Lydia N.
Photographed by Kaylee Matas
Before reading this letter, we'd like for you to know it discusses Lydia's experience with eating disorders, sexual assault, and suicide. If you think that reading about this will be distressing for you, we encourage you to take a pause before reading this letter, center yourself, and prepare any resources you may need to access after reading it. If you'd rather not read this letter, you can read a letter on a different topic by returning to the Georgetown home page.
If you’re reading this, your life will change, I promise.
Wow, have I struggled with my mental health over the years. So much so that, at one point, I had a therapist practically dump me as a client for not getting better. Honestly, good for her. I definitely would not have been able to leave a rating saying I got the results I wanted…unless those results were major depressive disorder instead of minor (which, newsflash, they were not).
Maybe I’ll run you through my rock bottom for a second...just so we all get caught up to speed. In March 2025, during my gap year, I somehow ended up in Costa Rica - by ended up, I very much voluntarily signed up for a volunteering program there. The program involved a lot of physical activity; it involved hiking tens of thousands of steps a day with heavy backpacks, cleaning up beaches, restoring graveyards, and painting schools. We slept in tents and sleeping bags, and we ate food out of cans and only had cold showers. We stayed in community centers in bum fuck nowhere Costa Rica, and aside from our leaders, no one had their phone on them. Sounds like the gap year dream, no? Sounds like a story I could tell my kid…and I could definitely, but for other reasons.
I arrived in Costa Rica significantly unwell. I’d left a lot behind in London, but, unfortunately for me, my almost decade long fight with Bulimia (an eating disorder where one makes themselves sick) came along with me, and I almost lost my life in Costa Rica because of it. My eating disorder was already bad when I arrived, but my behaviour got increasingly neurotic, and I would go to extreme lengths to keep up with my bulimia. I would pretend to “pee” on 20 km hikes and just make myself sick on the side of the trail. After long days of physical labour, others would unwind with a nap; I would take myself to the local store and eat thousands of calories, only to then throw them all up later in the community centre bathroom. Some days, there would be nowhere to find food, so I would steal the snacks of my fellow volunteers and binge on whatever was for dinner, i.e., refried beans from a packet. My body was underweight, my heart rate was in the 40s, my knuckles were bruised. I was making myself sick 4+ times a day. And the worst part is, no one knew. My eating disorder was so secretive; everyone just saw a naturally thin girl who could eat a lot. So, when I had to leave the program one day because I was not functioning anymore, I’m sure it came as a shock to some. Though I’m sure others could see that I was struggling with something from the way that I was behaving: yelling at the instructors that I couldn’t walk anymore, visibly fatigued from even the slightest of physical movement, a permanent look of misery on my face, and constant crying. I was in one of the most beautiful places in the world, surrounded by young, fun people my own age doing incredible things, and I had never felt so dead inside. There was zero brain activity; there was nothing behind my eyes. I was broken. I had to leave. I had no other option.
So, when I returned back to London, through a very convoluted series of events, I ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Originally, I was in the general ward, but I made my way into the eating disorder unit, or, I like to say that I was “scouted.” The eating disorder unit changed my life. I learned how to eat again; there was an amazing community of strong women who all supported each other. I got lucky. I formed bonds with each and every one of the nurses. My mum would come and visit me with my dog, and we’d joke about how this was my brief stint as a London uni student.
It was, and still is, the most important period of my life–I’d be dead if hadn’t decided at that fucking community centre in Guana Caste, Costa Rica, that I needed to go home and that I needed help.
I wish I could tell you the story ends there. That I left the unit and that my world was rosy, but shit actually got a whole lot harder. The way I’d describe it is that: imagine you run a marathon…and then they tell you they forgot to time it, and you have to do it again. That’s how I felt. I wasn’t making myself sick anymore, and I actually felt pretty confident about my eating disorder recovery, but then it turns out that wasn’t the only problem. My relationship with my mother was heavily toxic and abusive and left me distressed and constantly trying to escape my household. I was still processing PTSD from when I was sexually abused by an immediate family member at the age of 10. I was burnt out from the end of high school and everything that had happened during my gap year. I didn’t really have any friends or anyone to talk to. College started, and I got severely depressed. Nothing happened for me: no boyfriend, no friends, no passion for anything in school. I officially went no contact with my mother and saw her for the last time when I went to get my birth certificate from her house during the Christmas holidays. I was still processing everything that had happened in my late teenage years, and, oh, did I mention that my nutritionist told me that I had gained too much weight in my eating disorder recovery? I mean, that was just the cherry on top of the fucking cake, pun intended, because...people with eating disorders tend to not agree with cake. There was no winning anymore. I thought, how on earth has life gotten worse and harder? I thought it was behind me, I thought the eating disorder unit was the worst it would have gotten, I thought it was meant to get better after that. How am I still dealing with more shit? How is this fair?
I contemplated suicide again, like I’d contemplated it many a times before, but that stupid voice in the back of my head that’s always been there told me to keep going. And I did. I returned for the spring semester of college. I started a podcast, called “Children of Divorce” and began processing everything I went through. I started making friends, some of which I fell out with and some who stayed. I started working out less, focusing more on a healthy relationship with exercise. I sat in the dining hall every day by myself because my meals were non-negotiable. I continued seeing my therapist. I applied for a summer job, which I got, and alongside that, I walked dogs to support myself financially. I was no longer returning back to my college dorm at 7 p.m. because I had eaten dinner and had nothing else to do with my life. My life was full–well I mean, it was fuller.
The point is, things happened. Things changed. And not miraculously, and not overnight either; they changed because I kept showing up. I kept trying my best. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Lydia Nathenson’s mental state, if I do say so myself. It wasn’t big and glamorous,
and I still feel a little empty and lonely sometimes. But is it better? One hundred thousand million percent it is. It’s so hard when things are bad and you think they can’t get worse, and then they do. When does the getting worse part end? And to that I’ll tell you my little secret I’ve discovered: life is a series of “it can't get worse” until one day it just does get better.
Coming from someone who has now run two marathons back to back, (not literally, these are metaphorical marathons) I can tell you that it does end. Things do change. You will not live your life like this forever. And look, there’s still room for improvement in my life. I’m tired of hugging my hot water bottle at night pretending it’s a boyfriend, just like I’m tired of going on hikes by myself, wondering if I’ll end up on the news: “COLLEGE STUDENT: MISSING IN THE WOODS.” But I’ve made it this far, haven’t I? I think I owe it to myself to keep going. I know that it will get better. I’ve seen it happen before;no need to stop believing now.
If you’re reading this, you keep going. You don’t stop. And by that I don’t mean exhaust yourself. I mean accept the fact that you try your best everyday, and you’re going to become who you’re meant to be, and it’s going to get better. I promise. Sending hugs to the whole big wide world right now. We didn’t choose to be here, but we do what we can :) XX Lydia
Lydia N., Georgetown University
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