"Cry For Help"

This phrase is banded about a lot in the world of self harm and eating disorders. I actually think this phrase perfectly sums up a huge part of their very workings, but for some reason, it has become a term of dismission.

"She's just doing it as a cry for help, it's no big deal"

Uh.. what? A cry for help means there is a need for help in the first place, the sheer desperation of people who turn to self harm starvation aren't  just crying for help, they're screaming. Why on earth does this strike somebody as a reason to disregard their struggles? Surely, if anything, they should realise how truly awful somebody must be feeling to search for some kind of deliverance, of salvation even, through such self destructive means?

Honestly, it drives me up the wall. If people hurt themselves as a "cry for help", give them fucking help, they clearly need it!

Now, don't get me wrong, I think "doing it for attention" and "crying out for help" are very different things. Somebody who shouts about how they love cutting themselves, or posts pictures on crazy ass erotic forums, or who broadcasts pro-ana messages of "bones are beautiful", they need a whole different kind of help. They need help to stop being such a dick and get to the bottom of why they're choosing to promote something so blatantly harmful as a good lifestyle choice.

Nobody ever acknowledges they're doing something as a cry for help. I never did, but with the benefit of hindsight, there were times when I just wanted someone to take me aside and say;

"I've noticed. I've seen the scars. I've noticed the weight loss, the disappearance to the bathrooms. And it's okay, I'm here for you, and I'm going to help you get through this"

I once read a very good description of selfharm;

"You scream, in a room full of people, but nobody, not a single person, hears you. So you scream in blood." 

Sometimes, you need to LET STUFF OUT, and you want other people to hear you.

Regardless, in keeping with everything else I used to destroy myself, I never opened up really, not until after a long long time of it anyway. I still wore long sleeves all through the summer, or smeared foundation on my arms. I still laughed off anybody who asked why I hadn't eating, and I still lied about my weight, and how much I ate. But right at the back of my mind, in the deepest, darkest corner of it, lay a desperate me. The rational me. The scared, hopeless, lost me, who wanted somebody to find me. Part of me wonders if that part of me is my inner child, the happy little girl who at times feels miles away, crying out for help.

The other day, I saw a yahoo answers post which broke my heart. A girl had posted this (or something very similar): 

"I am 12 years old, and I have taken 12 paracetemols. I'm 5ft3 and quite a small build, will this be enough to kill me?"

No, there weren't concerned messages urging her to go to hospital. In fact, the highest rated comment was;
"If you really wanted to kill yourself, you would have taken the whole pack sweetie. I think somebody's done this as a little cry for help, so why don't you run along down to A&E to get an ickle stomach pump."

Not sure if I've truly communicated the evident sarcasm of the comment, but it was dripping with it, and many of the other comments followed the same theme.

That little girl could be dead.

She was crying out for help, because she needed it. 

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?"