My Beautiful Affliction

It has been an evening of reflection tonight and in rereading old writings I have been gratified with much catharcism. I felt a need to share this again, reinforce that hope.
There is truly not a day that passes me by now that I don't thank my guiding spirits for my salvation, my epiphany and my chance to live life the way I do now. I live without regrets or remorse - these lessons have made me who I am and I would never appreciate all the beauty in the world quite to the extent I do without these tests, not least just in my experience of having an eating disorder.


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My Beautiful Affliction.

It started with cheese. 25g of fat for just 100g of Edam cheese! What was the point? I could eat so much more for so much less, so cheese went first.
Except it didn't really start with cheese did it? It was never really about food was it? Food just became my means of communication; my body became an outward display of how I was feeling inside. After all – what was the point in a healthy body when its mind was slowly dying?
This was to become a question that would haunt me throughout my illness and recovery.

Your cards all lie in taunting piles,
So you strike a deal with the joker,
But she'll only want to steal your diamonds,
Whilst she claims to teach you poker.

Living

I find it hard to pinpoint dates and ages when it comes to recollecting my experience of anorexia nervosa. My perception of reality became so distorted that I cannot recall huge chunks of time, but the mental and emotional turmoil that I experienced became something that has left a deep imprint - a scar on my soul.

I became so afraid of messing up my life that I believed I'd rather not live it. I was unwilling to fail and unable to take risks. I was terrified of failure and too weak to accept it as a possibility. I felt I was too narcissistic and selfish to believe it was something I could do. I believed it to be beneath me - and I disgusted myself for thinking like that. What gave me the right? I "couldn't" fail because it was unacceptable and I hated myself for being so self obsessed and so pathetic. I felt I was too weak to run a risk and too self righteous to accept less than perfection for a life.
And so was born my escapism – "anorexia", my beautiful affliction, my safety and purity, my purpose, my identity. My excuse?

My excuse; my reason to avoid life because I could choose to play with dying instead. I chose to dance with death because I wanted to touch it and to taste it almost as if that if I could get close to it then maybe I could be convinced that it is life that I'd choose and its life that I wanted.

Anorexia I knew, it was safety, it was secure - where as life was unpredictable and unexpected. I needed security and structure. It fulfilled all these needs when life could not be orderly and in control all the time - or so I thought.

With all its walls and boundaries it gave me a shelter, somewhere to be safe, something to hide in. Hide from life.
Anorexia provided me with a justice system – a world that offered me security had to be paid for fairly, I believed that the struggling I faced was a small price to pay for the safety that my "illness" gave me. Suffering, at the time, seemed like the wrong word, for I believed it to be a choice and that the pain served as a good constant reminder for my own weaknesses, I deserved to experience pain for taking the easy way out.

Hate & Heart

Her magic tricks deceive you,
She knows every game and cheat,
Her hand will play inside your heart,
She's the queen - she can't be beat.

Beneath this deep seated self hatred, at the very core of my being was fear - a terrifying fear of being alone, not being loved or being rejected. This was an immense childlike insecurity, a longing an ache – a need to be loved and looked after.

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

A need for perfection - I must please everyone, be the best because if I'm perfect and the best everyone will love me, nobody will reject me, nobody will leave me. If I am perfect then I must be loved.

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

They say I am a caring person and they smile. Compassion! The answer is compassion - I must be the best. I work so hard, I am so focused, I listen and empathise, care and comfort and it doesn't matter at what cost because I must love as many people as I can, I must be perfect, be the best friend and carer I can be because that is what will help me on the road to perfection. I focus all my energies into ensuring everyone else is okay and try to become selfless, I have bettered myself but now I don't know how to care for myself and am now emotionally stunted. So not yet perfect so what next?

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

They say how proud they are of my A* and they smile. Academics! The answer is academics - I must be the best. I work so hard, I am so focused, I drive and drive myself and it doesn't matter at what cost because I must achieve as highly as I can, I must be perfect, get the highest grades I am capable because that is what will help me on the road to perfection. I get the highest grades, I have bettered myself but am now exhausted and unable to continue studies... so not yet perfect so what next? .

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

They say how disciplined I am and they smile. Control! The answer is control - I must be the best. I work so hard, I am so focused, I organise, schedule and be regimented in as much as I can and it doesn't matter at what cost because I must be as orderly as I can be, I must be perfect, be as organised as I possibly can be because that is what will help me on the road to perfection. I am so orderly, I have bettered myself but now control has become obsession and normality becomes questionable... so not yet perfect so what next?

