Thoughts from Bed Rest
By: Sydney Freidin
tw: eating disorders, suicide
Looking back, I have struggled with mental health issues my entire life. However, I never considered myself as someone who struggled with them until the age of 19. Being a competitive gymnast since the age of 3 combined with living in an orthorexic (extreme obsession with “healthy” foods) household, I have always had an interesting relationship with food. As a young kid, I thought it was normal to eat all organic food and nothing with high levels of sugar. I got excited to go on airplanes because that was the only time I was allowed to have ginger ale. Although my parents weren’t overly invested “gym parents”, I was raised on the idea that “my body was my tool” and I needed to feed it “clean” foods.
Inside the gym, eastern European adults controlled every inch of my life as training 25+ hours a week left me in their gym more than in my own house. The messages I received about food and my body were appalling. I was told I was a bad person for getting my period.
It was drilled into my head to only eat a piece of chicken the size of my palm and two pieces of lettuce after a 6-hour practice. I was brainwashed to listen to them out of fear that they would hurt me if I didn’t comply. Ultimately, their inability to care for me as a human for years on end left me on a bender of my own self demise.
These rules around food got even stricter when I got injured at age 16. I developed compartment syndrome in both of my calves and had to get bilateral fasciotomies on both of my calves at the same time. Due to surgery, I was out of gymnastics completely for at least 6 months and then in and out over the next two years. During this time of decreased exercise, I became obsessed with what went into my body. I started cutting out certain food groups and then meals, and then snacks. Once I became more mobile, I added cardio into the mix.
I did not grant myself permission to eat unless I had done “x” amount of sets or exercised until I could not physically go any longer. Just like clockwork, every Sunday I would wait outside the Rec center at 7:20, because I had to be early to everything, and be the first one in the gym door at 7:30. My freshman Sundays morphed into an extra day of exercise that I had convinced myself would give me a “one up” status in the gym. Food and exercise rules had completely taken control of my life.
Isolating social issues with my teammates was the catalyst my freshman year for my eating disorder to blossom. I couldn’t control my friends, my school exams, or my injury recovery, but I could control what I ate. At this time, I still had no clue I had an eating disorder. Things spiraled really fast and in April of 2018 I was officially diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. At age 19, my athletic trainer pulled me into a room of 5 different medical providers who sat me down, diagnosed me with anorexia nervosa, and told me I needed to call my mom. This, hands down, one of the worst conversations I’ve ever had to have. My mom ended up coming to Tucson where we jointly lived in a hotel room for 1.5 months, so that she could oversee my food intake. I hated my parents and everyone else making me eat because I was convinced I was fine. I told myself “this is who I am” and “this is what it takes to be a better gymnast”. These were all lies my eating disorder told me to keep me sick.
Over the course of the next year, it only spiraled more. When we would travel for gymnastics meets, I would cry after team dinners to my trainer about how awful I felt because I actually ate something. I was freezing all of the time and I had no energy to do anything. I am still so thankful that I did not get seriously injured during that time because, honestly, I was a walking liability. As my sophomore season came to an end, I got the flu. My body was clearly telling me it could no longer keep up with my behaviors, and someone had to intervene. I got into a yelling match with my parents after a meet and, by them, my trainer, my dietician, and my therapist, I was given the ultimatum that I either had to go to treatment or quit gymnastics.
I was in PHP and IOP treatment for almost 4 months. I ate the food and I talked in groups/therapy. I thought I was recovered. Although my body was stable, my mind was not. I went back to college and things slid even faster than last time. Gymnastics was pulled and I replaced that with excessive running and then severe depression/anxiety. Let’s face it, an eating disorder normally does not work alone. I also suffered from depression, anxiety, PTSD, SI, self-harm, and orthorexia. Once gym was taken away, the flood gates opened. All of the sudden, my traumatic past with gymnastics exploded. It began to wreak havoc on my life and it got to the point where I felt like life was not worth living. Admitting that is extremely challenging; however, it is the truth. These disorders seem to impact every nook and cranny of your life until you almost cannot take it anymore. Due to my PTSD and loss of gymnastics, I was engaging in behaviors left and right, and this time I knew that I was doing it. Treatment had given me the awareness to know I wasn’t making the recovery choices, but I still felt like I had no choice.
At the end of 2019, it was very apparent I was not doing well. Therefore, in January of 2020, I made the decision to take a gap semester and later on medically retire from gymnastics. Between injuries and my eating disorder, it was not safe for me to be doing the sport anymore. This was the hardest decision I have made in my life thus far. After making this decision and lots and lots of tears, I decided to go back to treatment. This time, however, I went to residential treatment.
I lived in a facility for weeks and was in therapy constantly. Although it was super challenging, it was so needed. Afterwards, I stepped down to the PHP and IOP program where I really did the “work”. I dug deep into my trauma, behaviors, core beliefs, family dynamics, etc. because I knew those were the root cause of my eating disorder. At the end of the day an eating disorder really isn’t about the food. It is about all the underlying issues that then get projected onto the food, which for me was a lot of gymnastics trauma. After 6 months in treatment, I finally graduated. All of my hard work had paid off and the following morning I walked into two separate reconstructive hip surgeries on my left side…because athletes don’t take breaks from hard things.
With Covid in full swing and still being on bed rest, I ended up completing my senior year virtually from home and graduating in May of 2021. As I was becoming more mobile post-surgery, my eating disorder tendencies began to creep back in. With the loss of my gymnast and student identity, I clung to my eating disorder as a safety blanket. Sadly, this wound me back up in treatment for 6 more months and this time not by my choice. My treatment team told me that I was not in the mental space to be making medical decisions for myself, and therefore I had to follow their recommendation. For the first 6 weeks, I was in complete denial and was pissed at them for making me go. However, after a few months, I got on board and started to turn things around. This time I had the goal in mind of getting my right hip repaired and I knew I needed to be nourished to heal properly from the surgery.
As I was 2 weeks away from graduating from treatment and reaching my goal of getting my right hip repaired, my extremely close family friend, Katie Meyer, died by suicide on March 1st. It rocked my world. She was the last person I ever thought this would happen to, yet right before my eyes, she had disappeared. Most people when they think of suicide or self-harm think that the person doesn’t want to be alive. That honestly couldn’t be farther from the truth. I believe that suicidal ideation, or at least for me, developed because I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to live a life free of pain and since that did not seem possible, it felt at that time I needed to find a way out. That is how suicidal ideation begins.
On March 28th, I had the second of two reconstructive hip surgeries on the right side. As I am on bed rest now, all I can think of is Katie and how so many others lost their lives because of the failure of the NCAA. My club coaches and the culture of gymnastics told me never to speak, never to feel happy, never to cry, never to be excited…basically to be a robot. I was to be seen and definitely not heard.
Even during my time in college, I always wanted to say the “correct” thing as I was representing an entire university every time I stepped out onto the mat. Realizing that I now am in control of my own voice has been one of the most empowering things in my journey this far. By the grace of God, I am still here today. Do I still struggle with my eating disorder and my mental health? Yes. However, I know that change only happens when people speak their truth and that is why I choose to be a voice for those who lost theirs or are not quite ready to share theirs yet.
