It is a little hard to acknowledge these thoughts.

I’ve been digging around rather uncomfortably to see if I can find out what they mean…only I already know the answer. They mean that I have to stop pretending that I don’t care.

Over the years, I’ve picked up a particularly destructive little voice. It likes to tell me that I don’t care. “I don’t care what they think of me”; “I don’t care if they don’t like me”; “I don’t care what they say”. It is intimately entwined with the eating disorder; in fact, it is possibly the closest that the eating disorder comes to having its own voice.

The “I don’t care” voice has served a number of purposes. At first, I think it was a childish response to hurt or disappointment or anger: the kind of thing you say when you care too much. Later, it got a bit twisted, and the eating disorder commandeered it to pass through whichever behaviours it wanted me to act out. “I don’t care what people think” (if I am walking through the streets bingeing); “I don’t care if people stare at me” (because it looks like I’m going to collapse); “I don’t care if I am on my own” (because the eating disorder is more important than anything else). That kind of thing. At some point, the two parts merged: hit me with your worst world, because I don’t need you when I have food.

My eating disorder was my fuck off shield. It was marble hard and shoulder thick and cold as ice and absolutely nothing got through.

Nothing.

So, anyway, up until now, I’ve gone through any major transitions (and everything in between) with the protection of this rather warped shield. Yes, I’ve been nervous and things have kind of mattered; but there’s always been the food to immerse myself in and there’s always been a little voice in the background re-iterating the fact that it doesn’t matter what happens because “I don’t care”.

Only it does matter and I do care.

Bitterly, I care bitterly. I care that the job works out and that I do it well. I care that the people there like me and that I make new friends. I care that I’ll meet expectations and that it will all turn out alright…

I care a huge huge amount.

I have been kind of numb to this experience. I have dampened the panic with food and taken the edge off the caring with defence. I have prickled at people rather than left myself open and taken refuge in my eating disorder because it provided a place for me to hide. Or that was the illusion.

That was an illusion.

The “I don’t care voice” has not served me well. I get that it thought – at first – that it was acting in my best interests, but it has denied and weakened myself. It has pretended that I didn’t care about the things that actually matter, and it has inferred that I could not cope with the stuff that caring brings.

We’ll see.

This time I’m going properly in.

It was a beautifully hot day and my friends had brought a picnic so we sat, on the Heath, with the other picnic-makers, and I fell asleep in the sun. The conversation rose – and fell – around me; and I drifted in – and out – of what was being said. At some point, one of the guys (a chef, I think), produced a box of homemade cookies and handed them around. A joke was made, to his girlfriend, about how hard it must be to live with a great cook; and she replied, that it didn’t matter, because he’d taught her how to be sick.

The comment winded me.

The conversation carried on. Someone joked that it would be easier, then, to eat what you wanted if you could just throw it all back up. Another, that they’d seen a show about a hospital where people ate toilet roll. Someone else chipped in that apparently “they” drunk water out of the showers, to make it look like “they” had gained weight.

And I felt my knees wobbling, and my friend’s colour rising, and my heart racing –

And then I left.

I was that girl who drank water out of the bathroom tap, at 4 in the morning, so that I’d be ready and prepared when they came with the scales. I fell for the illusion that bulimia was the solution, and a miraculous way that I could eat – without gaining weight. I cried in hospital showers and screamed at nurses and was reduced to a crying, hurting wreck.

And yet I said nothing.

Nothing.

I just crumbled under the shame.

I have been wrestling, since the weekend, with why I handled the situation so badly. Been trying to work out what I might have done differently, and acutely aware of all the things I didn’t say. What is the point of talking about an eating disorder if I check, first, that the audience is safe?

I know that it was hard to confront a group of strangers. I know that I was disarmed by the sudden turn in conversation. There was a certain irony that I was beside the very hospital, where I’d spent over three years of my life –

And yet I said nothing.

Nothing.

And now I feel a different kind of shame.

I have been trying to tell myself that the people, in question, did not seem likely to develop an eating disorder (but then you might have said that about me). That, whilst I am acutely aware of eating disorders’ trail of devastation, my perspective has obviously been swayed (although the numbers are rising and eating disorders kill). I have acknowledged the feelings of the person I was there with (though I think the shame probably belonged more to me); and the context of the conversation –

But I perpetuated the myth that an eating disorder is not a bad thing –

And I didn’t stand up and speak the truth.

I have wanted to unpick each sordid secret and expose every unspoken rule. To break down the perceptions. To write myself into recovery. To say the things I shouldn’t say because maybe, together, we can help to make things change…

It is important, I think, to talk about these things.

But it is even more important to remember that eating disorders kill.

It is even more important to remember that eating disorders kill.

I am worried that I have diluted this message. That in the to-ing and fro-ing, I have blurred over this one, crucial point. That in the detail, and the dissection, I have forgotten to re-iterate the terrifying bottom line –

Eating disorders kill.

So, this is a reality check and a reminder. An acknowledgement of the cruel truth about eating disorders – but also, that recovery is possible and that there are people out there who can help.

There are people out there that can help.

It is a message that makes my eyes watery and my stomach, clench –

But it comes, along with the experience and hope of recovery, as the most important thing that I can write.

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.

A fixation with food is the first symptom. Like the blue elephant that only appears when you don’t want to think about it, food moves from peripheral to centre. It becomes the first – and last – thing that crosses your mind each day.

And so, to feed the fixation – without actually giving it any food – you get caught up in the paraphernalia of eating. You satisfy the hunger through magazines of recipes that will never be cooked, and trips to the supermarket that will never result in a purchase, or mental meals that are so vivid you can almost taste the illusion –

It’s hard to keep a grip on reality when you’re body is slowly eating itself. It’s impossible to focus on anything – other than the hunger – and things start getting a little warped….

