Control

I don’t even know what this word means anymore.

Once, it meant less than 200calories a day. 

Once, it meant losing 5llbs in a week.

Once, it meant illness and pain and hatred.

Then, it meant realisation.

Then, it meant anorexia had taken it.

Then, it meant being lost in a spiral into this illness, becoming sicker and sicker.

Now, I don’t know how to gain control.

I’m so lost.

Rescue me?

The Wake Up Call

When did you guys all SEE yourself for the first time?
I think it's so easy to allow anorexia to cloud your vision when you see yourself. I would look in the mirror and think I looked like a fatass, that my face looked chubby, that you could barely even see my bones. The inspiration from this post came from reading another blog, about a girl whose wake up call was unbelievable. Some of you may have seen the pro-Ana slogan "I want to be so light, I don't leave footprints in the snow"? This girl was walking in the snow when she suddenly realised she was barely leaving a mark.
This resonated with me in two ways.

Firstly, it shows that with anorexia, you think you really want something, but actually when the time comes, you realise it wasn't worth the sorrow and the heartache to get.
The second is the symbolism within this realisation. You're no longer leaving a mark on the world, you're becoming less of a person; you're becoming invisible. This image reflects the way in which anorexia takes away who you are, you don't have as much impact. You are barely even there anymore.

I saw another story of a girl who just looked in the mirror one day, and actually SAW herself. She suddenly saw the ribs, the bones sticking out horrendously, how ugly her skeletal body looked in the harsh light of reality. She realised she looked nothing more than a corpse; no femenine curves; gaunt pale face; bow legged;... unattractive. Anorexia is not beautiful.

My realisation could have come at a  lot of times:
I was in the shower, and as i put conditioner in, I took my hand away from my head, and a huge clump of hair was left in my hands. I sobbed; my hair is the one thing I have ever liked myself. THis was very symbolic too, in that it highlighted anorexia was taking away everything that mattered to me.
The second time I could have had my wake up call was giving my friend a hug at school. "Holy shit, K, I can feel your ribs through your blazer, that's disgusting". My thought process? How stupid, she obviously can't, she's lying.
The third time could have been a picture taken of me, smiling. I thought I would look pretty in it; I'd got dolled up to go out, I felt reasonably okayish. I looked at the photo and I look drained, exhausted, gaunt, sunken eyes.. the lot.
The fourth time? Sat in my psychiatrist's office, he had just weighed me. "K, if you lose any more weight, you WILL be put in inpatient treatment. You now are severely underweight." ... He's lying?

The real realisation came when I was lying next to the guy I was with at the time. He had his hand resting on my stomach as we lay half asleep, and I suddenly became aware of how much my ribs and hips stuck out. I felt... embarassed. What I usually saw as achievements looked so ugly. I suddenly became aware of how much pain I was in, with my bony spine resting awkwardly on the floor. My bones protruding suddenly made me feel ashamed. I had no stomach there really. I tried pushing out my tummy to make myself look bigger, but I physically didn't have the energy.

This sudden feeling of embarassment threw my world into turmoil. What? Bones are how I judge if I'm doing okay?? Why do I suddenly wish I just had a regular non-concave stomach?

I hope you all receive a wake up call sometime soon.

All The Things I would Say

So I know there's so much STUFF that can build up inside you that you really want to say to people, and when stuff like that gets all built up it can stress me out, don't know about the rest of you, but it does me. SO I am going to write everything here. Maybe you guys should try it, write it on a piece of paper, then think about what you can logically say or what is better left unsaid, then burn the paper.

C - "I know I hurt you, I'm so so sorry, but the truth is you found me at just the right time; you found me when nobody else was looking just when I needed you the most, thank you. I will always love you for that. I wish you could see how great you really are."

J - "You know I'm in love with you, which is why I don't fucking understand how you can keep breaking my heart over and over when you know that you don't feel the same way anymore. I'm getting over it, okay, I'm trying to anyway, but by hooking up with me you just make me fall for you all over again. Aside from that, and a few other times when you have fucked me around friendship and relationship-wise, you've been my best friend, and in all seriousness nothing will ever erase what we have been through together. Nothing. I love you, and I hope we stay friends even through college and uni"

B - "You make me feel so loved, darling, and for that I thank you. I have fun around you, even if I can't be myself, and quite a lot of the time you just make me feel small and stupid. Most of the time, you are sweet and caring and loving and I'm so sorry I can't necessarily find it in myself to reciprocate those feelings 100%"

H - "You are a DICK. We say we're friends, but every second I spend with you, I worry you're going to make another 'hilarious' mark about the fact that I starve myself or I have done regrettable things, and you're going to laugh at me and make my friends laugh at me. And I'll stand there and fucking smile, as I fight back the tears, and I'll have to eat because you've just said  that. It's only when I'm broken down on the school bathroom floor coughing up blood that it'll truly hit me how fucking DEEP you cut. THINK about how your words hurt, you bastard."

Jeb - "My best girl mate, you've been with it through me most of the time. Sometimes I don't think you trust or even like me, but deep down we love each other to bits and I am very grateful to you. I think about us a lot, where we'll each end up, and where we started. We're so different, and yet that in itself has brought us together. Even if we lose touch, I will never forget you as long as I live. Love you forever."

S - "You make me laugh, but you've made me cry. Sometimes I worry you're going to really hurt yourself, so please be careful okay? I love you to bits, you make me smile on my worst days."