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

They say that today I am beautiful and they smile. Beauty! The answer is beauty - I must be the best. I work so hard, I am so focused, I starve and starve myself and it doesn't matter at what cost because I must be the thinnest I can be, I must be perfect, be the lowest weight I can possibly get myself to because that is what will help me on the road to perfection. I take myself below that emaciated BMI mark, I have bettered myself but now am anorexic and normal life becomes a strain... so not yet perfect so what next?

Just please love me and please don't leave me.

Shrinking Thinking

She'll take your dreams and shuffle them,
And drive spades into your skin,
So you'll raise your bet and gamble harder,
But it's too late you can never win.


Many clinical and psychological assessments of anorexia nervosa patients' show that typically sufferers have an unnatural obsession with their body image and symptoms of a body dimorphic disorder. How an anorectic looks is of utmost importance to her, but for me it wasn't about beauty. This was about both protecting and destroying myself at the same time but never about beauty. It was for pain, for suffering; I never wanted to be beautiful – I wanted to be as ugly as I felt, for the outside to reflect the inside.

Studies show that typically anorectics have a target weight where they wish to look satisfyingly thin - which then subsequently gets out of control, but for me I never wanted to reach a target weight where I was comfortably thin – I never would be satisfied and I knew that from the start. I wanted to be so thin that I looked like I was dying – maybe I wanted the world to see that on the inside I was dying?

My intention was never to kill myself, because to me this represented giving in – I deserved to suffer for being such a pathetic person, I wanted to live feeling pain – to pay a price for living a life that I felt I wasn't worthy of.

In my head I felt as though my mind was eating my body from the inside outwards. A mound of rotting flesh on the inside working its way outward – disgusting, disfigured and grotesque – it was how I felt. That was what I believed I was and as these thoughts grew, I continued to shrink.

Waking Up

She'll bruise and break you with her club,
And convince you that it's fair,
You'll plead and beg for game over,
But you were always playing solitaire...

I was one of the fortunate few who are given an epiphany. In the depths of my illness I had lost all real sense of what was normal and what wasn't and therefore it was going to take something huge to snap me out of this world. I no longer even knew what I was aiming for – I just wasn't eating. My rituals had become so ingrained that I couldn't ever envisage living without them and I certainly wasn't going to break them of my own accord.

I was very lucky to be paired with a wonderful therapist, months, years of intensive introspective work and finding a voice to speak about my fears and a trust in her that she would not give up on me and not being able to manipulate her the way I had done with so many others before that tried to penetrate my iron bubble.

There is something very powerful in empathy and sharing in experiences with others. As I got thinner and thinner and panic and chaos broke out all around me, that made something inside of me snap. It wasn't people telling me that I was going to die if I didn't stop that changed my mind, this was something that had to come from me. It was lead in the depths of things I realised I had hit my lowest point and I had a choice here – learn to live, or die. Dying wasn't an option; I was many things, but I wasn't a quitter. I finally opened my eyes and looked around me, at people that were genuinely ill, with genuine problems and realised that I did have so much to live for. I COULD change this where many really couldn't. There was still hope for me and I wasn't prepared to be ignorant to that. I wanted to live for those that couldn't and give back. I began to try and see from the point of view of my loved ones those unable to understand why I wanted to destroy myself as I was doing, unable to see why I saw myself like I did – what my perception was.

Interlude: Perception Reflection

Anorexia- where a girl is given the choice to become inhuman, escaping body (and therefore mind) to become something beautiful and better, to escape the hate of herself. She knows that they only way she can ever become good enough is to be weightless and free.

An anorectic lives in her own beautiful bubble, always on task and always aspiring to new targets and experiences a giddy sense of elation when she reaches them. Self satisfaction brought with each new challenge - there will never be an end - new targets can always be formed. She's tired and weak but she knows it's worth it - she will be beautiful and perfect. An anorectic knows she is in control...

VS


Anorexia- where the sufferer is torn between the love of become inhuman, escaping body (and therefore mind) to become something beautiful, to escape the hate of herself and the self destruction she is inflicting. The sufferer is driven to believing that they only way she can ever become good enough is to be thin enough but there is never a limit.

An anorectic is trapped by her own obsessions constantly striving for her own goals to only push them higher when she reaches them. Self satisfaction becomes impossible as she finds herself never being able to achieve what she wants, exhausted mentally from the constant drive and her body weak from the torture and destruction it's been subjected to. An anorectic believes that she is safe inside her "illness" because she finds that it's the only way she can control what's going on in her mind.


Life is about perception. I believe that it isn't so much the things that happen to us that affect us, but more the way in which we choose to deal with them. Maybe I couldn't learn to like myself but I could learn to accept myself.

