October 2019 – It's OK to talk.

I have always been hesitant to write a blog. 1. Because I was worried nobody would read it. 2. I had no confidence in my abilities and 3. Perfectionism was very much the bane of my writing existence!

Akin to taking good medicine, writing has always been therapeutic for me but sharing that concoction with the world? Not a chance.

I’m protective of my writing. I shield my work like an overprotective mother who doesn’t want anything bad said against their child.

Though I loved writing and practised it freely growing up, I always gave myself a hard time over it. I would brutally critique my work and huff and puff over whether it was good enough. It needed to be top quality and so it was absolutely my fault when I fell out of love with it.

I came to the conclusion after giving up on countless writing projects and exhausting the backspace key, that writing wasn’t my calling. The words I strung together never held any promise. The paragraph – I had already spent hours on – begged me to play with it some more. The piece of work became a piece of work and in an act of revenge, I fed it to the recycle bin.

I stopped writing for a while and didn’t give my creativity a platform; I stopped harvesting my ideas and let them go rotten.

Having spent a year fighting a severe case of anorexia and experiencing a lot of self-hatred, I really didn’t think I could find a flicker of something I liked about myself. Turns out, I was wrong.

My therapist recommended that I write a thoughts and feelings journal to help me deal with negative emotions. I wasn’t convinced at the time and found the very notion of it tedious and depressing.

Though I was unenthusiastic, I began writing a diary a year ago. I couldn’t have predicted how important the routine of documenting my life day-to-day became. And at some point, consulting this journal gave me purpose. I think when you’re dealing with something as consuming as anorexia, having other commitments, no matter how small, are important.

When you research advice on how to improve your writing style you tend to see familiar tips of “write a lot” or “write every day”. I used to grumble about the aforementioned advice because thinking about writing made me feel stressed. So in order to combat this stress, I would watch self-indulgent YouTube or bask in the glory of doing nothing. Needless to say, I had a lot of blank word documents and an extensive YouTube history when the moon popped up.

So when I did start dedicating an hour a day to writing, I noticed a vast improvement in my author’s voice. The more I wrote, the more I developed. I started to experiment with sentence structure and grammar. I was braver in my choice of words. I started to even like what I was saying and how I said it. Even though I was terribly ill and not much made me happy at the time, a wave of pleasure hit me whenever I read my work and an incentive to progress bubbled up.

I guess I liked myself best when I was writing. At least for a bit, I could escape the toxic relationship I had with anorexia and build a healthier relationship with myself. I appreciated those moments of (sort of) liking myself.

I set a deadline to stop my journal when a year was up. Said year passed yesterday (on the 30th of October) and instead of feeling liberated, I felt lonely. This diary had comforted me massively during the recovery process; It had endured my bad days, awful days and yo-yo days. It joined me in celebration when I reached a healthy weight and passed my driving test. I guess it became something like a companion; I had written myself a friend and I didn’t want to break up.

This morning, I wrote the date 31/10/19 and recommenced my journal. I’m not quite finished with it yet…

Writing played (and still plays) a starring role in my recovery which has given me so much belief in it. It’s also persuaded me to use my writing to help and support others because sharing has tremendous healing properties; I want my story and honesty to touch somebody somewhere. I want them to know that this battle is worth fighting, it’s always worth fighting.

This blog will primarily focus on anorexia but I want to cover other areas of mental illness, too. The stigma surrounding mental health demands to be shattered and being open about it is one of the leading ways to invite acceptance.

I aim to update my blog once a week. I have plenty of projects in mind for the future and am looking forward to writing them.

After years of avoiding it, I’ve finally found the courage to start a blog – and though I will never thank it – anorexia uncovered a strength in me I never knew I had.

20170520_192236

Today’s the 30th of October. To some, this date might mean it’s their birthday. The majority will recognise this day as Halloween Eve. For the rest, it may mean absolutely nothing. But for me, it was the day I decided to fight my anorexia.

It was a year ago today that I was unwell. Having been severely malnourished and brain-starved at the time, I deluded myself to the fact that I was ill at all. I considered myself completely rational.

I’ve come to realise through therapy that rationality is a funny thing. It’s easy to spot other people’s irrationalities but not your own. Your brain will always try to convince you that you’re right, even when you’re not.

