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Thud. A Story of Anorexia



Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. All that I could hear. Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. All that I could focus on; the sound of my feet hitting the pavement as I ran the same run I took every morning. Repetition. The chant in my head ‘This-will-make-you-thin’ with every rhythmic step. This wasn’t the start of my day. Oh no the most important part was just before my run- the weigh in. every morning I would take the step onto my high-tech precisely accurate scales and I would endure the dreaded wait for my weight to be calculated. The number that would determine my day, the number that would control what I ate that day, the number I’d spent yesterday trying desperately to decrease and that I would spend today trying to decrease further. The number that my “life” was built around. This morning I had only lost half a pound. Not enough. Yesterday I had lost a whole pound so this means I have failed. Again. I pass the road I normally go down and carry on to take an even longer route so hopefully tomorrow I will have lost an acceptable amount.
When I finally get home I will continue with my structured, repetitive day. Repetition and routine are the only things I have left. I will have my 50 calorie breakfast of 200g of melon carefully weighed out and then I will do my exercises; sit ups, crunches etc. all in multiples of 5. 5x5x5x5x5. If I lose count I have to start all over again.
Then I will start to cook lunch. I will cook a normal hot meal for my dad and me cooked in water and not oil and I will sit in front of the TV with my dad nearest the TV so he doesn’t have a full view of me. I will have my bag with me and when I'm sure he’s not looking I’ll put handfuls of my dinner in some tissue and then into my bag. Adrenaline pumps through my body but I don’t mind, I like it; adrenaline burns lots of calories. I won’t stop until I've fed nearly my entire meal to my bag, leaving a few vegetables to chew on so my dad thinks I'm eating. He never notices.
After that, I go out. Either to town to look around the shops, (I never buy anything though. I cant concentrate long enough to hold a conversation with someone, let alone choose something, take it to the till and give them the right amount of money) or I go to the supermarket with dad (he is not allowed to go on his own because he buys the wrong things) or I just walk around enjoying the light exercise but scared that I'm going to faint.
I have tea at half past 6, which usually consists of some more melon, or, if I've had a bad weigh day, a diet fizzy drink. Then I spend the evening carefully calculating how many calories I've consumed, how many I've burnt and I will plan tomorrow’s horrible day. I have a session on the rowing machine before I go to bed, and then I try to sleep. My bones ache and I have a chill in me, which seems to come from the inside out. It takes me a while to fall asleep because I can hear my heart beating very loudly and very slowly in my ears. Sometimes it doesn’t beat for several seconds and I sit bolt upright until it starts to lazily beat again. I am fully aware that I might not wake up in the morning. I am ceasing to care.
Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow I will go to the doctors. I’m terrified that they are going to make me put weight on, but some part of me, however small, breathes a sigh of relief that I might not have to live this “life” much longer.
I wasn’t always like this. It started a few months ago. I’d had problems during my teenage years; my mum died when I was 15 and it was a very unusual and traumatic death. I had later been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for depression with self-harm. When I was discharged, I was given some wonderful pills, which made me happy, but they also made me put weight on. I moved to London, which was something I’d dreamed of doing since I was little, but the bright lights of the city were duller than I had imagined and I found myself surrounded by people but being incredibly alone.
I found a cure for my loneliness. At first it was quite harmless. It told me that I could succeed at something, that I could be someone. It formed a thin, comforting bubble around me and nothing could get in. It flew around in the bubble; a rainbow of colours, it told me I should do some exercise and eat more healthily. When I lost weight it told me that I was amazing. It told me that I would be even more amazing if I lost just a bit more weight. It wasn’t long before the beautiful colours started to run into each other. It started telling me that I had to do more exercise and eat more healthily and lose more weight. Its words of encouragement soon turned into words of criticism. It told me I hadn’t lost enough weight and if I ate something slightly unhealthy it told me I was a fat, greedy failure. It turned into a thick black fog. Still nothing could get in, but I started to realise that I also couldn’t get out. I took it wherever I went, it never let me out. I had to do everything that it told me to do or I would face the horrible consequences of guilt and self-hatred. As starvation took over my body, I became weak. Too weak to fight it and so it took me wherever it went. It controlled me.
When I went to the doctors, they referred me to the Suffolk East Eating Disorders team. There was a two-month wait to get help and in those two months I deteriorated rapidly. I didn’t think I could get any lower than the rock bottom that I’d hit, but I could. It was a depression and weakness that I’d never experienced before and never want to again. It completely consumed me and I willed death to take me so the pain would stop.
