Sophie Theriault is a singer, songwriter and musician from Hartland who works as a waitress at Stella’s Restaurant in Jessar’s Common in the village of Hartland Three Corners. The following is an edited interview.
The year things got rough I don’t really talk about. My parents divorced, both my grandmas died, the earth itself seemed to be melting and all this stuff sort of snowballed. At a time you need a steady foundation, mine was not steady at all.
It started as a way to try to gain control. I started restricting food, and it turned into this numbers game of how many calories you consume and how much you weigh, and going smaller and smaller.
It was really empowering in a lot of ways. Then it just spiraled way out of my control. There was a point where my mom took me to the hospital and they weighed me and she was shocked.
I spent two months in a treatment center. I was at too low of a weight to do anything else; it was either that or the emergency room. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I put on a lot of weight and got my physical health better but a lot of it is on the inside. When people say I look so much better it immediately distorts into, “You’ve gained a lot of weight.”
Even though most people would tell me that I’m at a fine weight now, I still completely believe that I’m enormous. It’s a constant battle seeing through that veil and figuring out when my perceptions are distorted.
Working in a restaurant is bizarre, I know. At first it seems like a masochistic job but it’s really not. It’s actually pretty healing to witness people who enjoy food and to see tons of people everyday who eat a healthy amount and really love it.
I’m maintaining my weight and learning how to eat again and how to enjoy it. It’s an hourly struggle. I’m trying really hard to distance myself from defining myself as someone who is eating-disordered. What happened to the rest of my life?
The last year or two I’ve gotten sidetracked, but I feel like music is my core that I come back to in my healthiest place.
When I feel lonely and isolated, it has been a powerful tool for me to express a lot of that stuff that gets clumped up and balled inside. It’s a way of connecting with other people, of finding how I fit in and how I relate to the world in general.
What I’ve been trying to remember lately is that, though at times it may feel all consuming, this eating disorder is only one chapter in my life. People are very complex things composed of so many different experiences and ideas.
I am passionate about a lot of things. I am a dancer, a musician, a poet, an activist, a patriot, a traveler, a sister and a daughter. I hope someday to have a degree in nursing. Mostly what this ordeal has taught me is the importance of compassion and acceptance, for myself and everybody around me.