Today is the final day of my twenties, I will enter the next decade of my life in a few hours and I wish I could say that I am facing the future with hope and a renewed vigour for life. The reality is, I am starting my thirties in the the midst of a long and difficult bought of depression, struggling with self harm, suicidal thoughts and an eating disorder. I have been out of work for nearly 10 months and some days I struggle just to keep breathing, never mind attempting to function at some ‘normal’ level. Starting out a new decade of my life in the space I find myself is terrifying. So terrifying, that at times over the last week, I didn’t think I would be able to reach tomorrow. But I have, or I will, so now I must decided how to begin this new chapter of my life.
Last Friday I went for a meal with my boyfriends parents, and for an hour I struggled to find something to wear. Everything was too big, even items I had purchased a month before hung awkwardly from my body. I eventually settled on a shapeless jumper and dress, but I was stuck in a land of confusion. Why did nothing fit me? I was certain I had gained weight in recent days, and despite being told the week before that I had lost 3 kilos in 2 weeks, I felt bigger than ever. My confusion was genuine, and the thoughts swirled round and round in my head for hours until finally, I looked in the mirror in the restroom and thought, maybe I have lost weight. Maybe the constant feelings of being grotesque and overweight were coming from the eating disorder, and were not facts, but beliefs being fed to me by that insidious voice. So I took a picture, to capture the moment, what I thought was the beginning of finally understanding my illness and seeing it for what it really was. A lie, a trap that I was stuck in and I just needed to find my way free. I would use this picture to fight back the voice that makes me weigh fat free yoghurt into 57 calorie portions, the voice that causes me to panic when I forget to watch the barista making my coffee to ensure they really used skimmed milk and weren’t tricking me into consuming extra calories and fat. This picture was also the first time I had looked at my whole self in the mirror in two months, as me own reflection had become so unbearable I could only look at certain body parts at at a time. There was too much to hate in one glance otherwise.
I wish I could tell you that my plan worked. But the next day I looked at the picture and felt only disgust. My eyes were drawn to the fat on my thighs, the roundness of my calves, the excess flesh on my cheekbones. What was I thinking? Of course I wasn’t too thin, here I had proof of that. I was a failure, a mockery, a whale. At the doctors this morning they told me I had lost another kilo and that voice filled my head. What a disappointment you are, only one kilo this time, you can’t even diet properly. So I set a target in my head, a nice round number, and that voice promised that once we reached it I would be rewarded. I would have achieved something, I would be a winner for once. I readily agreed with this plan, of course, 2 more kilos and I will be just right. It will be finished, and I will be happy with what I see.
This is a lie. With an eating disorder, you can never reach the finish line because the goal posts will always move. If you had told me last year I would weigh what I do today, I would have scoffed. I know it is a lie but I can do nothing but work towards the current target because there is no other option. In the words of The Borg, resistance is futile. Resistance is failure, and failing at this will just make the pain worse, the loathing stronger, the abusive voices louder.
I looked back today on a photo of myself from my birthday last year, and I see no difference in the two images. I see mistakes to be fixed, bulges and flesh in abundance, I see that I have achieved nothing in the last year. And deep down inside, buried beneath the depression and the eating disorder and the hatred, I feel a profound sadness. Because more than numbers on a scale, the most important thing I have failed at in the last year, the last ten years, is finding my way out of the trap.
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