I agree: if that's truly how BSR was living her life during the past year or more that is super sad. Eating disorders can be extremely isolating so that may have contributed to her being so guarded. In her particular situation, it sounds like there was both food restricting and purging going on and that while some people were worried, some were also encouraging her to lose weight at certain times (her mother, mostly, otherwise why would BSR send her a text about weight loss?). In the majority of cases where both behaviors are going on, even if the restricting is not particularly hidden, the vomiting almost always is. It's pretty easy to convince yourself that cutting calories or skipping meals or whatever is fine and normal because probably lots of other people around you are doing it too (especially if your own mother is). But the minute you bend over the toilet and stick your finger down your throat, something is definitely wrong and you have a shameful secret to keep. Honestly, if BSR has had a few years of practice of keeping THAT secret, I bet that made her more likely to keep the shameful pregnancy a secret too, all the way up through whatever decisions she made about the baby itself. Like, how many times did she flush her own shame away and experience relief? Putting the baby in that shallow grave and covering her with dirt and walking away probably felt the same in certain ways, as horrible and sad (not to mention criminal) as that is.
I agree. A lot was at play here to cause her to do what she did. Secrecy. Shame.
But it' seems very odd because it seems like she didn't work that hard to hide things. Like her "secrets" were actually family secrets and it was understood that you just don't talk about such things.
Her aunt described how she would clearly go to the bathroom and vomit up her food and come out smiling and talking normally. And no one confronted her. "Honey! Are you okay? What are you doing to yourself?"
Nope. Just accept it silently and don't address it. So dysfunctional. I mean I believe she knew that her family knew what she was doing and either she understood that it just wasn't something to TALK about but was accepted, or she was subtly asking for help by making it obvious and not getting any help. And what message that sends, I don't know.
Then comes the pregnancy. She was concealing it but also not. She apparently swam all summer in a bikini. She went to prom in a form fitting dress.
She instantly texted her mom a selfie of her post-pregnant body, hours after getting rid of her baby. I mean that's almost delusionally unaware. Unless it's not.
It gives me the impression that in that family appearance and weight were vastly more important than health, stability and even life. This gal either killed her infant and disposed of it like animal bones in a fire pit or allowed her baby to die for lack of care as she stared at it, or at the least, (which I don't believe), gave birth to a seeming stillborn, stared at the body for an hour while doing nothing and then tossed its naked body into a shallow pit.
Yet a mere hours later her main concern was showing her mom how overnight she shed pounds of stomach weight and would never allow that to happen again.
It seems to be all about the weight and her body and nothing about the baby or even the trauma she herself should have gone through if she gave birth to a still born and had to bury the body.
It's really quite disturbing and unreal.
