Despite adamantly believing that I would never speak about my eating disorder and vowing that, if I recovered, I would leave it behind me, I have found myself doing rather a lot of talking in recent months.
Provided with some great opportunities by Professor Janet Treasure, I have spoken to students, professionals, and general bods; and, found it a remarkably rewarding process and a real way of being able to change a few perceptions.
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In 1993, I gave up fat for Lent.
In an attempt to be “good” (which I was a little hung up on), and to prove my self discipline (which seemed to be lapsing), and to convince myself, once and for all, that I could stick to my guns; I decided that a period of abstinence was a great way of putting myself on the straight and narrow -
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Now that the worst is over, it feels, sometimes, like I’m left to pick up the pieces of a life or clearing up after a party that has gone horribly wrong.
In the moments of quiet, when I’m trudging up the stairs to my lonely flat or clutching my stomach in the middle of the night whilst it spasms, backwards and forwards, then I wish that I could reclaim a little of what I have lost –
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I have been asked to talk about the things that kept my eating disorder going for so long. The ‘maintaining factors’, in medical speak.
It is difficult to answer this now, when the reality of so many lost years feels like an open wound, and, if I could go back and violently shake my previous selves, I would.
It is hard not to turn to myself and say, yes, Melissa, what exactly did you think you were gaining from choosing an eating disorder over the things that most people aspire to, like jobs and husbands and families and friends…
Maintaining factor 1: Oblivion
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I seem to be a little squeamish about food.
I am yet to work out whether this is a consequence – or a cause; a commonality – or a quirk that’s peculiar to myself.
It goes back to a peanut in a glass of orange juice incident, and is proving quite hard to shrug off –
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Outside, the snow is ankle deep and shot through with black ice.
Twice this morning, I have seen a frail figure, clad in leggings and a thick woolly hat, run past my window.
This is why I am writing this website.
Anorexia does not do holidays and it certainly doesn’t do days off.
This is why the message is so important.
If she falls, she will break.
This is why I’m telling my secrets -
Because the prisoner running up and down the road whilst the rest of the world is wrapped up in warmth or shouting with laughter reminds me of where I’ve come from –
And where too many people seem to be going -
If we don’t change the trend.
Flashing lights and ambulance sirens and the mutterings of paramedics and this is the break point. This is the moment when I’m scared that I might have gone too far.
Hospital beds at three in the morning with a wired up heart and an alarm that keeps beeping and this is the life change. This is the instant when I can see what I’m about to lose.
And, in that precariously balanced moment, when I’m not sure which side of the fine line I’ll end up on, and I’m terrified that it will be the wrong one; this is the promise that I make to myself –
No going back.
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We are programmed to forget pain.
This is a luxury of human biology but it makes it a little difficult to articulate an experience: the edge is softened with time.
Maybe this is why relapse happens (we forget how bad it really was); or why it’s so difficult to understand and empathise with the eating disorder experience.
Even I find it difficult to identify with my ill self now that I am a little stronger.
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I’m not sure that I’ll be able to have children.
You might not care at 14; but it hurts at 29.
The signs aren’t looking good; so, whilst the rest of my peers are busy reproducing, I’m still waiting for my body to get used to being healthy.
After 17 years, it’s taking a while.
Children didn’t enter my eating disorder dominated head very often; but now I’m getting back in touch with the world, I wish I’d explored the concept a little. It’s only with maturity that I understand that it’sone of the most important things a person can ever do –
I’m kind of hoping that I haven’t destroyed that option.
Please learn from my mistakes.
It doesn’t take a genius or the horrors of Belsen to illustrate the connection between anorexia and food fixation –
There’s nothing like a touch of starvation to really focus the mind.
Anorexia gets you hooked on an emotional level – but it’s the physical reaction that will really screw with your head.
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I’ve managed to cover quite a lot of ground without mentioning anorexia. I’ve sidestepped the key feature. Managed to avoid any serious discussion.
It’s been a bit of a pattern, this whole denial avoidance discomfort thing.
It’s an indication of how incredibly difficult and entangled it all is. It’s an indication of how exhausting and monotonous and ingrained it all becomes.
But there are things that need to be said and bits that I need to work out.
There’s a whole misunderstood epidemic out there that I seem to have got unintentionally caught up in.
And I’m really hoping that what I learnt was part of the reason.
Anorexia is not very honest. It tells you things that aren’t true – you eat too much – and makes you tell other people things that aren’t true – I eat enough. Bulimia’s similar although the lies are slightly different. I imagine that other eating disorders operate along the same lines of deception.
It’s not a conscious deceit – it’s all about the illness taking control. If something tells you that black is white enough times, you start to believe it. At the very least, you start to question whether black is white.
Honesty’s hard when your minds being addled. When you’re lying to yourself, lying to others is path of the course. And it makes everything a whole lot easier.
Talking about an eating disorder is humiliating. You do things that you wouldn’t normally do.
My stomach gave way this morning.
It is a strange source of inspiration but I’m taking it as a sign.
I can’t afford to be prudish at a time like this.
It’s all very well viewing the possibility of death as a medical scare tactic; but you never reach the destination immediately – there’s lots of steps along the way. Nature doesn’t take much notice of the it’ll never happen to me approach.
And, whilst Anorexia may start out as an artificial anti-ager, you might as well press fast forward on the aging button: I may have looked like a child but anorexia has transported me straight to geriatricity.
It’s just taken a while to see this.
Being thin is the telltale sign of anorexia.
Thinness and anorexia. The words have almost become almost synonymous now. Interchangeable descriptors.
I can see where they’re coming from. Starvation is a pretty visual effect. It demands the most attention. It’s a bit of a giveaway.
Being thin was at the heart of my eating disorder and completely irrelevant to it. It was, simultaneously, a desired consequence and an unintended outcome.
Confused?
I’ve been trying to get my head around this whole pro-anorexia trend. Wondering whether, in the process of healing, I’ve forgotten what it felt like and lost a little of the empathy that would make understanding possible.
It’s hard to go back there.
When you start to see the damage and have struggled – and struggled – for your freedom, then remembering the attraction is difficult…
But it’s probably important.
If you can understand the appeal then you might be able to offer an alternative.
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At the height of my anorexia, no one asked me whether I was okay. I’m far more approachable with a fractured ankle. It’s been quite a talking point.
The contrast is striking.
People are scared of anorexia. They tiptoe on eggshells around it. People don’t want to say the wrong thing. They don’t want to aggravate it. They don’t want to be implicated in it, maybe.
I completely understand. I didn’t want to talk about it either.
And therein lies the problem: we’re all concurring with it. It’s privileged, permitted to run riot, tacitly prioritied – because no one wants to speak about it. No one knows what to say.
The silence is deafening.
Anorexia is the great big elephant in the room.
