Editor's Letter: The Liesel Schmidt Story

There’s a common saying that age is just a number, and while that’s true in many respects, it’s also a gross simplification. Because when reaching a particular age—whatever age that might be—is an uncertainty, it becomes more than a number.

It becomes a trophy.

I recently celebrated my 41st birthday. And while turning the corner into this particular age bracket is something so many women dread, I often marvel at the fact that I stand here in this place in my life, at this age, and can look at how my life has changed and what I have accomplished.

Before you start thinking this is one giant ego trip, I’ll give you some context.

I shouldn’t be here.

If you have any familiarity with eating disorders, you may have a notion of how severe they can become. But so much of the public is still uneducated not only about the signs and symptoms, but also about what causes them, what they do to the body and mind, how hard they are to fight and how deadly they are.

This is one dragon that isn’t easily slain.

My own started when I was 14, after I spent a summer locked in a cage of my own making, trying to shut out the noise of a nervous breakdown. I still don’t know exactly what caused the emotional and psychological instability I was experiencing at that point—only that I woke up every morning dreading the day ahead, wondering how I would possibly cope with the demons that screamed so loudly in my head.

What finally calmed them was finding something I could control, something tangible, when it felt like everything around me was crumbling in my hands. In the end, what was most controllable as a 14-year-old was food. I could decide what to eat or not, when and how much. I could calculate and tally, play a mental game that kept my mind too focused to hear any of the other noise I’d been struggling against.

I never realized that it would take over my life. I never considered how much it would steal from me.

From an outside standpoint, it didn’t impact much at first. But as the monster grew, it took up more and more space in my head, consumed more of my time, dictated more and more of where I went and what I did.

Another coping mechanism became running. It was something that helped quiet the thoughts in my head, helped offset some of the need to restrict my eating habits. I ran alone at first. Then I began to compete in local running races. As a naturally competitive person, it was addicting to see how far I could leave the other runners in my rearview, to see how many seconds I could shave off my time and how many medals I could bring home.

"None of it was what I wanted. But psychological disorders and mental illnesses rarely bow to the wants or needs of their host."

Over the next decade, I got faster, but I also began to lose more weight. In 2007, I ran and completed my first marathon. I crossed the finish line, winning myself a coveted qualifying time for the Boston Marathon and a stress fracture in my tibia.

That broken ankle was the gateway to a quicker, steeper slide into the pit where I dwelled for the next decade, losing more weight, wasting away while my ability to run was sacrificed on the altar of my anorexia.

Not that it was a choice—none of it was a decision I made.

None of it was what I wanted.

But psychological disorders and mental illnesses rarely bow to the wants or needs of their host.

Even when I broke my hip—for the second time—at the age of 34 in 2017, I was so mired in my disorder that hearing the orthopedic surgeon tell my parents that I wouldn’t make it off the operating table didn’t shake me awake. It didn’t make me angry at the anorexia. I didn’t feel anything.

Even with the help of several different professionals, it wasn’t until 2020 that things began to change. Two months before the rest of the world hid away from the threat of COVID and went dark, I met my own darkness and hid once again, trying to still the noise and cope with the inner battle that was waging against my own body’s will to live and the voices that had been in control for 23 years.

For the next year, I locked myself away, terrified of what was happening to me—seemingly without my consent and completely beyond my control—as a natural survival instinct took over, trying to restore my body before it shut down. How it hadn’t is still a mystery to me—I weighed less than a kindergartener, had skin as fragile as tissue paper, bones as brittle as an 80-year-old. I’d seen grown men start to cry at the sight of me, and even that didn’t give me the resolve I needed to say, Fuck this, I want to live. 

It was still never a conscious thought during that year. But something took over, and so I ate. I ate like someone who couldn’t find the off-switch. The feeling of being out of control made the disorder scream all the more loudly, shaming me into the cage that my apartment had become. I wouldn’t even let my family see me as the weight restored itself on my body, because I couldn’t reconcile myself to the newly created image that I saw in the mirror.

When I finally re-emerged, healthy and weight-restored, to spend Christmas with my parents after almost a year of hearing my mother plead to see me, I saw in their eyes glimmers of what was really there—not what the disorder was telling me was there. When they looked at me, they saw the daughter they'd lost 23 years before to something they couldn’t help me fight. They saw life poured back into me after it had been taken away. And over the next six months, I learned to silence the lies in my head, to look in the mirror and see a strong, healthy body and be proud that I’d slain the dragon that had wanted me dead.

I may not have a perfect reflection, but I can look in the mirror now and see beyond that to all the things I can do that were once lost to me: I can run again. I can laugh and feel it soul deep. I can love my life and live it with no numbers, no tallies.

So this age isn’t just a number. It’s a trophy, and one I fought hard to win.

My hope for you, dear readers, is that in whatever struggles you have, you fight hard. It may take help, but never be ashamed to speak out about what you’re facing. You don’t have to be alone.

Liesel

Editor in Chief, VIP Alexandria Magazine