As you may be aware, this week is Eating Disorders Awareness Week - a cause very close to my heart. I was plagued all my teenage years with anorexia and bulimia. Turning to fitness gave me a new, constructive coping mechanism and helped me turn my life around. Tomorrow I'll write a post about the difference weightlifting has made to my recovery, but today I want to spread some awareness about the reality of life with an eating disorder (or two!).
In my first year at university I suffered a major relapse. Midway through the first term, that haze of bops, clubbing and Kebab Kid became tinged with guilt and self-hatred. Back came a feeling I thought I’d forgotten. That portion of chips on the way back from town became a weapon to torment myself with for days. The upcoming faculty dinner paralysed me with nerves because I didn’t know the menu or whom I would be sitting next to. I stopped going out in the evenings because of how repulsive I felt.
The voices of my teenage years were back in force, not as a feeling, but as a whole identity taking shape in my head. When it’s strong an eating disorder owns every single day. Every command it gives you, you are almost powerless to ignore, even if you know it’s damaging. It’s soul-destroying to live with the tirades of abuse that come whether you obey it or not. They can go on for days, every name under the sun just echoing around the empty space within your head. It’s a constant screaming, in private, in public and in sleep. It doesn’t stop. It takes every inch of you – your voice, your strength and more. It’s a bombardment. There are days when it obliterates absolutely everything. Holding a simple conversation becomes an enormous effort, because every time you open your mouth to speak your thoughts have gone. They have been stolen by the eating disorder and converted into a waterfall of numbers.
The essays I was meant to be writing seemed of little significance in comparison with what the needle on the scale said today. I started to distrust my friends. When they invited me out for dinner, it seemed like a conspiracy to make me fat. The eating disorder established a strict regime. It imported a concrete set of rules by which I knew to live my life. You come to believe in it. Everything it says, you take as the truth. Everything it forces you to do seems like the sensible option, and you’re blind enough to think you’re choosing to do it. I had a ghost wrapped around my tongue and working my legs for me, walking, talking, thinking, answering questions, even smiling.
My friends realised there was something wrong before I did. When experiencing a relapse, its common for the sufferer to think ‘it’s alright’ to lose ‘just that little bit’ of weight. What it’s difficult to see is how much of your head you’re dedicating to this endeavour. By the time you realise, you’re facing a fully-grown version of the most fatal mental illness of all. I went straight to the doctors and alerted my tutors to my situation. They were, on the whole, incredibly supportive. It was difficult to be honest about why I wasn't functioning. The truth was that I’d spend an entire day each week obsessively poring over the menu for the canteen, working out exactly what I’d eat over the next seven days. I’d spend hours in the evening waiting for the bathroom to be free and for as few people as possible to be around. Most disheartening of all, battling this illness takes every ounce of energy. It became impossible to complete my work, even though I looked fine. My still healthy weight disguised my inner struggle.
I was my own worst enemy. I knew I was going to remain at war with myself until I decided once again to win every mealtime battle, whatever the cost. To do that I had to speak the truth, to everyone, no matter how much my voice shook. I had to conquer the shame I felt because I’d slipped, that I’d let my personal demons affect not just me, but my friends, the girls on my corridor, my family. I had to accept that it wasn’t my fault. There was no reason for me to be ashamed.
As soon as the secrecy is removed from a mental illness, it loses a vital grip over its victim: they are no longer the only one fighting it. I spoke to my friends and told them the things that cause me to falter. If the illness is inside, people outside cannot be expected to know what acts as a trigger. They’d had no idea of the fuel apparently innocent comments could give to my illness. Opening up removed a crucial element of my ED’s ammunition. I started to admit my difficulties even on the worst of days.
It is this openness that needs to be repeated on a grander scale if mental illnesses are going to be recognised and defeated. The stigma that can be encountered can silence any terrified cry for help. It’s so easy for a disease of the mind to be dismissed as attention seeking, a bad day, or a phase. This couldn’t be further from the truth. These insidious illnesses need to be fought every waking moment of every living day. The fight can seem debilitating, but every victory over every fear adds another line of defence. When you’ve won you can begin to live again, rather than just breathing air.
We are not weak because we suffer. We are powerful because we are surviving. No pity, no shame, no silence.
Find help here: http://www.b-eat.co.uk/