The first time I saw SEEDs, they asked me if I got any cramps. I did. They said that this was very dangerous and if the cramps reached my heart I could die. They said I had to eat a banana or drink some orange juice if I got any cramps. That evening my entire legs and my hands were attacked by cramp. Dad poured me some orange juice because there was absolutely no way I could eat a banana (too many calories.) I took the juice to my room and after much deliberation; I poured it down the sink. I couldn’t even have the 50 extra calories that could save my life. Luckily the cramp didn’t reach my heart. The next time I saw SEEDs they said that I would have to be admitted to the same psychiatric hospital I was in before. I thought I’d only be there for a week so I only packed enough clothes for a week. I would actually be there for 5 months.
I saw the doctor when I first arrived and he said that my BMI put me in the life-threatening category of Anorexia. ‘Anorexia?’ I thought ‘I’m too fat to have anorexia.’ Then I saw the other girls on the ward and I was convinced that I was by far the biggest and I didn’t want to stay. I had to though. ‘Only a week’ I kept telling myself.
I don’t remember very much the first couple of weeks because my brain was severely malnourished. I was later told that I had a very low heart rate and blood pressure, I was very dehydrated and my kidneys were failing. One nurse said that I couldn’t even string a sentence together. I had to have blood tests everyday for the first week and I had my bathroom locked so that I couldn’t exercise or purge. A nurse had to watch me shower in case I fainted. We were watched all the time in one way or another and we were not allowed to stand up or walk around unless it was absolutely necessary. I thought that this was a bit extreme and unnecessary because I wasn’t thin enough to be ill.
We had to eat. We all had our own meal plans, which we had to follow; there was no choice. We had to gain at lease a Kilo a week or our meal plans would be increased. Everything down to how much water we had to drink was carefully measured out and we had to finish everything that was on our plates. We were supervised while we ate and for 45 minutes after every meal to ensure that we kept the food down.
Meal times were horrible. There was a silent battle between the nurses and the anorexia and we were stuck in the middle. The nurses knew how to fight the anorexia and most of the time they won. You could feel the pure fear emanating from us. It’s like someone with a phobia of heights being made to stand at the edge of a skyscraper three times a day.
The most cruel and ironic thing about anorexia is that you have to do the one thing that terrifies you to realise that it is not something that you should be terrified of. When you are starving with anorexia you can’t think rationally, so you’d rather die than put on weight. But feeding your brain helps you to think more rationally which then helps you to accept that eating and putting on weight is a good thing. So you have to eat in order to accept that eating is ok, it’s a catch 22.
As my brain was nourished I started to realise that I was going to be there longer than I had originally thought and I began to accept that I was ill and I did have anorexia. The bubble that I’d been living in had a name. Once it had been given that identity, I could fight it. I even began to realise that what I saw in the mirror wasn’t what I actually looked like. This realisation came when a new patient told me her BMI, which was the same as mine when I was admitted. I was shocked. She looked completely emaciated, she was a walking skeleton, she just looked so so ill. I must have looked like that when I was admitted. Anorexia had warped my view of my own body. I was so angry, I wanted it to go away. It had taken everything; my friends, my control, my happiness, my entire life and I wanted it back. I wanted to LIVE. So I decided to do everything I could to claw my way through the black fog and pop the bubble.
Anorexia is a very competitive illness, so having lots of people with anorexia living together is quite dangerous. It is very easy to feed off everyone else’s anorexia and pick up their habits. There was a constant competition of who could be the most ill because to be the most ill meant to be the thinnest. So there were games of ‘who can eat the slowest’ and ‘who can skimp on the most calories’. It’s very easy to get sucked in to the anorexic games. I was lucky enough to have a few amazing positive girls with me and we encouraged each other to not be the most ill because we knew that to be the most ill was to be the most unhappy.
After 5 long months I had reached my target weight and was released. I was free, not only from the endless routine and constant supervision of the hospital but also from anorexia - the bubble had popped! There is a 70% relapse rate of anorexia but I am going to do everything I can to not let it control me again because there is so much I can do now, that I couldn’t with anorexia. I can watch a film and remember what happened at the end of it, I can go out with friends, I can eat without feeling guilty, I can go for weeks without weighing myself, I can laugh, I can cry, I am ALIVE.

2 comments:

  1. That really moved me, hearing it written from your point of view, i'm so proud of you for beating it hol..you never lost us, but i'm glad to have holly back

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  2. Love you bob! Its good to be back, thanks for standing by me, you're an amazing friend :)

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