This is part of my story and the thoughts I have had over the past ten years that I had suffered from an eating disorder and self-harm. I figured I might as well publish more about it, since I seem to often post snip its of it on Facebook. I want to continue to raise awareness about the severity of these illnesses. I do not claim to be 100% recovered, but I do consider myself to be in recovery. It's sometimes hard to share such personal thoughts and feeling, but I feel like I am ready for it. Let's do this...
With multiple hard things going on in my young life (I was 12 when my depression and eating disorder started) moving to a new state, trying to make new friends, parents previous divorce and dads new marriage, etc, I was feeling really down. I remember feeling so depressed, I would come home from school and hide in my closet. This was not like me. I used to be such a happy and friendly girl. I remember not feeling good enough for anything or anyone and I really just wanted to disappear. I tried drowning myself in the bath tub, but couldn't remain under the water long enough to carry it out. Starving myself was a slow suicide.
I became very unhappy, angry, lost all motivation and sense of purpose in life. I was distant to reality, and lived in a different world. I felt like I couldn't relate to anyone and they couldn't relate to me. I was an alien stuck on the wrong planet. My parents made me start therapy. When I first started therapy I couldn't even imagine any other life than the unhappy, self-hating one I was living.
It was difficult for me to concentrate on much of anything. My mind wandered in classes and it took me about three times longer than it should have to turn out any kind of quality work. I look back on the energy that went into counting calories and thinking about food, and I feel sad. It was such a shallow and lonely existence.
People used to really hand it to me for being so disciplined. I would always say no to dessert. I would workout whether rain, hail, or shine. I used to get compliments on my "toned" body. What those people didn't know was how weak and tired I was all of the time. I really wanted to just curl up and take a nap, but I was too driven to work off what little food I had eaten that day to let myself rest. I feared that if I didn't work out no matter how weak, sick, or tired I felt I would immediately get fat.
I would hardly sleep at night. As soon as my siblings and mom had gone to sleep, I would walk up and down the stairs all night and do jumping jacks in my room as quietly as I could. I finally had to tell my parents about how torn up my feet were, and I blamed the unsanitary locker rooms at school for giving me athletes foot, when in reality, it was really me tearing my own feet up. I would also lie about taking the bus home from school, when in reality I would run home. If you're reading this mom-sorry for all of the lies!
I planned my day around exercise. How much I could eat depended on how long and how many times a day I worked out. I fit in my friends and family around my exercise schedule. I was too busy burning calories to have any relationships in my life. The very nature of an eating disorder prevents the development of relationships. How could I have a relationship with someone based on honesty and truth if I was constantly lying about how much I ate, didn't eat, exercised, purged, etc.
Anorexia and the problems associated with it caused me to withdraw from most people. I didn't date, had few friends, and thought my family didn't care (which was the TOTAL opposite). I was afraid to go out of the house and face the world.
The sad thing is, I didn't even realize I was pushing people away. My disease blinded me. Especially when my loved ones told me I had a problem, I blocked them out even more, because hearing them drove me crazy. They hated to see me slowly killing myself. I used to make a schedule each day with every minute of the day accounted for. Exercise was sprinkled throughout my schedule. You know, 8:00-10:30 I had class, from 10:30-noon I ran laps in the gym, and was back in class until 3:00. I would run home to study standing up, and filled my study "breaks" with sit-ups, push-ups, and running in place-but softly, so my parent's couldn't hear.
Celebrations felt anything but celebratory when I was in the depths of my eating disorder. I remember begging my parents not to get me a cake, and my caring dad instead went and cut up a cantaloupe and stuck some candles in it. Those birthdays still make me cry.
Eventually I got to the point where my weight was too low, and the state got involved and I was forced to go to treatment. That first treatment is a story in and of its own. I was having heart problems, and had to be fed through a tube. I never thought it would get to that point, but it did. Maybe I'll cover that in another blog. But basically, I have been in inpatient treatment over 5 times, and each time saved my life again and I have met the greatest friends from each place. Going inpatient was one of the most important steps in my recovery. I kept reminding myself that I was there to begin to heal. I really was so miserable thinking about food all the time, constantly weighing myself, etc. The coping skills I learned at each rehab are skills now that I use every day.
Anorexia masked my feelings so well that I didn't always recognize them. In the process of recovery, I feel reconnected to my true emotions. My emotions feel much more intense, and somehow more real. I feel more real. I have so much hope and a zest for life that I never thought I could have!
I have come to learn that in wounds, there lies wisdom, and in healing is strength. The first step in recovering from the eating disorder for me was CHOOSING LIFE. Staying focused in recovery can be hard. The eating disorder was my life, it was me. As I began to get better, I started feeling hard emotions that I didn't know how to deal with. Overwhelming feelings DO in fact pass. Recovery is HARD and SCARY. Every now and then, I had to make myself do things that I didn't really want to do, but in the end, it all paid off.
I think each person's recovery is unique and that everyone's definition of recovery is different. Personally, I will probably always be somewhat aware of my eating and weight; but, each year, the obsession lessens. I do believe to a certain degree that recovery is possible. It is a day-to-day process and sometimes even minute-to-minute. It is hard work, but SO worth it! My life has gotten so much better. I am so grateful.
My relationships have improved dramatically in recovery. I am more open and honest, able to express my thoughts and feelings. My relationships are now based on people liking me for who I am, not on what I do or how thin I can be. I've finally learned to create and sustain both intimate and casual friendships, something I thought impossible when I was sick and died a thousand deaths every day from shyness. I've learned how to take the imitative, to reach out to people instead of waiting for them to notice me and take the first step. I used to say that I'd rather be lonely than ask for quality time or a hug from someone. I felt terribly vulnerable admitting that I was not totally self-sufficient. The time came, though, when I realized that if I waited for other people to notice I needed something, I would wait a long-and awfully lonely-time.
Watching my body change filled me with panic. I kept thinking my thighs and legs were huge, and I would freak out. It took a long time for me to get used to my maintenance weight. I was depressed until I realized that being thin hadn't changed my life at all. Matter of fact, my life was a LOT better at a healthier weight. I forced myself to take risks. It was always important to me to be able to someday eat like a normal person who doesn't have an eating disorder. I wanted to be able to eat whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, without driving myself or the people I was with crazy. Seeing that I could eat something I was afraid of and not get fat overnight or die from it helped me tremendously. Everyone always says it's not about the food, but you know what? Some of it is! It may not be the root, but it is definitely a branch that you have to recognize and address if you want to truly get better.
Loving myself was also another piece to my recovery puzzle. I used to not allow myself to put on any chap stick when my lips were bleeding or put lotion on my peeling skin because of two reasons: #1. I was afraid that somehow there was calories in the chap stick and the lotion and it would sink into my skin and make me fat (ridiculous, I know) and #2 I felt like I deserved punishment and didn't deserve to feel well. When I first started to really experience love for myself, I found it to be bittersweet. There was joy as I began to appreciate myself as a valuable, lovable being. But there was also grief. It's amazing how much old injustices and injuries hurt when you finally love yourself. My compassion for myself is what assures me that I will get through it. Loving myself was definitely the key to my recovery.
So much LOVE to everyone!!!!!! Thanks for all of your love and support!
