"Why are you anorexic?"

"Why are you anorexic?"

Because it’s easier to control calories than actually taking control of the negativity in my life.

Because an eating disorder instils order among chaos, I have control.

Because this world is spinning too fast for me, and this allows me to keep up.

Because it helps me hold on, I don’t have to grow up anymore.

Because without it, I am nothing.

Because I don't deserve that food, I am worthless.

Because the emptiness of hunger is easier to bare than the emptiness I feel inside.

All Grown Up

I feel I've lost a lot of time. Do you ever think back to those things you felt when you were younger?

All those dreams, left unrealised? You know, the ones we had as children, that we told our year 1 teacher about; when she nodded, and smiled, and left you with crayons and contentment, allowing those fragile dreams to remain intact for a little while longer.

I wanted to be a trapeze acrobat in a circus. I would swing back and forth in my garden, eyes burning with the images of cheering crowds and ears buzzing with their applause. I read books of girls running away to join the circus, dreamed I'd be beautiful and tall and graceful, that I'd fly through the air and that nothing else would matter.

Yet here I am, left in the tangled ruins of a hangover and regret. Spliffs smoked and guys fucked and shots downed that shouldn't have happened. How did I get like this?

Where is the little girl I once was, soaring through the air on my imaginary trapeze as my pigtails bobbed cheerily in the sunshine? Gone?

Yet sometimes, I feel her still here somewhere. When I'm scared, when I'm alone, I sometimes allow myself to return to that place. To curl up tight on my bedroom floor, squeezing out the world with tear-stained eyelids, and I remember. I feel the sting of grazed knees and kisses of parents, I taste the melting ice-creams and delicious fudge, I hear the singing of happy birthday and my own childish laughter.

Funny, isn't it, how we spend so long wishing we were grown, and yet once we get there, we'd give anything to see the world just once through innocent eyes?

Healthy Weight Loss

The weight I am right now is just about a healthy weight, but lately I've been eating a bit too much junk food, and have just gone up by a few more pounds than I would like to be. Of course, the second I decide that I'll lose a few pounds, in a healthy way, my old habits begin creeping in, and suddenly I find myself teetering between full on relapse and just about holding it together. THIS is ridiculous isn't it? Lots of people lose weight in a totally healthy way for lots of different reasons, why do I feel like such a failure when I try and just stick to a diet plan?

This isn't really a post, I just really wanted to know if anybody had had a similar thing, and found a way of overcoming it without allowing the ED mindset to return? Diet plans? Calorie limitation? Anything like that?
Thank you!

Fate

*TRIGGER WARNING*

I attempted suicide on the 7th of September 2011.
If I had succeeded, I wouldn't even be here. I'd have been dead for over four months.
That's a fucking weird thought. The idea that my parents might have forgotten the sound of my voice by now has really shaken me up.

My best friend might have gotten over the fact that I'd be dead.
My sister might just think of me late at night when she has nothing else to think about.
My school would have moved on, the teachers already forgetting the name of "the girl who killed herself".

Have I left anything of value behind? I don't know.
But maybe I'm here because of fate. Maybe I wasn't meant to die on the 7th September. Maybe I am destined to be sat here right now, writing all about it.

Partly, it gives me hope that there is a reason I'm here. Partly it makes me sad to think how easily I could have  been forgotten. And then another part of me wonders whether I really am meant to be here, or if I should have stayed in that bath, let myself bleed to death, let my parents find me...

Mind is fucked right now, I don't know anything at the moment.

Early Beginnings

Now, I know it isn't the same with everyone, but I have for a long age had problems with food, and body image. I think these began very young, around 3 or 4, because I was a classic chubby child while my sister was a skinny waif-like 2 year old. This feeling of being bigger, the need to compare myself to everyone, was made worse when I started school. There, I became very close with a girl who was again, super skinny. We would play dress up, and she could always wear the nicest fairy costume or look the cutest.

However, I did not starve myself or blame food for a while after that. I hated how I looked, believed with all my heart and soul I was ugly, and often would eat too much and feel guilty afterwards. Aged 5 I switched to skimmed milk from semi-skimmed, aged 6 I started eating Special K after hearing it would magically help me lose weight. I would steal diet books from my mum, I would hide while my mum did excercise videos, doing the excercises behind the sofa or in another room. My body issues consumed me.

