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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An eating disorder makes you someone that you’re not.
At first, it made me a liar; then it turned me into an animal; for a while, it made me feel like a fraud; and, then it decided that I was nobody.
Or so it felt.
Jekyll and Hyde and the multiples of me has been ringing around my head for all these years and I couldn’t explain it until I’d put some of the pieces back together; until I started to get re-acquainted with the real me.
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Sometimes, it would get me in the middle of the night.
They don’t warn you about that.
Sometimes, the addiction would penetrate through my sleep; and, I’d find myself, bleary eyed and sleep headed, standing in the kitchen trying to assemble a pile of food.
While outside was still and sleeping and time seemed suspended, I’d be retching my guts up in my own private world.
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When you’re sick, you want to get better.
Unfortunately, it’s rarely that straightforward with an eating disorder. It’s never just an illness – it takes a while to even recognise it in this guise – and it’s hard to work out whether it’s a friend or an enemy.
Because it’s both.
The paradox screws with your head.
The dichotomy makes moving on and getting better a real challenge.
Ironically, it’s also the key to recovery.
I think I may have mistaken concern for care, confused professional curiosity with personal interest. I think I may have become accustomed to being looked after, grown used to the attention.
There’s nothing like a chronic eating disorder to rally up a medical army. It does a great job of ensuring that you’re well looked after, takes you right back to a parent child scenario – and it’s not hard to guess which seat you’re occupying.
It feels like a safer place to be. It feels like you’re special.
For a while. But then, like a child throwing a tantrum, you find yourself cranking up the volume. It’s not always a conscious thing – you’ve just got to work that little bit harder to get the same response.
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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I get that I might not be here today if it wasn’t for a few well timed hospital admissions but you’ve got to be a bit careful with the inpatient option: anorexia can be a little devil when it’s cornered.
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.
I don’t get on with Victoria Station. It’s not the floundering tourists or the one-track-minded commuters that I can’t take. Nor the noise and the dirt and the tedium of waiting for delayed or crammed trains. I can even put up with the constantly interrupted conversation.
It is, instead, the smell of food and the onslaught of food vendors that I can’t take. Even after 9 years of distance.
Stations were a playground for my bulimia.
