How my Eating Disorder Stole My Creativity - And How I Got It Back

© Nassima

Recovering from an eating disorder made me challenge my preconceived beliefs in creativity and art, especially those concerning the ‘suffering artist trope'.

TW: Eating Disorders 

Two years ago now, I fell into the deepest pit of the eating disorder that had already been accompanying me for years. I was in uni, living on my own, finally free of the Covid-19 isolation, I had just dyed my hair red and was ready to enjoy the freedom and fun of being 20 and living in London. The pandemic had been a thriving moment for my creativity, and like many others, I was looking to beat the boredom, seeking escapism, and unburdened by the usual routine, something started blossoming amidst the waves of uncertainty that hung in the air. By that time, I had been writing creatively for years, but what took me by surprise when the pandemic hit, was that instead of (figuratively) picking up the pen (a.k.a grabbing my computer to write on my notes app), I dug out old unused canvases, acrylic paint sets and mismatched brushes, and leftover school supplies accumulated over the years for mandatory childhood art classes (in the schools I went to, art classes were part of the curriculum until 12 or 13 years old). 

I had vivid fantasies in my mind that I couldn’t satisfy with writing alone. At first, the process of trying to paint was frustrating. Despite the mandatory classes at school, I knew nothing about drawing or painting, let alone mixing colours and picking brushes. I knew I had no inherent talent for drawing like my friend Ada, whose life-like portraits of me hung on my bedroom wall. I had to find my own style, starting with simple symbols that I could repeat and perfect. The surface of my crisp white desk became quickly and permanently covered in sketches, paint swatches, dirty water bowls, and a canvas always in progress. I’d leave the mess until the painting was done, only to clean it up and mess it back up a day later with a new project. In a little over a week, I had exhausted all the supplies in the house. Living through a worldwide pandemic at 17, whilst trying to finish school and prepare for university abroad was a constant limbo. Luckily, amid all that uncertainty and fear, I found a new facet of my creativity that soothed my brain, day after day. When lockdown was over, I made it to uni and during my first week in student halls, I ordered a brand new paint set. That’s where the trouble began. 

© Nassima 

Suddenly, my life had become all I’d wanted, my dream of moving to London and finishing school had come true but with my newly found freedom, I found no inspiration. Once the initial euphoria passed, all that freedom became very overwhelming. It meant having to live every day making choices and bearing the responsibility and the consequences. I no longer had a parent to blame for not being able to do something or a shitty teacher to blame my bad moods on. I only had me. I felt a constant anxiety that smothered what was left of my creativity and I found myself only able to create when I was at my lowest, when I had exhausted everyone in my life and had only myself left to hold accountable. You can see how all that created the perfect environment for my beastly eating disorder to make itself at home. 

But I didn’t worry about my creativity back then, I was writing a lot after all. In retrospect, I might have misconstrued journaling with creative writing, it was liberating, sure, but it wasn’t inventive, it didn’t soothe my brain like painting or writing stories had, it left me feeling more raw and lonely than anything else. Those feelings were my eating disorder’s best friends. 

As time passed and new beginnings took over, I was starting to really, urgently, miss painting and writing stories. I’d buy canvases that never got covered in paint, and friends and family would give me supplies, but I was too embarrassed to tell them I didn’t know how to paint anymore. I’d spent day after day at my desk, in front of my laptop or a canvas begging my brain for a morsel of creativity. The desire to create was there, not even the eating disorder could take that from me, but I could tell that there was something gargantuan blocking its way. By that time I was losing weight rapidly and I had started getting concerning comments from my family.  Although I  tried to bat them away, I began to recognise there was an issue. There was something heavy I was carrying and even if I could only see it take away my body, it was siphoning out much more. But the urgency of my situation eluded me until it sent me to the hospital on Christmas Eve of that same year needing urgent care. After all, I was eating every day, I never missed a class or an assignment, and I was social and organised; the situation couldn’t possibly be so dire, right? 

After a check-up with a doctor, I was referred to a specialised clinic where I was able to get therapy. Despite what happened afterward, I’ll always be grateful for the initial help that got me on the path to recovery. 