Aged 7, I tried to make myself sick. I had never heard of bulemia, I didn't realise it was a problem or a medical disorder. All I knew was that I wanted that food out of me. Luckily, I didn't succeed, although I tried right the way through my first year of secondary school. I began cutting out of frustration around the age of 11, because it was at this point I began taking on a lot of my friends' problems, including drug addiction, self harm and depression, which naturally had an adverse effect on me. Aged just 12, I succeeded, and through the next two years I made myself sick on a regular basis until June of the year I turned 14. This was triggered by unrest at home; Dad's job was in jeopardy and everything seemed to spiral out of control. Throwing myself fully into an eating disorder (although I did not acknowledge I had a problem until years later) helped me establish some control, or so I thought.

At this point, I finally faced up to the fact that I had a real problem. I gained about 6llbs, but didn't care because I was happy. That all fell apart the summer of that year - I won't go into it - which caused a very quick decline into anorexia. My weight plunged, everything began to spiral out of control. I quickly lost 9llbs in just 2 weeks, I barely ate, I passed out regularly, my parents and friends and even teachers were very worried. I began seeing a psych every month, a therapist weekly, and going for weekly weigh ins. I was threatened with inpatient treatment, which triggered a desire to break free.

So, having problems with food from such a young age must mean something?

Increasingly, we see stories of 9 year old anorexics on life support, or 8 year old bullemics being sent to clinics to recover; isn't it horrific? That our society has reached the point where children this young feel such a self-destructive impulse?

One argument might be that those who struggle with mental health issues have different neurological patterns in their brains. This scientific theory is highly disputed and countless studies disprove and prove it. Another might be exposure to the media brainwashed me, even at a young age, which is potentially true, although I always felt something a little deeper. I haven't suffered terrible losses, or been abused. My parents told me I was beautiful, Mum didn't obsessively diet, my Dad is a little overweight but never dangerously so; nurture seems to be out. That leaves nature..

I don't know exactly what it means, but it is proving to make recovery even harder to manage; overcoming habits and mindsets which have been deeply embedded all my life. Maybe self-destruction and self-hatred are part of the make-up of my mind. These thoughts get inside every second of my life, constricting it, suffocating it, leaving me feeling worthless. I'm tired of it.

Fuck nature vs nurture, I'm fighting back.

Ups And Downs

Sorry I haven't written for a while, I've had a pretty rough week. The roughness of the week is actually what's inspired me to write on here, because it's only struck me this week that people think once you start eating again, your problem is solved.

Friends think now that I'm not passing out in lessons, throwing up every day after lunch, losing weight at an alarming weight, now I'm not skeletal and I actually eat that I'm okay. And you know what? I'm not. I'm better, much better than I was, maybe even ever happen. But the truth is, even in this stage of recovery, there are days, sometimes weeks, where you just genuinely will feel shit. It's hard though, when something is so much less noticeable or obviously problematic to alert people to the fact that it's still not okay to talk about weight or ask me for diet tips. Not yet. I'm not ready. I just want to shout "guys, I'm not quite healed yet, please just give me a hug". As awful as this sounds, it's almost made me want to cut, to make me see some physical embodiment of this not-being-okay feeling I keep having. The ED thoughts still exist, and a part of me worries they always will.

I don't even think it's just friends and family who think recovery means eating and then, suddenly, you're fine. I think a lot of sufferers will embark on what truly is a long journey to recovery, thinking that they'll wake up tomorrow no longer having these thoughts. That they'll be fine.

I'm not going to bullshit you: Recovery is fucking hard. It really is. You'll have your ED days, you'll probably purge up your dinner, or go 2 days without eating. That's part of the battle, you see. It's how you overcome the bumps in the road that really matters, because recovery requires an inner strength to keep going and keep pushing forward. The first few weeks are instrumental. I read my diaries from around May last year, when I decided to try and recover, and every other day I decide I can't do it. And you'll feel like that! You WILL feel nothing matters anymore, you will feel alone, and scared.

Truth is though, your worst days in recovery will be better than your best days in relapse.

The rest of the world may not understand that because you don't look emaciated you no longer have an eating disorder; or because you no longer are covered in cuts that you're no longer depressed. Almost all of the strength to make it to recovery is needed from within you.

And so I leave you with the ever wise words of my drunken school friend.
I once had somebody tell me "You know, you look so frail and fragile on the outside, and yet on the inside you're one of the strongest people I know. You got some fucking balls, you know that?"

Personifying Your Eating Disorder

The issue of whether giving a name to your eating disorder (e.g. 'Ana' 'Mia' 'Ed') is a highly contentious one, so I thought it is probably a good one to write about.