Seeing Beauty from the Beast

Perhaps I will never understand why I went to the extremes that I went to in my pursuit of perfection (of happiness?), why I felt that I had to hit a real bottom before I could even consider going up. Is it because there is something so alluring about dying? The concept is so seductive yet so poisonous at the same time. I seemed to need a world of fantasy to live in - reality and I didn't seem to agree with each other. The "real world" was the wrong kind of world for me – it felt too chaotic, too risky. So what I did instead was choose a world of lies; however beautifully disguised they were still just sugar-coated lies.

There wouldn't ever be a way of expressing into words the process I had to go through to get to the point I am now – there wouldn't ever be a way of giving it justice. In it's most simple form I learned to accept that this is who I am and I need to stop trying to conform to things around me, stop holding on to what I don't have, the dissatisfaction I have about myself - this is who I am and I can't change the real essence of who I am no matter how hard I try- this IS who I am. I decided to stop trying to be something else, stop trying to mould myself and stop blaming my surroundings.

One morning, I was just struck by a thought that crossed my mind as I looked into the mirror. For the first time in my existence I looked in the mirror and thought "today I look beautiful". It was nothing to do with my weight, my choice of outfit, my hairstyle or make-up, nothing at all to do with my physical appearance- it was because I look happy - I am happy. In some ways I feel that I have been blessed to have such an insight into myself and into life at such a young age. When I first started to get better I felt like my whole life had been turned upside down and inside out – but it felt wonderful – it feels wonderful - because it was me that turned it upside down and inside out! It was my choice and in my control - real control. Something I'd never been able to admit, been to afraid to admit, was that I'd never been in control – and it was my safety methods and boundaries that were controlling me. Of course I feel a definite sadness for the loss of a part of my life to being ill but that has given me even more of a determination to make up for that time. I'm going to take everything from life, soak these experiences, just live.

Beacon

Then every so often I'll hear of something that completely catches my breath, stuns and silences me. Such tragedy that it penetrates right through me, all the way through.
Sometimes life can be so cruel. Naturally I feel we all as human beings are affected more by tales that we can to some extent empathise with - it taps into something very deep. There will always be certain topics that will touch a raw nerve with me and as we all know I am no stranger to that vicious, manipulative disease that is anorexia nervosa.

I didn't even know the girl, I don't even know her name but I was reading mooching around Facebook today of a person a friend of mine knew of who had died of her anorexia. It's such a fucking god awful illness, only profanities seem fit to describe it. It leaves me feeling a real seething burning hatred right to my core when I think about what it steals from young lives.

I feel I lost enough of myself to my own experience, it sapped the life out of a sizable chunk of my teenage years, and I consider myself to be a lucky one - relatively I got off pretty lightly (save a tad of this and that damage) and (regardless of whether I "should") I never spent time in an inpatient unit.

It just eats it's victims from the inside outwards - quite literally, a parasitic leech. It makes me want to weep, I've seen too many truly beautiful people being chewed up by it, watch their soul erode, see once bright eyes fall beyond dull - to just lifeless black pits. Vivacious, gregarious young women become just shadows of their former selves.

I know how it feels to live within it's brutal claws. How impossible it seems to ever get out of it's seemingly impenetrable bubble. Nothing matters but the pursuit of impossible levels of thinness, it makes you believe that your only purpose for living is to starve yourself to absolute nothingness. Such a sickening irony - living to die. I understand how hollowing and harrowing it is to live that way- just being so desperate to be good enough, to be acceptable, to conform a standard - but such standards are impossible - it's a level of delirious perfection that is simply unattainable. You live feeling nothing but worthless. And beneath that deep seated self hatred, at the epicentre of it all is fear - a terrifying fear of being alone, not being loved or being rejected. An immense childlike insecurity, a longing an ache – a need to be loved and looked after.

I was fortunate to find a sense of love and strength from somewhere, I found a light, I had an epiphany and have been able to fight through a build a new life for myself - which isn't to say I don't have off periods but reading today about this poor young person's death just brought everything home to me again - you HAVE to keep fighting, being strong and surviving as a beacon for those lost to this terrible disease. I'm standing tall with my beacon and sharing with you all my fellow fighters and survivors, a light of hope, a light of remembrance and symbolic of a true determination and will to move forward. We can't bring back those who have been lost - but I know I walk and fight everyday to show that to some extent their death hasn't been completely in vain - we live on in their memory - living and breathing where they no longer do - showing that for us the fight wasn't for nothing and we survive carrying their spirit along with us.