Back then I really believed that my creative drought would be drowned out by all the feelings that came to me when I was in hospital;  I thought, I’ve always wanted to write when I was in distress, surely I’ll be inundated with things to write now? A new perspective on life and death? Something about friendship and family in times of need? Anything? But nothing came. I felt abandoned by my own self like my brain was denying me the drug that would save my life. And that felt unfair as I had seen artists creatively thrive when they were at their lowest. I was taught about the trope of the ‘suffering artist’ and I had bought the lie that to be creative, you have to be in distress, and need to live in chaos, and pain, through addiction or suffering. 

Little did I know that catharsis and creativity are not bound together, they can exist separately. However, these things didn’t become clear to me until some time later. 

It took me months to get better, physically of course, but mentally as well. I was angry about what happened to my body, while also trying to shake the guilt that it was my own fault for starving myself in the first place.  In the end, I decided there was no space for guilt if I wanted to recover and spare my loved ones all the stress I had caused them already. I owed myself the chance to get better and to be happy. This, and the fear that what had happened to my body would happen again, showed me that there was no way back into the eating disorder. It’s this exact thought that proved that my brain had forever changed and although I’ll carry a part of this experience with me for my whole life, I know it changed me for the better. 

© Nassima 

For a few months after my time at the hospital, I entered a stage of numbness that shielded me from any complex emotion and as a result, it prevented me from exploring any of what had happened to me creatively. To this day I still haven’t understood it, and I’m in the constant process of coming to terms with those events, but what I do creatively, always manages to slip past those experiences and I find inspiration elsewhere. I think I just don’t want to immortalise the past and I don’t want to use my bad experiences as a jumping point to create. Sometimes pain, anger, and suffering are just that. Sometimes there is nothing beautiful to make from it, nothing revolutionary or even cathartic. As an artist, I believe that you do not need to indulge in hard emotions to create. Sometimes you might, but if it doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean it went in vain. 

One fine sunny morning, I was making my bed and listening to my favourite artist’s new song and that’s when it hit me. I started sobbing uncontrollably because I was able to enjoy that song;  it was the push I needed to finally let go of that numbness and come back to myself. I had always been an emotional person and regaining the ability to have a good cry after all those months was sublime.

It would be almost a year later that I was able to paint again, with new ideas and inspirations, and it took a long time to get back to feeling like myself again. It was trial and error sometimes I pushed my creativity so hard, that I think I almost smothered it,  I’d get motivated and then I’d get depressed. I didn’t know how to count on myself without the safety net and the confidence that being able to create things gave me. It wasn’t until a few months ago when I was going through a really rough patch that threw me back into old spirals I thought I had gotten rid of. And in that moment I wanted nothing more than to go back 3 years and tell myself how I got out of this in the first place. 

I happened to be at my parents’ house and whilst rummaging through the drawers in my bedroom, I picked up my old sketchpad from the pandemic days. I had seen it there a hundred times but never thought to open it. As I went through the pages, I felt my brain starting to back off the edge, like someone had turned off an excruciatingly loud blender. I found all the sketches of the paintings I could see hanging on the wall or that I had stashed in my flat, I found old portraits of people I no longer know and the sketches I had made of the tattoo I have on my leg. It was like seeing the legacy of my thoughts, the steps it took to form the final product, and there, in the sketches I had discarded, I found my inspiration again. It was endearing to feel that 18-year-old me was unknowingly watching out for a future version of myself who needed a reminder of what she could do. I wanted to pick up a brush and start painting right away for fear that those new ideas would escape me. I went around the house frantically hoping my mother had some art supplies lying around and bless my mother’s hoarding tendencies, because I found that day that she had kept paints and brushes in a box in my room. I was re-accustomed to the same supplies that had propelled me into my creativity in the first place. I was over the moon. 

© Nassima 

Maybe it was the sketches, maybe it was the supplies, but maybe it was neither of those things that got my brain to wake its dormant creative side. Maybe it was the belief that behind all of it, there was a way out that would lead me back to myself when I feel most serene, sitting at my desk with a brush in my hand, a thousand shades of pink paint and something pretty playing in my ears.  

*For anyone struggling with mental health or an eating disorder, it’s never too early to seek help, speak to a loved one or your doctor, and check out these resources: Beat Eating Disorders, Mind, The Recovery Club. 

*Some personal tips from me include limiting your time on social media (you can put time limits on different apps in your phone settings), covering mirrors around your flat when you don’t need them to avoid constant body-checking, journaling, and practicing mindfulness by focusing on doing one activity at a time, for instance going for a walk without headphones.