"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.

Life is Fragile

Life is precious.

Every day, life could just slip away. It really could.

I don’t know the exact figures, but there’s probably a 0.0001% chance that somebody you love, pick someone, could be in some sort of terrible accident. Would your last words have been enough to do justice to how much you care?

It’s an awful comprehension to realize how truly fragile life is, how breakable. Maybe it’s fate; maybe it is all pre-determined, I don’t know. Either way, every day we teeter on the balance between living and dying, of loving and losing, of succeeding and of failing. 

No goodbyes, no preparation, someone could just disappear from your life. They could just be.. gone. GONE.

You wouldn’t know the last words you’d ever speak to them would be the last words. You wouldn’t know, until it was too late.

I don’t want to be cliche, and prat on about live every day like your last, and life is short, and dole out all those quotes. But beneath the pathetic cheesiness, they actually contain a very poignant message, which I believe needs to be communicated.

Thoughts?

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.

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?"

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"

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.

Tumblr

For the Tumblr-ites among you:

www.recovery-roundabouts.tumblr.com

Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll

While nursing a post-New Years hangover, the idea for this post occurred to me, but I lacked the willpower, and the stomach, to actually write it.
Now, around  October last year, I was very 'innocent' you might say. Only been very mildly drunk on a few occasions, never smoked, never done weed, never had sex, you get the idea. I mean, at 14, this is understandable, not at all abnormal. However, after plunging into the depths of anorexia after years of bullemia, I believe it was the anorexic mindset that caused me to allow all that to change.

With anorexia even more so than bullemia, I felt worthless. Maybe this was because a lack of food will inevitably lead to a poor state of mind, a total exhaustion with life, a lack of incentive to continue at all. My parents were now alerted to my self harm tendencies, and regularly checked my wrists and legs for signs of this, but I needed SOMETHING to make me feel alive. I chose risks. These risks allowed me a temporary escape, and also gave me a flicker of excitement as I rebelled from my parents.

This is a pretty normal teenage thing to do, nothing at all out of the ordinary. However, the things with lots of meaningless sexual activity is apparently something generally connected to low self esteem, and this was definitely my mindset throughout. My thought process was "I'm worthless, let them use me". And that's what I did, and that's why now I have so many regrets it is unbelievable and I wish I could go back and change so much. Not to mention the fact that even if someone wants you purely for your body, or what you are willing to do with it, sex makes you feel like somebody wants you. That is a feeling I craved, whatever the cost. Now, if people are reading this, I would think that they too are suffering from some kind of eating disorder, or depression or self harm issue. Do not allow sex to be another way of expressing your hatred for yourself, because in all honesty, you'll get to the other side and feel even worse than you did beforehand.

I was surprised to read countless blogs and articles about low self esteem being connected to such disorders as my own, and comforted to know that I'm not just "a slag" or "easy". It was a coping mechanism, just like smoking and doing weed and getting pissed off my face every other weekend. Although common, don't let yourself become yet another example okay?

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.

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 :)