last moment, when my quality of life was so poor that death would feel like a welcomed relief. Procrastinating on anything wasn’t in my DNA. I would be the person that would complete a school project the day after it was assigned despite it not being due for three weeks. But seeking help from my eating disorder was like submitting a term paper at 11:59 p.m. when it’s due at midnight. I didn’t regret my actions at the time, but I do now because of how much I see that it’s cost me. So even if the feeling isn’t allowed to be regret, it’s certainty sadness and anger. There is no joy in experiencing all of those lost years. I’m sad about losing my experimental years. I believe that a person’s 20s are for experimenting and taking risks to determine the life you want to lead and getting out all your immaturity and recklessness. By the time you hit your 30s, you have nestled into a lifestyle that best fits you and you start establishing a career. I had an amazing last few years of college and I can’t thank the people I met at Oswego State enough for everything they did for me and how memorable they made my college experience. I had my eating disorder in college, but the bonds I made in college were strong enough to soften my eating disorder’s grip on me. They allowed me to have the best college experience imaginable. I have wonderful memories from my time in college as well as from my time in sports journalism in North Dakota and Maine, but they stop there. I honestly don’t think I can recall any good memories I have from 2015 onward. Anytime I’m asked to remember a time that I was truly happy, I go back to my late teens and early 20s. I barely even remember any specific memories past 2015 because every day felt exactly the same. It was like Groundhog Day, but the calendar kept moving.
Losing many years of my prime saddens me, but it also angers me. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but I feel like I got scammed by my eating disorder. I would always wonder how people got duped by such an obvious scam, like receiving an email from a Nigerian prince asking for your bank information so they can send you millions of dollars, or receiving phone calls from the cable company stating that there is something wrong with your account and they need your social security number and your mother’s maiden name in order to fix it. But I fell for a scam, and I lost things that I can’t get back. Sure, it sucks to get scammed out of money, but sometimes you’re able to recoup what was taken from you. I can’t get back those years I lost. I’m not going to stumble across a magic lamp and wish to go back 18 years ago and never succumb to an eating disorder. I’ve got to live with what I’ve lost and it’s difficult. It’s always going to feel like a part of me is missing, that my life is always going to feel incomplete no matter how successful I become in the future. In the end, I’m happy I chose recovery, but I regret that recovery was a necessary chapter of my life.
Written by: Mike Kraft