The courage it takes to share your story might be the very thing someone else needs to open their heart to hope
 Katie on move in day, 2018 Katie Regittko, they/them, co-chair I remember spending months dreaming about attending UNC. Not for the old well sips and basketball games and frat parties, but because of the 24/7 gym access and lack of support and watchful eye over my eating. The school year came, and with dredged up disdain for ending up so close to home and the stress of a new environment, so did my eating disorder in full force, worse than it ever had been before. It took on new faces, rearing its ugly head, until less than a month into second semester I was in the hospital and subsequently a treatment center. Summer 2018, I planned to only do what I called "light restriction" during the school year. So how did it get so bad so quickly? There are some hypothesis I have: still dealing with rejection from my dream schools, being away from my dog, isolating in a single room, overworking myself, the "little fish, big pond" analogy, etc. But, at the end of the day, colleges are breeding grounds for eating disorders, especially at huge schools with a heavy athletic and fraternity/sorority presence, the textbook UNC definition. Parts of seemingly "normal" college culture are steeped in diet culture and promote eating disorder behaviors. My first year of school, I thought it was normal to fast all day before a night of drinking, either to get inebriated quicker or to look a certain way in the outfit I had planned. Dining halls are plagued with large calorie counts in front of every option, and you can't get past a day without hearing about the "freshman 15". Comparison runs rampant--in class among your peers' knowledge, and also about the way other people live their lives. It isn't uncommon to hear about how someone spent hours in the gym or skipped eating before class. Meal plans are set up to make it easier to skip meals, and I won't even get into the horrid LFIT requirement. When I look back at these things, on my first year of college, I have a lot of compassion for the person who struggled so badly and quickly. Not only was I transitioning from a graduating class of 30 students to an undergraduate body of 18,000, I was also grieving the death of a friend, trying to find my own way as a semi-independent adult, repairing the relationship with my parents, balancing a full course load, and wading through all the college diet culture bullshit. And I wish so badly that I could go back and tell myself to take it easy, everyone is just figuring things out. So for the incoming freshman, who might have struggled with an eating disorder before or is currently struggling, here are some things I wish I could go back and tell Katie on their first few days at UNC:  1. Find a community Shameless self plug, but Embody Carolina became a lifeline for me in college. Having a group of people who were focused on eating disorder advocacy and body liberation helped me to not only challenge some of the diet culture I saw on campus, but also eventually brought me the strength and resources to reach out for help. UNC is filled with hundreds of clubs for any interest you could think of--find one and become a regular. Those people will become a lifeline for you, and life-long friends.  2. Develop a consistent eating schedule I can't stress this enough: eat and eat often. UNC classes need your full brain power. Get into the habit of eating three meals a day and bringing snacks with you. You're probably going to be walking more than usual, so eating enough is even more imperative. The fun thing is that eating can be really social in college, go to Ramsgiving or go on an excursion to Franklin street with friends!  3. Steer clear from the gym for a while Gym culture in college is something else. Going to the gym just to go to the gym can be a bad idea if you have a history with eating disorders. If you want to move your body, opt for one of the many opportunities for joyful movement on campus. Join a dance club, play volleyball in one of the quads, hit balls on the tennis court with friends, or do fun fitness classes through the Student Recreation Center!  4. Opt for a lighter course load This is the number one thing I wish I did my first semester. With a full ride scholarship, I felt the pressure to "make it count" VERY hard. So I filled my schedule to the brim with classes I loved and were interesting, but no matter how amazing they were, the combination of 18 credit hours and just trying to figure things out was a recipe for disaster. I would even recommend just taking 12 credit hours your first semester and seeing how that feels, then revisiting in the Spring.  5. You Belong Here The imposter syndrome at UNC can be real, especially before you find your place. But you did it, you're here and going to one of the best public schools in the nation. It is real, and you are amazing for getting here. There is no rush to fit absolutely all of the traditions and expected actions into your first couple of months. Take care of yourself first, keep doing the things you love to do (make sure to make time for them). Some days, you're not going to want to wake up a 6am to stand in line at the Old Well and that's okay. You're a Tar Heel, like it or not.  6. Help is available, seek it out sooner rather than later There are so many resources for help and extra support right here on campus and in the community. Chapel Hill has a free support group for people with eating disorders, and CAPS has a free body image group for students. Campus Health has an eating disorder treatment team, and there are a number of amazing providers in the surrounding area. UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders is right there for centralized outpatient support and higher levels of care. Carolina House and Veritas Collaborative are right down the road for higher levels of care. And the Embody team is always here for peer support. Eating disorders and starting college are both incredibly difficult feats that sadly often go hand in hand. But, you are not alone. Your body needs all the love and care from you as you start this new chapter of your life, and so many of us are here to give compassion and support.
