It's now been over three months since I
wrote the first post on this blog. At the time I was intending to
update it regularly to help other unfortunate people in a similar
position to myself through their own personal battles. However, these
three months have been rather hectic for me in many ways, and like
every good blogger I've kept my mouth shut and haven't updated this
since. Yet, I feel this is an appropriate time for an update.
First of all, you'll have to forgive
the truly atrocious grammar on display in the opening post of this
blog. It was a piece that was never really completed. Originally it
was something that I wrote for ED Awareness week in February, but I
never got around to finishing it. Part of the reason was is that it
was really hard to sum up what I wanted to say. There were so many
things I wanted to talk about, yet I just couldn't work out how to
fit them all in, so I left it. It sat around on my Mac until
mid-March gathering virtual dust not doing anything. One afternoon I
went down the school and spoke to two of my teachers, and they said
how people were wondering how I was and what was wrong with me. I
decided that I could no longer really cover what I had been going
through, and decided to just be myself and be completely honest about
what really had been happening to me. I hadn't won the lottery and
moved to Saint Lucia to top up on my tan whilst sipping martinis. The
truth was, I had an eating disorder (and OCD, an anxiety disorder and
depression, but they were caused by my Anorexia Nervosa). So I
decided to be honest and just say the truth to them. Thankfully,
everyone I know is incredibly intelligent and understanding, so like
the top student I am, I found something that I wrote before and
copied and pasted it straight onto the blog, and just posted it on
Facebook to the people who I trusted the most. The only reason I
didn't post it to everyone was because I was still anxious about
everyman and his dog knowing how seriously ill I was. I was
overwhelmed by the support that my friends gave me, and this is the
reason why I believe that with any mental health problem, not just
eating disorders, it's always best to open up to those closest to
you. You'll be surprised by just how caring people really are!
Anyway it's now almost halfway through
the year, and I'm completely unrecognisable to how I was just six
months ago. My whole physical, and most importantly, my whole mental
health has never been as good as it now. Weight wise I'm now bang on
a healthy weight at a BMI of approximately 22. Climbing the stairs is
no longer an issue for me; I can walk medium-long distances
relatively quickly again easily (this time, fuelled by energy of
course!); and I no longer get blown about in the wind.
Mentally I've never been as well as I
am now. The whole depression and dark thoughts that plagued my life
for months on end have now gone away, and I'm enjoying life more than
I ever have done before. For the first time in my life I now have a
relatively clear(ish!) path that I wish to take in life, and I'm now
confident for that I can achieve it. Few would argue it's an exciting
plan, unless the statistic that in 1800 there were twice as many
doctors in Berlin per head than there were in the surrounding
countryside gets your heart racing; but it's what I want to do.
In terms of how my recovery has gone,
as much I would have liked to have said it was easy, I'm going to be
completely honest again and say that it has been anything but! As
anyone with a restrictive eating disorder will tell you, you want to
be free of the horrible s**t in your head who prevents you from
enjoying and living your life, but it's incredibly daunting. Every
extra calorie sets your anxiety sky high; you will feel depressed as
the bubble that protected your eating disorder from the world slowly
bursts; and you will struggle from time to time. However, at the end,
it's worth every upset, every tear and it's worth every second as the
melancholic skeleton that you have become slowly becomes a healthy,
strong and beautiful body again. Unfortunately the catch-22 with
eating disorders is that to improve your mental state and cognitive
functioning you must eat to provide your body with what it requires
to rebuild itself, yet, your mental state does its utmost best to
prevent you from doing so. An excellent analogy that I have seen by
an inspiring male anorexic is that an eating disorder can be likened
to an abusive lover. It takes you in saying 'I will love you', yet
slowly destroys you mentally and physically, yet you're unable to
escape as it says 'you're not good enough for anyone else, only I
love you, everyone else hates you'. Of course, this isn't helped by
the amount of catastrophic thinking that eating disorder sufferers
exhibit. Every extra calorie seems a mountain for you to overcome,
every fear food an obstacle. Shall I tell you what happens to a
normal person when they eat a biscuit with their cup of tea? What
happens is that the extra sixty calories goes into their body, makes
very little difference to their total intake for that day, and it
comes back out again about twenty-four hours late. They don't just
pop up like an inflatable balloon! You only become overweight and fat
if your total calorie intake exceeds the total energy you expend over
a prolonged period of time, over many years in fact! As someone who
was once clinically obese, I would never blame overweight people for
being overweight, as it's an easy thing to become in this society of
ours (if you want to hear what I think of modern food habits, or
indeed, society in general, I can probably write an entire
dissertation if you wanted me to...). One banana doesn't equal man
tits, just as two and two doesn't equal thirty!
