Who am I?

I never understood why my eating disorder seemed to have such a hold on me for so many years, and why it got stronger and stronger. Apart from the obvious malnourishment and my brain running on such little intake for so long, i realise now that it served a purpose. That purpose is different for everyone, but for me, a rage opponent to my anorexia was that I didn’t know who i was. You’ll notice a trend in ed sufferers - they care more about everyone else than they do about themselves. To fit it simply for you, they’ll make sure everyone else’s needs are being tended to before they consider their own, including eating. For me, i spent so many years trying to meets everyone else’s needs that i neglected my own, and in that, i lost my identity and who I was. I thought my worth was what I could do for other people, how they thought of me, everything came down to other peoples opinions and judgments. My purpose was to make other people happy, and I lost who i was. 

Recovery is giving me the chance to tend to my needs, which is terrifying and liberating at the same time. Often I feel selfish, especially for eating. It feels like a luxury I don’t deserve. So many people are struggling, I could always be doing something for someone else, there’s so much pain and struggle in this world, how on earth can I justify myself the luxury of sitting down and indulging myself in a sandwich? I’m learning, slowly, that i am as important as everyone else, and therefore i need to tend to my needs to allow me to be able to help other people whole heartily. 

Needs VS wants

This one was a biggy for me. Even up until a few months ago, I would’ve argued i don't need anything. Literally anything, the eating disorder led me to believe i was a superhuman and could survive off of no food or fluid intake for days and i could push myself to run that extra lap. Sleep? For the weak! I could go days, weeks without sleeping. There was far too much to do to waste my time asleep. The little things as well, that I’ve learnt are actually significant. Like other people, to love and be loved, stability and safety, purpose and even play. Maybe they are concepts that I’ve not lived by for so long that I hadn’t even considered them on the spectrum. Actually, they’re just such foreign ideas to me because of the eating disorder that I hadn’t experienced them for so long. It feels too vulnerable to confess that i need those things, because that means i need other people, a concept that is terrifying for me. If i need other people, i can get hurt because ill let them in. If i depend on them for something, there could let me down... they might not, but if i don’t give them that chance, there’s no way they can, I’m safe. Anorexia makes me believe i can do everything and anything, but only alone. It thrives off of isolation and secrecy and gets its digs from having me on tap for hours on end. An afternoon spent home alone? Perfect time to go on three runs, clan he house from top to bottom, cook (everyone else) a smack up dinner, file all the implant documents (the eating disorder loves to think its being organized) and of course, do this all on next to no intake. There was no time to think about fun, play ad enjoyment. 

And as for stability and purpose? Anorexia creates a epiphany of the concept. Stability in predictability. I felt so out of control of my life, so unstable that i shrunk my world to a set of rules and regulations that made me feel in control. If I didn’t eat, the number on the scale would go down, guaranteed. It wasn’t a decision i made, it wasn’t some crazy idea i had to make myself feel better, this was an already extremely vulnerable child that was subconsciously desperate to meet hr own needs. If i put my worth, my purpose and life down to a eat of scales, I could control it, i could know what was going to happen. The inevitable spiral that followed was evident, the vicious cycle of malnourishment, rigid thinking and behaviour, obsessive rules that were unrelenting and unachievable. The ironic thing is that the health professionals Ive me throughout my illness have all commented one thing, how predictably unpredictable i am. But it felt safe. And that’s all i needed. 

None of this was a choice, and having insight on my illness, how it took such a hold so quickly and kept me in its depths for so many years now is both helpful and harmful. It was all subconscious, no one would choose to have an eating disorder, trust me. To develop such an aggressive illness is a clear sign of deep complex emotional troubles. I spent too many years beating myself up for getting poorly, but i can now see how futile that is, and also how much it plays into all I’ve ever done. 

