Egg Freezing and the Surprising Aftermath on My Eating Disorder
Did freezing my eggs help my recovery?
Two months ago, there I was, fully transcended into a Dashboard Confessionals, moody teenager on my parent’s couch in Horseshoe Bay, Texas, injecting myself twice daily with fertility drugs and losing the will to live.
Dramatic perhaps?
To that, I say until you’re newly single at 35 and having your mother steady a needle on your iced-red skin for you to poke yourself with some sort of nuclear fertility liquid that disperses like a hot streak of sharp fire in your blood stream — don’t come @ me.
Between the hormone shifts, daily 3-hour round trip doctor visits, skyrocketing abnormal estrogen levels (thank you PCOS), and the general emotional weight of feeling the need to do all this in the first place (because of both age and aforementioned break up) - I was in it.
You know what I mean? Like, in it in it.
Face down in the moment, so to speak, but just really - face down on the couch. Napping frequently amidst an unsorted, nuked bedroom of crap I’d dragged back from my Canadian break up. And begging my mom for Dairy Queen Blizzards in the nearest town.
I’d love to tell you I was showering daily, but I wasn’t. I’d love to tell you I took on all the TikTok recovery mantras and gave myself little mental health walks, but I wasn’t: the pain in my ovaries too aggressive to do much else but lay and complain of my faltering back.
Side note story time:
What surprised me most in that period is that I thought I’d already reached the metaphorical emotional rock bottom when six weeks prior, I’d returned to Montreal to sell an entire apartment’s worth of barely-used furniture/appliances.
While there, sorting through all the useless apartment crap and my ex conveniently missing out on all the liquidating fun (to which yes, I’m still salty), I’d sold our ceramic coffee mugs and plates to a woman in her late 40s and her elderly father.
I’d lied and told them I was moving back to the USA with my partner. Because obviously I was living in some wild west mental landscape and was making it all up as I went along.
But as they haggled me over $10 CAD, I broke down right there in the kitchen of my echoing apartment when the father leaned over, put his hand on my shoulder, and said “You feel sad to me. I think maybe you are divorcing and I’m sorry if this is true.”
He didn’t even make it to the next sentence before tears began to pour down my face. Snotting there right over the beige coffee mugs. Couldn’t even contain myself enough to protest:
“We’re not even divorcing!” I would’ve said. “We never even made it that far even though I’m 35, and yes definitely should be at the life stage to be divorcing not just breaking up like the inward teenager I continue to demonstrate!”
I just stood there instead, unable to look either in the eye and whimpering pathetically.
They hugged me. Which naturally caused me to only cry more. And after the woman apologized profusely on behalf of her father’s candor, they paid the extra $10 CAD, and left promptly thereafter. To which, I then likely smoked a cigarette on the balcony, because after years of giving up smoking, as with all bad vices I’ll find a reason to sneak one when shit gets tough.
Ok. End of story time.
—
So, like I said, I thought rock bottom was found and roamed.
But I guess no one tells you rock bottom can also be some weird jagged erosioned cliff you keep stumbling down.
So, six weeks later, there I was on my parents couch like a rapid dog, defeated but hyped up on fertility meds. And craving ice cream a lot. Like, I was either dreaming of that or of every single one of my exes. Sometimes, they even had ice cream in the dream.
It was a personal rock bottom. Ehem.
Moving on.
Prior to starting this process, I’d thought a lot - like A LOT - about the effect it would have on my body and body image.
To those that know me well, and probably to those who don’t know me that well but have read literally anything I’ve ever written online, I’ve had a wild ride with my eating disorder over the last 17 years.
17 years - yikes. Writing it makes me stop mid-sentence. That’s so long.
Anyway, what I eat, how I eat, how I work out, when I work out, how long I work out - the whole cycle has been up and down, around and around.
For a few years after treatment, I was in a pretty solid position. Recovered enough to move along in life, be chill about exercise, and only have a few menty b’s about body image and the likes.
But, then I sold all my stuff and bought the van in 2021, and I think the whole upheaval of “home” left me clinging to whatever little control I felt I had left. I ended up right back in the no-fly zone of Anorexia that 2021 fall and while I’ve trended upward since, I’m probably often balancing wobbly on the “worrisome” totem pole which I’ve kind of just accepted as the new norm.
At my worst in 2021, I knew I couldn’t stay in what I was doing or I’d go back to treatment and frankly, I just didn’t want to make time for that. I had too many trips lined up, too much client work, and I really just didn’t want to go through the whole ring-a-round again in my 30s. Like being confined to an inpatient center is not a Bermuda beach vacation, I can assure you that. I didn’t need Nurse Betty telling me yet again to “get in line” like I was in a middle school gym class.
Truth is — I know when I’m sick enough. Recovery has given me that awareness. I don’t need the validation of being told. And I didn’t really want to be that sick — I just wanted to be, like, a little sick, which is far different than when I was younger and felt like I could never win at the battle of Anorexia.
I wanted to be a little sick so I knew I had the control, but not sick enough to be talked to about it. So, I recovered enough to keep doctors and friends from saying anything. And enough so I didn’t feel physical side effects and on I went on my merry way the last few years.
It’s been a weird point. I have enough tools and awareness to know that being sick sick is a recipe for chaos, and also just like… boring. I’m so bored of anorexia. It’s predictable.
But I still fancy the perceived control of ‘not needing’ food the way others do. The quiet confidence of “oh I know I worked out more than most of this room this week because I. AM. DISCIPLINED.”
I’m not saying it’s right. Or okay. I’m just saying it’s where I’ve lingered at in the last few years.