Like with most cases of anorexia, it started innocently and I wanted to lose weight for a holiday. It wasn’t abnormal to want to look good for a summer vacation, was it? I wasn’t the first (and won’t be the last) person to want to shed a few pounds to feel comfortable in a bikini.

I committed to weight loss and healthy eating right away.

I was relentless in my willpower and perfectionism and so cheating was never an option for me. I’d watched my parents struggle in the past with diets and I’d be damned if that was going to be me. I liked proving others wrong. I liked validating my worth.

I poured more and more of myself into this goal each and every day until it was all I could think about; my sole purpose in life became reducing the digits on the scale.

The line between health and weight loss became blurred. It became less about getting fit and more about getting thin.

I would go to the gym religiously and run long distances. I had a specific exercise regime I had to fulfil. If I skipped the gym or couldn’t use a certain machine there, I felt extremely guilty and irritated. Put it this way: I was not nice to be around.

What didn’t relieve my mania for exercise – and likely contributed to it worsening – was a Fitbit. Now I’m not saying that Fitbits aren’t beneficial and convenient for some people, but for me, that watch fueled my anorexia until the flats of my feet were burning with how many steps I’d done. Overshooting my step goal and lowering my resting heart rate was my assurance that I was worthy, but that worth always died with the day.

My eating disorder got worse but I still trained 4-days a week through both exhaustion and hunger. I can honestly say that with a mind heavily controlled by anorexia, I got a massive kick out of my stomach growling at me to eat something. Hunger meant that I was doing well. Hunger meant that I was losing weight and going in the right direction.

Everything I ate was controlled. There were certain foods I could eat and others I couldn’t. My brain became so fixated with these strict rules that it drained the bigger picture of colour; I lost my bubbly and spontaneous personality through this regimented lifestyle. In fact, much like my body, my personality shrunk away.

I couldn’t tell you when I actually met my goal weight. It was sometime before May which was the month I was holidaying. The fact that I’d met my goal and felt nothing should’ve told me something, but I was too concerned with my body to pick up on the warning signs.

May rolled around quickly and I was going on holiday. Only, it felt the complete opposite of a holiday. I was not relaxed. I was not happy. I was not free. My eating disorder had got on the plane, checked into the same hotel as me and was lounging on the sunbed over.

The whole 7-days I was away on that beautiful Greek island, I was plagued with anxiety for eating unfamiliar food and gaining weight. I would obsessively check my Fitbit to see how many steps I’d done; I was not content until my wrist buzzed in jubilation for reaching 20,000 steps.

Not going to the gym left me feeling guilty. I couldn’t even eat dinner without feeling like I’d committed a sin. I was always too “full” or feeling too “fat” to eat dessert.

I refused to drink alcohol despite the holiday being in celebration of my 21st birthday.

In secret, I would do sit-ups on the hotel bed because I was terrified I would lose abs overnight.

There was something wrong with me, I knew then. I lost weight for this holiday and yet I was not satisfied and couldn’t reward myself at all. I worked hard but I wanted to work much harder. I needed to lose more weight.

I can look back now and see that I was punishing myself because I felt disgusted by who I was and what the mirror was showing me. I felt completely worthless and undeserving of nice things, like love or a slice of cake. My anorexia gave me a purpose which is why I clung to it like a lifeline. I was not good enough for anyone but at least I could be good enough for anorexia.

There’s a number of reasons why people develop eating disorders and trying to name them would be an injustice.

For me, anorexia was my coping mechanism, she was my comfort blanket. She gave me value.

I didn’t stop losing weight after my holiday. I kept going, going and going.

I kept making excuses as to why I was still dedicating my life to this lifestyle. “I’m going to run a half marathon”, “I’m petite and so I can weigh less” and “I’ll look more attractive when I’m thinner”.

Secrecy became my best friend. I threw my lunch away and pretended like I ate it. I started to skip meals. I exercised silently in my bedroom after working out at the gym. I lied about my health and masqueraded as some fitness god; I showed off about how “fit” I was to family and friends even though I felt like death.

I will never be able to forgive myself for the fear I inflicted on my loved ones, my beautiful mum, especially.

