Mental Health, feminism, and the adventures of an aspiring actress! Hiding behind books, probably. 'Have courage and be kind'

A mini post - Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2017

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23:53


This is only going to be a little teeny post, because it's late and to be honest i'm still super nervous and paranoid about the fact that when things have been so messy and hard my ability to blog has just gone to absolute pieces - but I felt like it was really important to acknowledge even in the smallest way how important today/this week is. So here!

Today marks the beginning of Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2017, aka a super-important week aiming to raise awareness of this horrible, debilitating and relentless illness and break the frightening amounts of silence and stigma that surround it.
I haven't always spoken as much about my difficulties with eating disorders quite as much as I have about depression and anxiety etc. This is partly I think maybe because I was so young when everything first went horribly wrong, to the extent that in all honesty I don't remember my life before having an eating disorder - but to be truly honest it's also partly due to the amount of stigma-orientated hate and frustration I still have against myself in my own mind. I will try and talk a little bit more about my own story this week, which is terrifying, but I've made a promise to myself to try and be brave - for the sake of maybe helping others if nothing else - but for now I just want to talk a little bit about why it's so important to break the stigma surrounding eating disorders, and maybe what we can do about it this week and hopefully beyond too.




When people talk about depression, they often talk about how one of the most crippling difficulties with it and with other mental illnesses is how invisible they are, and in some cases how seemingly easy they are to hide. I know i've done this too - the whole metaphor with how you can't tell someone with a broken leg to 'just walk'. The horribly difficult thing when it comes to eating disorders is that sometimes you can see it, and that's the 'acceptable' default image of an eating disorder diagnosis that dominates our entire society, including the GPs and medical health 'professionals' we need to access the most.
The truth is, you can't always see an eating disorder, and for that reason they are one of the most deadly, isolating, corrosive and destructive mental illnesses we're facing; 1 in 10 of those suffering from an eating disorder will be killed by it. Eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, races, genders, sexualities and classes, strike without any warning at all, are relentlessly cruel, and bitterly isolating. And because we as a society still only really accept one 'kind' of eating disorder - the emaciated white teenage girl - the silence and secrecy around these illnesses in an increasingly diverse society is more stubborn and frightening than ever before. (NB, there are plenty of ED sufferers who do fit this type too, and their pain is just as valid and frightening- it's just that right now I want to talk a bit about the countless others who don't too).



(TW - this bit contains details of ED behaviours)
I have been hospitalised for my eating disorder twice, once just after my 11th birthday, and again when I was 12. But this doesn't accurately or truthfully measure the amount i've struggled with it. You can't count the severity of someone's illness by the amount of times they've been hospitalised, or their lowest weight. Two hospitalizations almost 10 years ago now doesn't show you the other terrifying times my weight dropped, but not enough to be 'worthy' of help. It doesn't show you the countless lunchtimes I spent aged 16 nibbling half an apple and a cereal bar, and hating myself for the rest of the afternoon over the sugar in those 100 carefully calculated calories. It doesn't show my daily routine aged 17 of crying, confused out in the rain at lunchtime over the calories in gum and nursing diet coke, because that's what society had assured me that 'real' anorexics did, so why wasn't it enough and why couldn't I just fucking do it properly? It doesn't show the amount of times I burst into tears in the middle of the cereal aisle at uni, or the first time I resorted to making myself sick for eating a 'normal' amount, or the fact that the whole of the last 3 years has been a cycle of starving a bit, panicking because I don't have 'time' to be ill anymore, disappearing at uni to make myself sick, gaining weight slightly and losing everything else trying to cope with it. I'm a stable-ish weight at the moment, and a semi-healthy one, and it's catastrophically frightening, sickening and exhausting. I don't 'look' ill, so I hide everything and constantly and jeeringly doubt myself that I even am, or that I ever have been. I can't 'recover' right, and I can't please my eating disorder right. I am a colossal failure in every conceivable fucking way.

The truth is that in second year (the last time my weight dipped enough to worry anyone), I only 'got better' because I had to. My parents were about to take the chance to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe away from me and my uni life was completely on the edge because I just wasn't coping in any way. I was about to lose the one thing I love doing, and the one thing that makes me vaguely a person in my own eyes, and all the independence and everything that came with it. (Also, crippling amounts of fear and guilt at the amount of 'wasted' money if I had to drop out of my degree). It wasn't an option. I'm not a little girl anymore, I don't have time to be sick, I can't I can't I can't.

But even at a healthy-ish weight, or the way I am, the difficulties haven't stopped. In fact the truth is that sometimes when you're in 'recovery', or you don't 'look' anorexic, is when things get the most terrifyingly tiring, mocking, hopeless and hard. I am not currently in specialised treatment, because there was a complete mess with my files when I moved home from uni (a whooooooleeeee other story…), but the doctor I do have dismisses anything I dare to whisper to her about my mental health almost laughably. My body image is crippling. One moment i'm making myself sick because of a single flapjack, the next I'm panicking about the damage to my body and having things taken away from me, or hurting my family, or I get attacks of extreme hunger and all the starving i've done goes completely to shit. (My mum's mum is ill at the moment, so though my family are lovely and have been amazing throughout all this mess, at the moment if I show any hint of being unhappy such a huge guilt trip ensues that I can't bear it). I look healthy, but I faint or get chest pains randomly all the time, my metabolism is beyond fucked, my period has been monumentally messed up for as long as I can remember, and eating puts me in pain daily. I still don't see food, I see numbers. Things have been horrifically worse for me and I know that more than anything, but X years on they aren't right either, and it's frightening.

I promised that this was going to be a short post and it's turned into a little bit of a messy ramble instead, but I hope it makes some sort of sense. In short, Eating Disorders Awareness Week is crucial because this horrible illness is still so desperately stigmatised, simplified and misunderstood at every level. Even in recovery, we don't talk enough about the invisible dangers that haunt sufferers both physically and mentally day in and out. Heart problems, brittle bones and infertility all wield their own silent vengeance regardless of how much you recover, or how much you weigh. Eating disorders don't just eat away at physical weight, they eat away at everything you are inside and out. It's time we set the record straight for sufferers, for professionals and for everyone, and hopefully we'll help save lives from the pain of this horrible illness as a result.



Support Beat-ED's EDAW17 Campaign here: https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-us/eating-disorder-awareness-week
(I'm also supporting B-eat by wearing silly socks ever day this week for their #sockingit to Eating Disorders campaign, so expect lots of sock fun soon too!) x
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