The facts are, it happened for a reason, to somehow, in a desperate situation, meet my needs that weren’t being met. Now, I’m learning about all my needs. From eating enough to keep me alive and healthy, to ensuring i have a good belly laugh occasionally and letting myself play around with paint and stickers. Letting myself be around other people, talking and trusting, and also knowing where my needs end and someone else’s start, because i must learn to tend to mine before I can whole fully help someone else. It retraining my brain, my whole belief system and way of thinking. It’s feeling guilty for everything, from the food i eat, to the nights sleep i get to the time i spent chatting to someone, the time I cried to someone and needed their words of wisdom, the times I’ve not used my eating disorder and i realized i actually felt better than if i had lapsed. It’s a process, but its working. 

When the body becomes the battle ground

My body became my voice, when I lost the ability to speak. Not literally, I’ve always been fluent with words, but there came a time in my life where speaking wasn’t okay. A repetitive message to not talk or say anything left me loosing my voice, a fasting diminishing self confidence left me too scared to say anything, and the self hatred I felt toward myself left me hating anything I had to say. I always hated causing a fuss, and to me, talking or saying anything was causing a problem, needing attention, being a burden. 

But no one can cope silently. Trust me. I had so much pain built up inside that channeled it in the only ‘safe’ way I could see, the only way that stayed hidden from others and gave me some release, I turned it on myself. Self harm, restriction, over exercise, pill after pill after pill, it gave me a quick fix, it numbed the pain. But not for long enough. The more I tried to numb it, the stronger it returned which meant I had to do more to block it out again, a vicious cycle that put my life in danger. People noticed something wasn’t okay, the quiet but ‘coping’ fiona, wasn’t really coping. She was wearing long sleeves, her clothes were baggy, she was out for hours a day and crying herself to sleep at night. But I still couldn’t talk about it. At this point, I didn’t realise the power of my voice and talking, I had shut out the world so viciously that I couldn’t even imagine letting that wall come down. 

I got stuck in the vicious cycle for years. I wasn’t okay, everyone knew I wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t find an (unharmful) way of communicating just how much pain I was in. My body became my voice because I could SHOW it. The increasing lines on my arms and recording hospital trips. The bloods tests that showed severe abnormalities and ecg’s that left worried faces. 

It’s taken a lot of time, and a lot of work and trust to find the ability to communicate the actual problem. Not just the fact that I was struggling, but what I was struggling with. I learnt the only way I could ever deal with the pain was to feel it, and to do that I had to acknowledge it. Baby steps, I started off a few years ago with play dough in therapy. I barely said a word for months, but I started to write, and draw. In the past year, I’ve gone backward and forward between having the wall come down and block out everyone, but then managing to break through it again. I’ve learnt the power of words, when I say what’s going on in my head, I can let people help me break it down. From ‘that sandwich is overwhelming’ to ‘I haven’t slept for 3 days because I’m too scared’ to ‘I hate myself at the moment, I feel vulnerable and inadequate’. If I can’t talk, I write and draw. 

Don’t get me wrong, when I’m struggling, my default is still to go back to finding a way to show it. Restriction and self harm are still my biggest struggles, and I’d be lying if I said it was plain sailing. There’s been relapses but there’s also been times I’ve been close but held on. I’ve learn to stop myself before I act and think; what is going on right now?  How will doing (insert behaviour here) help the situation? The answer is, usually it won’t. The problem will remain, but I’ll have the added guilt and shame for lapsing into a behaviour. I know I need to be compassionate to myself as to WHY those behaviours are there - there was a time that they helped me. But now, I’m older, stronger and a hell of a lot wiser, and I know the power is back in my voice. 