My anorexia continued to deteriorate. It got so bad, and yet, not once did I think I was ill or wrong in my actions. This was the right thing to do. This was the only thing to do. I was apathetic to the cautionary cries of my family.

It wasn’t until August that I confessed to having a problem. I couldn’t say “eating disorder” or “anorexia” at the time. Both nouns were too raw, too real.

Of course, when I opened up to my family and a couple of friends about my food issues, it wasn’t a revelation for them. I think they knew before me.

I needed help but I hated asking for help. I remember being too embarrassed to meet my doctor’s eye as I stuttered out a, “I think…I think, I h-have an e-eating disorder.”

The doctor referred me to an eating disorder clinic in the August.

Having plucked up the courage to ask for help, I figured I may have been rewarded by a quick turnaround time. My thinking was too optimistic, however, because I had to wait a month before I was seen by a professional.

I could finally relate to patients’ pleas for shorter NHS waiting times. I could comprehend their desperation. Before, I had no idea what the fuss was about and dismissed it as an over-exaggeration. It’s really not, and it’s really very sad. Waiting times can be a death sentence for many.

I was fortunate with how my journey unfolded. But that’s the thing, luck shouldn’t have come into it. I should’ve had help because I needed it not because we paid for a psychologist who knew the right people. The psychologist I saw once was not cheap but they managed to push the NHS eating disorder facility to consider me a lot quicker, after acknowledging that I had “lost more than 10% of my body weight in the last 6 months”. Now imagine the end result for someone in the same situation who had no money to spare on private healthcare?

It was such a relief to finally be heard. I think that was the most frustrating part during pre-recovery, that my voice didn’t seem to reach the ears of those that could potentially save me.

Even though I was now in the door of the eating disorder clinic, it took 2 more months before I was “officially” a patient and receiving help.

Having been successful and deemed “sick enough” during an interview with the ed (eating disorder) team, I was informed that I would be seeing a nurse for monthly checkups. The nurse would talk with me, weigh me and take my blood pressure. The nurse informed me that – due to the waiting list – I could be waiting for therapy for over a year.

My heart broke knowing that I would probably be dead before I saw a therapist. And with this tragic news in mind, I decided to kill myself quicker. Maybe if I got so ill, they’d have to take me! They’d have to notice me. Call me selfish. Call me insensitive. Call me whatever, I don’t care. I didn’t know what else to do.

By the time I saw a dietitian, I was 5 stone. I had dangerously low blood pressure and had most of the awful ailments anorexics face. I was skin and bone and I was a size 2. I was living off just cornflakes and tinned pineapple, fasting for more than 10 hrs.

There were many moments last year where I could’ve died. I could’ve had a heart attack, passed out or not seen the next morning. I’m surprised I wasn’t hospitalised, fed through a tube or forced into an inpatient unit. I was lucky, but many aren’t and many die. And it’s not right. Nobody should be that ill before they are helped, nobody. Early-intervention is key. Help those who suffer from eds before they rely on their eating disorders to “save” them.

Once I saw my dietitian a couple of times, I was allocated a therapist; my dietitian was truly worried for my health and issued me with an earlier CBT specialist.

I started seeing my therapist back in January and have attended regular appointments ever since. I actually have my last appointment today. I have grown incredibly, mentally and physically and I owe every professional I came into contact with, my life.

When you choose recovery, it’s not an easy ride. It’s far from a straight line, either. You will have good days, bad days and days where you want to fall back into the arms of your anorexia because it feels kinder.

The thing about recovery is that you’ve got to want to recover and want to recover for you. It’s ineffectual to say, “I want to recover” because mum, sister or a friend wants you to.

I struggled massively at the beginning of my recovery. I wasn’t quite ready to let go of my ed which is why I continued – even into therapy – to fight against weight gain and anorexic tendencies.

Yes, my fight with anorexia is still ongoing, but I am no longer in a place where I feel hopeless and void of feeling.

Sometimes all you need is one moment to remind you that life is worth living. I found my strength to change through the love of others; I let others’ love shield me from my own self-hatred.

My family, my friends and the ed team shone a light on the future I now walk towards.

If you’re struggling – no matter the battle – I hope my story gives you the courage to speak out and ask for help. You deserve to be listened to and you deserve to be heard.