Anorexia

In June 2014 I tried to hang myself; the depression, self harm and constant purging had become too much for me to bear. I have written about that attempt before, so I won't go into it again. Eight weeks later I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, for treatment of depression and an eating disorder. However as I was a danger to myself and at risk of self harm I could not be placed on the ED ward. Instead I was on a general ward, and other than a handful of meetings with the incompetent nurse who rang the ED programme, left to my own devices with regards to what I ate.

Restricted to the ward, with all sharp objects out of reach, I threw myself at the mercy of my eating disorder. The despair had eaten away at me, I was a shell of a person. I felt like I was walking around with a black hole in my chest, that devoured all the light from the world. MY mind was always racing, from one self-abasing thought to the next, faster than I could blink. I would have done anything to stop the pain, even if it was just for a minute. The part of me that belonged to the ED offered up a solution. If you loose weight, you won't be so worthless. Worthless, and fat and repugnant. If you skip that meal, it will be quiet in your head for five minutes. The hunger pains took the edge off my self harm cravings. Skipping meals and secretly vomiting made me feel like I was taking some control nack from the doctors and nurses.

I started to loose weight, but it wasn't enough for that voice. Every time they weighed me it would whisper, 'So close, just a few more and it will stop'. The truth is, that goal weight will always be just out of reach. Because you can always try harder; because you ate that piece of toast on Tuesday; because you just have to look in the mirror to see that you're still fat.

The more weight you loose, the more behaviours you engage in, the stronger the eating disorder gets. It's like a leech, draining your body to feed itself. While you waste away inside, it thrives. I could no longer look directly at myself in the mirror, or look down in the shower. The sight of my stomach or thighs made me want to tear into my flesh, to punish my weakness. I stopped eating altogether for a few days, because I knew that I could. The less I ate and weighed, the more I hated myself. I think most people have been self-critical, more than once, and for some people it could be a regular occurrence. I don't think I've met anyone who thinks they look perfect all the time; I mean rarely anyone looks good swimming underwater, except that Nirvana baby. But for me, I don't even have to be looking at myself to be critical. I just need to be awake, and even then, I regularly dream about how grotesque I am. Right now, as I'm typing, that little voice is whispering to me about how doughy my thighs feel when my legs are crossed. And how rounded my wrists look, and my pudgy fingers. I'll stop there, but you get the point. It never stops, not even when I get so hungry I can barely stand. But it gets quieter, when I do what it says.

I said before that one of the reasons I started restricting was because it gave me a sense of control when I felt so powerless. In reality, the eating disorder had all of the power. It was stronger than me, that little part of me buried under all that shit and hurt, and if I'm honest, I didn't but up much of a fight. Because there was one other reason to give in, the distant hope that if you push it enough, your body will perish.