M - "I hope you know that I will never forget you telling me I starve myself for attention. Never. Anybody who would do this for attention is seriously a sick masochistic person, and you belittling the hardest thing I have ever had to face is something that cut pretty deep. I have forgiven you, but I'll never forget. I made myself throw up the second I read that message you know, and then didn't eat for 24 hours. If J hadn't called me, I might not even have been here. I love you now."

E - "STOP ATTENTION SEEKING. Jesus Christ, yes you have some issues but refusing to help yourself and rubbing your issues in everybody else's faces is selfish and stupid. You're egocentric and self absorbed and if you took a second to look around you, you might see you're not the only one hurting. Seriously, get a grip. Others can't help you if you don't help yourself."

D - "You take the piss, I laugh along, but in truth every time I see you I remember what you said to me 3 years ago. And I truly can't forgive you, never ever ever. I cried myself to sleep night after night, repeating what you said over and over, hating myself because of you. You don't know what I had going on at that point,  how could you say those things to me?"

Mum - "I'm sorry for being such a fuck up, Mum, you deserved a beautiful daughter like R, but you've still got here. I'm sorry my issues embarass you in front of the neighbors, I am trying, I really am."

Dad - "I'm sorry about that time you were banging on the door and I didn't answer so you got made. I was throwing up blood."

R - "Please never follow your big sister down this horrible fucking road. EVER. It's not worth it, I promise you, it has ruined me, broken me, made the last few years feel impossible. So I need you to be stronger and to develop into the beautiful amazing person I know you can be. I love you more than anybody else on this whole entire planet, I'm sorry I haven't said this enough."

G - "Self centred, but good hearted deep down. You helped me through a lot during our friendship, but you also were the trigger for my worst relapse to date. You have a double personality; a really nice, caring friend, and a total attention seeking dick. Please, just pick one and stick with it, it's a total mindfuck trying to second guess which one you are."

A and O - "Just truly lovely people, I love you as my totally uncomplicated friends. You don't know about my issues, and you don't need to. Love hanging out with you guys, I feel totally carefree!"

WOW I feel better for doing that ahaha.

Letting People In

This has been and remains today the hardest part of the entire process for me. Innitially, I went through about a year and a half of bullemia, totally alone, not talking to anybody. Then, I chose to tell this one guy, let's call him G, which was a mistake. He was my boyfriend, and when he ended it, he used this knowledge to humiliate me. The progress I had made while our relationship lasted was well and truly reversed, and I plunged into anorexia with renewed vigour, reaching my lowest weight, passing out, my parents found out after a friend called the police as she worried I was suicidal, and I was put in psychiatric care. My psych threatened inpatient care if I lost anymore weight, which bumpstarted this struggle for recovery nearly a year ago now.

This time, I understood more about the pressures of coping alone, but also how a total reliance on one individual was, to be frank, stupid. I trusted a group of 4 or 5 friends, who I would talk to about how I was feeling, and would in turn be a shoulder for them to cry on. Trusting these  people did nothing short than transform my entire world. A new closeness was achieved with them, achieved by allowing myself to become vulnerable. My best friend, J, is who I particularly attribute my recovery weight gain and general more positive state of mind to. He was a huge help, indescribably amazing when I needed him most.

My biggest fear when I first considered telling people was "what if they don't believe me, because I'm too fat to have issues with eating?". I should also add that until December of last year, I denied ever having an  eating disorder, believing that to have an eating disorder, I needed to be skinny. My disfunctional mind wouldn't allow me to believe that being 'severely underweight' and quickly spiraling to a point where I needed hospital treatment because my BMI was so low was "skinny". In hindsight, I see that was just fucking stupid really.

So, if that's what's going through your mind? Put it in perspective. It is the eating disorder talking.

Letting people in has to be a two way thing though. I myself always have endeavoured to be there for my friends, one of which was severely depressed. She came to rely on me, to lean on me, to tell me all her problems. Which would have been fine, if she had let me talk to her once in a while. Whenever I tried, she would tell me she "couldn't cope with hearing my problems right now" because it "wasn't helping her". I always make sure I am never that person, and as much as people allow me to talk to them, I will always be there for my friends too. That has to be something you are prepared to do.

Although they won't read it or know who I am, thanks you guys. You saved me.

Start off this new year by doing something positive, and trusting in others as well as yourself.

New Years Resolution

First of all, hi, welcome to my blog.
I've been putting off starting a blog like this for a while now, it's always seemed pretty daunting to write totally honest blog posts, revealing my struggles and innermost feelings, all over the internet, with people reading them every day. Well, if people bother to come on the site in the first place of course! So, I made it a new years resolution, which is probably a bad idea since I never keep new years resolution. Last year, I decided I would keep my room tidy, and if I'm honest war zones probably look tidier.

However, this is a resolution I'm pretty determined to keep, and I'm a pretty determined kind of person. This blog is going to be an anonymous documentation of my struggles with anorexia, bullemia, self harm and depression, which have been demons I've been fighting since the age of 12. No, it isn't some kind of fucked up "pro-ana" thinspiration website, or some crazy self harm cult. I'm also not somebody who feels recoverED, I'm someone recoverING. I'll mess up, of course, but I also hope to inspire a few of you to fight the fight alongside me, because I know, don't ask how I just know, that there is something here worth fighting for.

If even one person takes some of this to heart, it'll have been worth it.
Speak soon :)