My eating disorder has not consumed me in the way it had the decade prior. Since like early 2023, I haven’t felt as distracted by calories consumed, haven’t been freaking out if I missed a few work outs or a months worth, and haven’t like been staring at myself in every angle in every mirror. it’s just … I continue to hold a belief I’m meant to look a certain way. And while I can tolerate a degree of lack of tonedness, if that ‘way’ is effed with too hard, then there will be issues.
And those issues will entail some sort of mental breakdown of “you aren’t working hard enough, dedicated enough, you got too lax, too lazy, too la de da and now you’re going to give up all your hopes and dreams and never have energy again and you’ll end up in bed all day every day with no drive!”
I really was a cruel product of the early 00s wasn’t I lol? I read one too many US Weekly magazines and that messaging just absorbed so hard that it’s hard to differentiate body and mind.
I define myself by how much energy I have. It’s my favorite part about me frankly — my wide-nomad-eyes and fanciful steps. As I age, I worry about that energy level lessening via back pain, this fun new little heel pain I’ve had the last 3 months, or some other force of circumstance I can’t prevent. Illness or the normal wear and tear.
Not everyone needs as much novelty as I do to feel alive.
I envy those people.
Because it’s in part that novelty seeking that keeps me alert to food and about staying active and what that means to go on ‘performing’ or ‘producing’ the way I’ve done.
In turn, it all fits into the eating disorder and vice versa.
All that to say, it was of course a point of consideration when I chose to do egg freezing.
Once I was informed of what I feel are the fairly aggressive measures I’d need to do in order to care for both the eggs and myself through the process, surprisingly it wasn’t the weight I was told I’d gain or the increased hunger I’d probably feel, I was actually more taken aback when I learned I couldn’t do any real exercise for weeks during or following it.
Oh FFS, I thought. This will be it. The end of an era. I’ll never recover. I’ll be the energizer Bunny who’s finally crapped out. The little engine who in fact couldn’t.
It didn’t halt me from making the choice to freeze my eggs, mind you. I was determined, which again speaks to the level of recovery that says “I’m mostly in recovery … but all this shit still bothers me” lol.
The process itself also didn’t actually affect me body image wise because it was out of my hands and I’d signed up for it. I put on weight exactly as I was told I would. I looked ‘different’ than normal for a bit but I was truly fine with it. I can’t explain why but I felt I was doing something bigger for myself so it didn’t matter. I admired the sweet novelty of egg development taking place right there in my body. I was fascinated and wanted the eggs to be healthy.
I mean my God, I was spending a fortune.
So, I didn’t mind all that. People have asked how I did with the weight gain assuming that’d be the hard part but … it really wasn’t.
The hard part was the anticipation of once egg freezing was done.
This kind of nuanced anxiety of how long it’d take to get back in shape and feel like myself again. WILL I EVER GET BACK TO ME?
Will this be the beginning of the end of my energy era? Will I become old and feeble? Will I hate myself after this is done and be disgusted at every mirror?
You get the drift.
Predictable, anxious, and boring - these thoughts of mine:
2 months ago, I was sure they’d be part of me for months to come.
But today, I can firmly - weirdly - say they’re not.
And that, my friends, is what has been wildly interesting when putting a magnifying glass to this whole egg freezing and eating disorder experience.
Despite the fact that I am very much still not working out regularly, my hunger has remained notably increased, and my jeans are tighter than they’ve been in years:
I’m weirdly ... fine? Okay? Unconcerned?
I mean I’m not jumping for joy about the whole thing, but I’ve weirdly been unbothered.
Maybe even, dare I say, slightly relieved?
I think it’s hard to understand how much pressure you can put on yourself to juggle everything in your life until you let a couple of the balls fall.
Between moving out of Canada, working up to 12 hours days, tending to my cat, moving around in a van, being in Colombia, being in the UK, being in the US, moving around in general for work meetings/events, preparing for egg freezing, keeping up with friendships, processing a break up, losing everything else I owned when the storage unit company auctioned all my shit on accident, and exercising regularly — I think I sort of hit a wall of productivity so to speak.
Simply put, I have not felt arsed to put that much pressure on myself again now that I’ve remembered what it feels like to live a little - even a tad bit - slower than I have been the past three years.
I just really don’t want to go to the bloody gym after working from 8-6. I want to go on a slow meandering walk and soak up the last days of summer heat.
I don’t want to tone my ass with Pilates. I want to catch dinner with a friend when I pass through Chicago.
It’s difficult to put this all into words.
But, the biggest outcome of egg freezing on my eating disorder has really been that it has given space for me to relax - even just a tad - more than I was prior to doing it.
It forced me - literally - to slow down and that aftermath has then caused me to actually choose to stay slow down over the last two months.
Egg freezing increased my appetite and oddly enough, that too I’ve been relaxed about as well.
It’s just so nice to not give such a shit, y’all. Do you know what I mean?
I’m just eating whatever, whenever I want and it’s all good. Sometimes, I have those little panic moments of like “OK REEL IT IN.”
But, I’m in this place of like “No. I just don’t want to.”
I don’t want to get back on the “Seas the Day” Boat (see what I did there?) I want to be off the boat and working with my laptop on the sandy beach with my toes in the water.
I’m just … not willing to feel so much pressure.
And that, THAT alone, has been the most unexpected side effect that egg freezing has had on my recovery.
So my God, let’s hope it lasts.
Cause I’d really like to be a healthy mama to of those 26 eggs I got frozen in a crypto tank somewhere <3
P.S. feel free to DM about any egg freezing questions :)