Anorexia.

It gets on my nerves when the glossy girlie magazines are often blamed as the cause of anorexia. It wasn't like that for me, and the anorexics that I have come in to contact with rarely mentioned the images in magazines as the cause of their illness. Instead the reasons ranged from trauma, neglect (emotional or physical), being afraid of sex or growing up, to have some control in a chaotic life, the many forms of abuse, lack of self-esteem, being in the shadow of a dominant sibling, a dominant mother, and many, many other reasons. Every anorexic is different, and the reason(s) that he or she became that way also differ.

A person suffering with anorexia is often seen as attention-seeking, fussy, stubborn, or the whole situation is a silly diet gone wrong, or a way to manipulate people, revenge, or the person is just being plain awkward and "for F*** sake, why can't you just EAT?"

This was something I heard frequently when I was ill. Unfortunately, not being able to eat is the tip of the iceberg. It's more complicated than just shovelling food into your mouth, chewing and then swallowing. How do you explain to someone (if they are even willing to listen), that being presented with a meal is like attempting to climb Mount Everest with a broken leg? Or that the innocent action of a friend inviting you out for coffee can evoke extreme terror and the probability of you saying "no" is about 99.99%? Or the only way you can go to sleep at night is with the knowledge that you haven't eaten today, that you've notched up 1000+ calories on your exercise bike, and as you slump in to bed exhausted you are so hungry that it's painful. But you feel safe. And clean. As you drift in to sleep, you dream about food. Every night. Huge banquets. You can taste it in your dream. It's wonderful. But then you wake up and realize that you will never be able to attend that banquet or eat that food for fear of the consequences-whatever they may be.

During your waking hours, you think about food constantly. You salivate and your tongue craves the feel of food on it. You gaze longingly into the windows of cake and chocolate shops, savouring every smell hoping it will satiate your desperate hunger. But it doesn't. You want to go in and buy the whole shop. But you can't. You mustn't. It would be weak. Your bathroom scales are your best friend and your worst enemy. They determine your mood for the day. You also develop an uneasy relationship with your toilet. The fear that any food has been ingested is so great that you will go to great lengths to get rid of it. Vomiting, laxatives, ipecac, enemas and colonic irrigation to name a few. After a while, the laxatives don't work any more. Your body has gotten used to them and you need more and more just for them to take effect. When they do, you are perched on the toilet for hours in the middle of the night with stomach contractions comparable with what I imagine childbirth to feel like. They also make you have cold sweats, palpitations and chest pains which make you think you are having a heart attack.

I was fairly uncommon in that my anorexia wasn't about my weight or body image. It was about what putting on weight represented. Growing up. Becoming a woman. Sex. A boyfriend. Motherhood. A job. And just being in a world that I felt too young for and which I hated. At my lowest weight of 69lbs and a BMI of 9, I could see how thin I was. I looked like a concentration camp victim. I looked disgusting. But I felt safe.

In hospital, being stuffed up with food, calorific nutrition drinks, drips and a nasogastric tube terrified me. It brought me closer to a life that I was frightened of and one that I didn't feel ready for.

I have photographs of myself from those days. I used to be proud of them-the achievement of getting that thin! But now when I look at them, I feel sick.

I didn't really know all my reasons for becoming ill until far on in my recovery process. I made a conscious decision to become anorexic. Initially it was to buy time until I worked out what the hell I was going to do with my life after the devastation of the breakdown. I'd devoted my life exclusively to music and that had gone. I was left with nothing. I needed something to focus on. Anorexia fitted the bill.

As a person, I am determined, goal orientated, a perfectionist, single-minded, stubborn and I like my own way. These qualities are fatal in an anorexic.

Looking back, I'm not surprised I ended up that way, and my reasons for becoming so were much more complicated than I'd originally thought.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd wanted to be a nun for years. Now I can see that my motives for that were not fully religious, but an escape from the world, living in an ordered environment with somebody telling me what to do 24/7 for the rest of my life.

I'd felt a decade too young for my age. At university when my contemporaries were talking about jobs, in the back of my mind was a small voice telling me that I felt about 12 and too young for all of that. My childhood home-life was complicated; single parent, dominant younger sibling, and my own personality as a child, blah blah, which stunted my emotional development. I also believed I needed to punish myself for my failures. I felt I didn't deserve to live a normal life or to have love, so I deliberately destroyed the potential for both. There are other layers to the onion which I won't go in to, but it was definitely not a glossy magazine that gave me the idea to embrace an eating disorder!

It's hard to say if I regret those years. I do and I don't. I wasted a decade of my life which I can never get back. I am now left with osteoporosis, dodgy teeth, digestive troubles and food intolerances. I had no periods for 8 years and it's unknown whether I will have trouble conceiving when the time comes to have children.

Sometimes I feel very old for my 34 years.
Despite all this, I learned a lot. About me. About people. About life.

I feel a much richer person having come out the other end. I hit rock bottom and survived, and I found that life is not as scary as I once thought it was. Yes, I get anxious about all the crappy little things, but my attitudes towards the bigger picture have relaxed significantly. It irritates me when I see parents pushing their children to be something they clearly don't want to be which can cause emotional damage in the long run. As long as that child is healthy and happy, who cares if he wants to be a barista rather than a barrister?

I learned that life is precious and fragile and should never be taken for granted. I also learned that life can be very cruel.

I'll talk about my path to recovery in a later post, but I am extremely glad that I have no lasting food issues from those years. I put this down to my reasons for becoming anorexic in the first place-buying time and hiding from life rather than a distorted perception of my own body.

It's a sad fact that people have fewer expectations of you in the midst of anorexia, and now that I am recovered this is the thing I find hardest to deal with. I could never go back to that way of life, but sometimes when I'm having a crap day and stressed with the demands on me, I occasionally yearn for that simpler life where the only things I worried about were my weight and when my next binge would be. (I had bulimia alongside my anorexia, but I'll talk about that in time). Then I remember the fear that surrounded those years, how lonely it made me and how I nearly lost my life on several occasions. It makes me realize how lucky I am to be alive and how far I have come since I decided to face my fears and make the decision to recover.


Kerry.