I'm fairly sure the initial idea came from pro-ED sites, which is why a huge part of the eating disorder community reject the nicknames. You see girls and guys on these sites saying stuff like "Ana is my best friend" or "Mia? Where are you? I need my motivation back!". No joke, actual comments. And so the backlash against such names is  totally understandable. Pro ideas are almost totally despised by people with eating disorders, for the reasons I stated in the previous post. This idea of personification is surely just another one of those ideas? I saw one person, when discussing this issue, say; "You don't give diseases names, it's sick. You don't suffer from leukemia and refer to it as "Luke"!" which is a fair point.

Personally, I am all for the personification of eating disorders. (TOTALLY PERSONAL OPINION, FEEL FREE TO DISAGREE!!). For me, it was useful in two ways. For starters, it is a fairly accurate representation of the mental schism that anorexia forges; the feeling that there are two people in your one brain. One is the sensible, rational you, saying "do you want to die? No, of course not. If you were ugly, you wouldn't have a boyfriend. Your friends don't hate you, they just invited you over. How will starving yourself help ANYTHING?". I'm sure a few of you can relate, that voice you wish you'd listened to more, rather than the other voice. "Stupid, fat bitch. Put down that apple. Will it make you happy? No. It'll make you FAT. Fatter than you already are. Stupid whore, your boyfriend doesn't really love you, nor do your friends. They will when you're thin though." You know, the voice that screams in your ears every time you try to eat. So personifying that voice helps you to separate the two, in my view. I was able to believe I wasn't the fucked up one, it was just this stupid bitch Ana, who had got inside my head and was making me act fucked up. Because it sometimes really is your eating disorder clouding your vision when you look in the mirror, or making you run to the bathroom and stick your head down the toilet after a meal.

The second reason, for me, was the idea that it was something I could BEAT, or rather, someone. Naturally competetive, yes, but the main reason is linked to the first; if it is a separate being to you, it is something you can overcome. You can never overcome what YOU are. You can overcome Mia or Ana or ED, because they are just someone you're competing with. You CAN tell them to shut up, and get out your head, and you can pick up a fork and eat just that tiny bit of pasta. Each mouthful allowed me to feel like an accomplishment; I was winning.

So for me, I totally relate to why people choose to personify their eating disorder, but in truth why should it bother anyone either way? Slagging somebody off for using Ana to describe how they aren't feeling themselves is judgement, and way out of order. In the same way, using "Ana" as some kind of fucked up motivational figure is out of order in my eyes. At the end of the day, it's others' people way of coping with an impossible state of mind, not really ours to judge.

Difficult issue, would LOVE to hear you guys' thoughts.

My Smile

So, yesterday after having braces for 2 and a half years, I finally got them removed. "Big whoop" you might be thinking... But I have pictured this moment where I could confidently smile ever since the second I got them on. And now I can, my teeth are straight and yes I feel confident. But, I don't think that's down to getting my braces off.

It's not just straight teeth and carefully applied lipgloss - I think it's something more. When something small changes, you automatically shine from within, and that happiness makes you feel more beautiful, and look more beautiful to other people. I got lots of compliments from my friends as I flashed them toothy grins at a party last night, but I think it was the smile in my eyes and the smile about my whole persona that made them feel the need to say something.

My smile went missing, along with a huge part of me, when I was truly in the grip of anorexia. My friend J said something, which I will never forget. Ever.
"Maybe it is the weight loss, the gaunt face, the sunken eyes... but I don't think so. Something's changed. Your glow has gone, the glow you used to light up a room with... it's just not here anymore"
I think I still have the message saved on my phone, because in all seriousness that was one of the things I had never considered. On my quest for "beauty" and "control" I had managed to achieve ugliness through the sheer misery I was putting myself through.

A common misconception? Eating disorders are not glamorous or beautiful. For some reason, people seem to believe that anorexia has placed the vital chihuahua as the latest celebrity accessory. This thinspo shit pisses me off beyond belief, how somebody can promote a mental health illness as desirable is totally beyond me. Anybody who needs "thinspiration" or who relies on it for "motivation" does not have an eating disorder. They're following a fad, they're somebody with poor body image, but in my eyes that's not an eating disorder. Eating disorders are disgusting. Quite apart from the physical horrors your body goes through (google it, I won't go into detail), the light behind your eyes is dulled. You have no energy, no spark, no enthusiasm for anything but reducing the number on the scale.

So, treat yourself. Dye your hair, splash out on a new top, do your hair extra nice. Allow yourself to walk down the street with your shoulders back and your head held high with that eating-disorder-I'm-kickin'-some-serious-ass kinda attitude. Don't let that bullshit "once I'm thin I'll be beautiful and happy and successful and confident" fool ya. You'll feel sad and lost, look emaciated and unattractive, and life will all be in black and white.

The truth is, now I have my smile back, I feel almost happy. Something I haven't felt in a long time.

Smile chicas.

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 :)