Never Felt So Alone?

I think for me, the absolute worst part of anorexia was the total feeling of being alone. The sense of isolation; of watching life pass you by from within your own little bubble, where nobody sees you or cares. How you can be surrounded by crowds of people, friends and family and teachers and strangers, yet still feel horrifically lonely.

Maybe it's the effect of starvation on the brain, God knows lack of food will cause you to feel depressed and like shit. Or maybe you're so focussed, so totally absorbed in your own personal hell that is anorexia, that you can't connect to anything around you? I would be in his arms and still feel alone. I would be with my family and feel like there should only have ever been three people there. I would literally start to wonder if my existance mattered to anybody at all.

Of course, now I know and see that it does, and always has done. I managed to convince myself that the looks of terror in my parents' eyes were about something else, not the fact that I was becoming more skeletal by the second. I managed to drown out the sound of my sister crying because she thought I was going to starve to death. My friends' desperate pleas for me to eat were them trying to make me feel better, or because they were jealous I was getting thinner, not because they cared. I just returned to my little world where all that mattered was the fact that you could see my ribs through my t-shirts and my hipbones were so sharp my tummy wouldn't touch the floor when I lay on my front. Nobody there but me, and my personified eating disorder.

You see, when anorexia is present, there isn't room for anyone else. Not only does nothing else really matter, but if you don't throw yourself into weight loss one hundred percent, the voice will scream in your ears again.

"Don't be stupid, Kelly, of course you can't go to that party, you'll have to eat food and then you'll get even fatter"
"But, I want to see my friends, I feel so lonely"
"Pathetic, they don't want to see you anyway, they just invited you because otherwise you'd probably cry"
"No, they want me there, I think?"
"You're too fat, they're all prettier than you, why would they be friends with a fat little slut like you?"
"True... *turns down invite*"

On and on this conversation would rage in my head until finally I took the stand.
I broke the little bubble.
I picked up the fork.
I accepted the invite.
I launched back into life again.

"Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone"

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.

Understanding

The idea began when, as a clueless 13 year old in denial of any type of eating disorder throwing up three times a day, I logged on to a pro-ana site. I'd heard about them on TV, they seemed just what I needed.
No, not for thinspo, weight loss tips, or any of that other stupid shit.
I needed, wanted, yearned for understanding. A place where others would know exactly what I was feeling and putting myself through, without judging me for it.

Unfortunately, there is a stigma against those suffering from eating disorders. We are vain, or attention seeking, it's  all a "cry for help". And to be honest, I've met a few people exactly like that. I started a facebook profile specifically eating disorder related, a whole new persona, initially to vent my own feelings but then to help others. Countless times, I recieved requests on how to lose weight, people asking me for instructions about purging up food, telling me how "beautiful" being emaciated was, and how I should "keep going". These idiots would send me pictures, ask me to be diet buddies, challenge me to weight loss CONTESTS.

Yes, there are some people who fit the bill exactly. They make having an eating disorder something it really and truly isn't; they make it beautiful.

The ugly truth.

But I genuinely believe that to be a small portion of sufferers. I have met some truly brilliant people who have inspired me to take the necessary steps towards beating my demons and beginning my life again. For some people, it is about a total  lack of self esteem, a hatred of how they look, a completely distorted body image. No that isn't vanity, that's insecurity. For others, as mainly it was for me, it is a need for control. It's all too easy to feel like your life's being taken care of by other people, and you don't have a say about anything; the world is turning too fast, and in some small way, an eating disorder slows it down enough for you to catch up. It can instill order amid chaos. For a while, that can be true, until you're too far in to discover that it is the eating disorder controlling you, and drawing you further into a far more serious spiral of chaos. Some people can feel so worthless, they genuinely believe they are not good enough to eat, that they don't deserve the food in front of them. In being thin, they might hope to achieve some sort of self actualization, and feel good enough.

I'm sure everyone's experience is slightly different, but from my perspective, those three things, or more often a combination of those factors, are what contribute to an eating disorder.

So, the idea of this blog is to replace the unhealthy pro-ana community which once seemed the only source for understanding. It'll have other uses I suppose, including a particularly selfish one which might help me, venting on here. But it might also touch a nerve with some.

Here's to a brighter future.

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 :)