In any case, if you're getting help
with your struggle, the last thing that your dietitian and workers
will do is let you become overweight! The whole aim is weight
restoration, not becoming fat! Something interesting that many people
have observed is how a whole cognitive shift occurs as you recover
and your body and mind begins to heal. When I first saw the CAMHS
team I was petrified that I would emerge as the whole sixteen stone
five 'fatty' I would be before. I didn't. I'm now bang on a healthy
weight for the first time in years, and my confidence in my body and
how I appear has never been so strong. Nobody can love you if you don't love yourself people! I don't
mean to the extent that you build a little shrine to yourself and get
people to come around everyday to worship and praise you, but to just
have some confidence and pride in who you are!
Confidence and pride brings me onto
what will be my last point, as I have no doubt I just appear like a
mad tramp going off on one at this point! Anorexia Nervosa is fuelled
by low self-confidence and low self-esteem. When I wanted to lose
weight I thought to myself that I was too fat to be cared for by
anyone. I thought that I only had a few friends, and felt that I
could not be loved by friends or family because of it. What a load of
b*llocks! I never realised just how many people really did care for
me! Once again it's a classic example of thinking catastrophically.
Some people think negatively and are horrible about those who are
overweight, yet none of my friends think that way. Neither does most
of society. Yes, people make fat jokes. That's part of life. Yet very
few actually mean it. The people who could never care for someone
because of their appearance are the people you wouldn't want to be
friends with in the first place! Those people are called a word that
rhymes with 'bats'. On the subject of friends, to anyone with
anorexia nervosa I just urge you to think about all the times that
you have missed out with because of your disorder. How many parties
you turned down because you were embarrassed about the way you look,
or were fearful of how much you could possibly consume; the trips out
to eat because you'll become fat; or the all the good times you miss
out on simply because you wish to be kept in that safe bubble of
yours where the world cannot hurt you. I've missed out on too many to
count. It's something that I will always regret. However, I have
committed myself to several parties, the school prom, and a trip to
an all you can eat with one of my classes. Why? BECAUSE I DON'T WANT
TO MISS OUT ON LIFE AND TIMES WITH THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT FOR ANY
LONGER!
Caps lock rage over, I only have about
three months to see most people before they go away to study in
university, leaving me in the rainy paradise that is the Rhymney
Valley. I'm never going to be able to catch up on all the times that
I have missed with them, however, provided they don't mind of course,
I'm not going to miss anymore time with them!
That's about it really. We're just
passing Royal Wootton Bassett now, and I'm getting off at Swindon
(off the train that is, not off with someone...). I just thought
instead of being one of those journeys where I do nothing but stare
out the windows with music blasting, or try out First Great Western's
relaxation techniques, that I actually wrote something that may
benefit others, and help others see the light at the end of the
proverbial tunnel. All I can say is, it gets better as you get better
people!
If anyone wishes to contact me about anything that I've been through, and have links to excellent communities which encourage recovery and talk about having life with an eating disorder, feel free to drop me a line!
If anyone wishes to contact me about anything that I've been through, and have links to excellent communities which encourage recovery and talk about having life with an eating disorder, feel free to drop me a line!
Cuidate!
Jamie L W
Jamie L W
(N.B I did just copy and paste this in from Open Office without checking it, if there are any errors, sorry!)