Grieving in recovery

This is a hard one, and a subject so many people will not understand. If you’ve not suffered from an eating disorder, how could you possibly think there is a part of you that would miss what had ruined your life, your health, taken everything away from you. Something that took me along time to understand about myself and my illness is that it happened for a reason. It served a purpose, there was a long time that all I wanted was the eating disorder because of what it gave me. There was a time in my life where the eating disorder had a role to play, to help me, it gave me control, a feeling of safety and security, it was known, familiar, and it felt like my protective barrier against the world. So when it came to recovery, I had to learn that I was going to miss it. And that was hard. I couldn’t understand myself for so long, why was it so hard to give up something that was destroying me? Why could I sit in hours of therapy every week, be utterly determined that I could see the eating disorder in it’s true colours, and yet still feel this strong dependency on it. I felt like I was giving up a part of myself, my shield and ‘helper’. I resented myself for a long time because of this, and I lied and hid my dependency on my eating disorder because I felt so ashamed that I was getting it so ‘wrong’. 
Through time, the support and honesty from other patients and realisation that this was NORMAL, I began to get myself grieve. That process was, is, far from easy though. It’s grieving for something that isn’t essentially ‘there’ but also hasn’t actually ‘gone’. If you think about the stages of grief, denial, anger, depression etc. It’s safe to say I went through each and every one, over and over again. Because on of the biggest difficulties of grieving my eating disorder is it was still there, loud and clear. Even when I woke up each morning and swore to myself I would eat my meal plan that day, that I wouldn’t engage in any behaviours and I would practise all the skills I had learnt in therapy, the eating disorder wouldn’t let me go. It held me in its claws like an abusive partner that I had seen the true side of. It was only when I tried to get away from it did I realise how prevalent it was in my life, how much it meant to me (which I hated) but also how much I wasn’t in control. I didn’t realise how bad things were until I tried to get better, and then my little mole hill I thought I had to climb showed itself as Mount Everest and I knew this was going to be a lot harder than I had ever anticipated. 

And one of the most difficult parts of recovery was that no matter how much I hated my eating disorder, I still felt like I was loosing something that I loved in a way. It filled and consumed so much of my life for so many years, and while those years were horrific, painful, traumatic, it became all I knew. So when I began to fight it, I found a void, a chasm of unknowns and it was scary. Yes the eating disorder was scary, being told I wouldn’t survive was scary, seeing my world fall apart was terrifying. But this gaping hole where the eating disorder used to be, the hours it consumed punishing me and forcing me to do unimaginable things, they were now hours I had to try and fill with... anything else. I didn’t know what I liked what I wanted, what I valued or But that is okay, because I need to remember that you are going to miss something that serves a purpose. Why do you think relapse happens?

 I know it’s vital for me to remember the true colours of my anorexia, and that everything it ‘gave me’ was short lived, and usually false. Recovery is by far the more difficult route, it means feeling vulnerable and scared and anxious and guilty, it means facing the pain, not running. It’s about learning to understand why you needed such an extreme coping mechanism, but also how to learn to let go, remembering it won’t let you go easily it’s a rocky road, but definitely one worth going down.  

NG feeding - poem (trigger warning)

I can hear them 

Scuffling around outside

Getting more people

Getting the beanbag

They’re murmuring amongst themselves

Working a plan of action 

How will we do this 

With minimal reaction. 

Suddenly there’s 8 people in my room

They’re trying to be nice

Words of poison fall from their lips

Lies of how they’re trying to help

‘Trust us’ they say, their only advice. 

I’m pinned down

I’m kicking and screaming

I don’t want to hurt them

I don’t want to upset them

But my heart is heaving

And my head is so angry

Lengthy abuse rings my head 

‘They’re making you fat fat FAT 

They’re lying, deceiving 

They don’t understand 

They have got it all wrong

You don’t NEED anything

I thought you were strong’

Tubes shoved up my nose

I feel like I can’t breathe 

I’m crying, sobbing my heart out

Pleading, begging. 

I feel the thick fortisip

Pushed through the syringe

I hate myself even more

My mind is unhinged 

Breathe they tell me

Try to keep calm

We don’t want more people

We don’t want to cause harm

We’ll get this over with

You can get on with your day

Forget it ever happened

You’re going to be okay’

But I feel the fat pouring in

Inflating my limbs

My legs triple in size

My stomach brims

I can feel myself expanding 

Growing by the second

When will they realise they’ve got it so wrong 

I don’t need any of this

I’m fine, I’m okay, I WAS strong. 

My throat is burning

My nose aches 

My head is throbbing

My mind begins to race. 

My body is tired from fighting

I resign to my corner

Shaking and crying

Feeling but numb 

My strength is dying. 

They ask if I’m okay

They tell me I’ll get there

When I’m better I’ll see

I just needed a little more care. 

I bury my face in shame 

This isn’t how it was supposed to be

I thought I was in control

But it is in control of me.