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 Katie Regittko, they/them, co-chair
The next ten years of your life will rock your world in ways you could never imagine. All of your dreams will come true, and then they’ll come crashing down. But you'll realize there are bigger, better, more fulfilling dreams out there. Right now you’re beginning to break apart. Things are hard, I know, they always have been. They’ll get a lot harder before they get better. You’re meeting friends who teach you about dieting, self harm, eating disorders. For the first time, you don’t feel alone, but you don’t know how alone these things will eventually make you feel. Middle school will be hard. Your body, trust, and soul will be violated—I wish you didn't have to grow up so fast. In seventh grade, you’ll start thinking about your sexuality & gender, and you realize just how cruel people can be. It'll be hard, but it will also mobilize you and bring you to activism, which you'll find will save your life and give it meaning in many roundabout ways. The world will harden you, but your communities will show you how to be soft again. You get let down by two different high schools, but Junior year you'll find your home at a little school in Cary. You make it work. You become the person you dreamed of being who works with multiple non-profits and runs a bunch of clubs at school. Student body president, valedictorian, national councils, federal volunteer awards, published books and articles (see that teen vogue next to your bed? you actually will be in it one day and it's won't be because you're skinny), times square billboards, the works. This never makes you as happy as you think it might. It actually kind of breaks you, multiple times. Eventually you’ll admit to yourself and slowly others that it was a front, that you haven’t been yourself your entire life. You got the marks on your resume and the pictures to prove it, but the memories are shrouded in that pesky eating disorder. You'll fall in love with a university and get rejected. You'll fall in love with losing weight and lose everything. You'll fall in love with being sick and think your life is over there. Hold on, because one day you will fall in love with your life, or at least parts. You adopt a dog in high school who saves you over and over. At points, she'll be the only thing keeping you going, and for that and so many other things, I'm grateful for her. She’s lying next to me snoring now. We regulate (if you knew what I know now, you'd roll your eyes at that). You bounce in and out of "recovery", sometimes believing yourself and others not. The eating disorder is always there in some way. You get really good at lying, and it's not a good thing: eventually, you start to forget the difference between the story you tell other people and the one you're living. In college, you'll describe yourself as an "eating disorder Clark Kent". After freshman year, you start to embrace authenticity and find the strength to speak your voice and story regardless of its messiness. You go to your last choice college and continue to make it work. Things are rocky. Things hit the fan over and over. I don’t want to scare you with how many times you’ll find yourself in hospitals and psych wards and treatment centers. The labels of "treatment resistant" and brushes with death. But you make it through. People who don't give up on you trickle into your life and you slowly let them. That psychology major dream? It was never your dream. You never wanted to be a therapist, you just wanted help. You fall head over heels in love with Sociology in high school (I know, it’ll make more sense later on) and eventually shift your specialization to criminology in education and then to healthcare & disability studies. Revolution runs in your veins. You never stopped wanting to help people through it all—that wish only became stronger the more you struggled. It will become more sustainable when you focus on your own healing. One day, you’ll get tired of your own bullshit. You’ll realize no one is coming to save you and in a last ditch effort you make the hard decision to do it yourself. It doesn’t get easier, until sometimes it does. One day you’ll find yourself waking up and the first thought is “what’s for breakfast?” not “what’s the number on the scale?” You’ll find forever friends and travel and repair your relationship with your parents. You’ll cry and scream and numb and suffer but make it out alive. You’ll start doing work that you’re passionate about and that truly helps people. You connect with your ancestry and convert to Judaism after a life-changing trip to Europe. You abandon music in a hard moment and find it again years later in a cold treatment center one Saturday morning among people who make you feel heard. Oh, and baby, you’re not a liberal. I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself later in a few years (pick up a book about the Zapatistas for a head start). You’ll become a person you hate, and then a person you are proud of. You find your way, again and again, stumbling, but never giving up completely. And I’m proud of that. I’m proud of you at ten, proud of the ways you learned to adapt and cope and survive in your youth, and even more proud that you eventually learned other ways, even if I don't always use them yet. There will always be another way. Hold on, sweet one. It’s a long and painful ride, but there are some highlights and eventually you make it through. I’m writing this in an apartment in Carrboro with a roommate who’s one of the best people I’ve ever met and a pug & two rats. This little family you've built makes it harder to give in on the bad days and makes the good ones more meaningful. Tomorrow I’ll celebrate the end of my teen years with cake and alcohol and food and movies because we can do that now. We always could (okay, easy on the alcohol). With love, Katie, 2020 |