Food becomes far more complicated when you’re focussing in on it 24 7. Anything that is limited suddenly rises in value; and, the constant pre-occupation feeds straight into the anorexia’s message about greed – even though you’re now in a state of starvation.

As the hunger grows, the headspace for other things – like people and places – shrinks, and you find yourself inhabiting a world where thinking about anything else is done half heartedly, and as a distraction.

Living is far more difficult when you’re struggling to stay alive. When each moment is precariously balance between life – and death – you’re fighting all the time. The hunger is, inevitably, accompanied by the tiredness and the cold and a state of being where everything is an effort and everything feels just that little bit too hard –

Until you make the connection between food and life.

Until you realise that controlling food is not solving a problem – it’s just making everything way more difficult….

For a long time, life seemed tough enough without adding a battle with anorexia into the equation. There were, it appeared, few pleasures, aside from my daily binges and a sense that I could, at least, gain a little order through deciding what I put in my mouth. Going out was cold and tiring and stressful; social occasions were angst ridden and filled with food complications; work was exhausting; chores, draining –

For years, I mistook this for laziness in the same way I interpreted the fixation with food as greed.

This is the great eating disorder deception.

It’s not life itself that’s un-enjoyable: it’s the state you’re in when you’re participating in life that dictates the experience.

When you stop starving, food is taken out of the equation – and you can make an informed decision about whether life is – or isn’t – worth fighting for.

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.

The Liar.

I am unable to tell a lie now. I have used up my quota – and some. Mostly, on the amount that I had consumed – or the outcome of the consumption; some, on what the scales didn’t say; the remainder on making sure that the truth was not uncovered.

It’s funny how one lie grows. Or not.

Trying to keep an eating disorder secret is hard work; trying to maintain it, harder still. After a while, I lost track of what I had said (and to whom), and what was real (and what had become real by default)….

The fear of exposure was paralysing – but the biggest cost falls on the perpetrator: each and every lie is a little assault on your sense of self; and, even then, it’s only a matter of time before someone puts the pieces together-

It’s virtually impossible to keep anorexia under wraps; bulimia can be concealed for longer but, eventually,the guilt and the deceit are as corrosive as the stomach acid. In both cases, exposure is almost inevitable.

It’s the reaction that’s a little more variable. I became like an animal.

The animal.

You do things you don’t want to do when you’re cornered.

You go places you don’t want to go when you’re starving.

Supermarkets at 3 in the morning and toilets in stations; growling and hissing at any tentatively stretched helping hands; rummaging through bins and rubbing food in your clothes.

The pain is primitive and raw. Like a savage animal, it screams and screams and screams -

Until you learn to manage it.

Which is where the fraud bit comes in: by day I am human – but just wait until what happens at night.

The imposter.

For a long time, it felt like I was leading a double life. There was the socially acceptable me – and the me that broke the rules and did things that you shouldn’t do. Like throwing up in public toilets or watering plants with build-up.

Being two people is hard: you’re always waiting to be found out; always waiting for the other version to be discovered. Nothing can be taken at face value when its complicated by your secrets, when there’s a ‘but’ for every positive and an ‘if only they knew the truth’ lurking beneath the surface.

So, it’s a total negation: one side cancels the other side out – and you become nobody –

Nobody.

If you’re nobody, then the eating disorder has, by default, won. It makes you somebody – or so it will have you believe.

After you’ve lied – and then pretended – and then done things that people shouldn’t do: well, there’s not much of the real you left. There’s not much to feel that confident about.

And so, in the absence of a positive alternative, and when you’ve lost any real sense of self, giving up the one thing that you do have is even harder.

But not impossible….

Because the behaviour are part of the illness, not part of the person.

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.

Sometimes, it would catch me unawares.

You like to think you’re in control.

But, sometimes, I’d find that the whole messy process had started with one, fleeting thought, or the whiff of freshly cooked food; and, suddenly, I’d be spiralling down and swallowing mouthfuls of panic because the momentary satisfaction was tinged with agony -

There are a few misconceptions out there about bulimia.

It might start out feeling like a quick fix diet aid; but, I can assure you, that won’t last for long.

You may feel like it’s all under your control; but, you quickly learn who’s in the driving seat – particularly if you add the savage desperation of a starving body into the mix.

It may look like a cry for attention or a silly school girl epidemic or, most horrifically, an aspiration…

But, let me set the record straight –

Sometimes, it will get you when you’re not expecting it.

Sometimes, you’ll only realise that that you’re under the thumb, when you try and escape –

And it’s far better to get out before you reach this point.

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.

This bit was written a while ago. It makes a little sense of the situation. I can’t say it any better now. My head can go back there but my heart can’t:

Sometimes my capacity to self-destruct hits me like a cannon. It sends me reeling. When I am lying in bed turning over the day and thinking of what tomorrow will be – and how much I want tomorrow to actually be – I can feel the knowledge that I am slowly killing myself searing through my body. It is a physical pain and a fear. The fear derives from the fact that the thing that I am most scared of losing is also the most lethal thing that I have.

My recovery hinges on this recognition. Whilst admitting that an eating disorder is dangerous and getting better is the right thing to do is relatively easy, appreciating the important position that it has assumed is equally important. Particularly when it comes to letting go.

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.

And you get used to asking other people, to checking everything out rather than learning your own lessons. It’s hard to build up any self confidence when you don’t build up the proof – and when you’re not on the same level: being the patient feels safer, it’s just a little disempowering. And not very real.

It’s easy to mistake concern for care, to forget that the people who are looking after you are doing a job – and going home at the end of the day.

It’s easy to confuse professional curiosity with personal interest, to assume that the probing and attention is about you – and not about the illness.

We all get used to being looked after – but sometimes it’s nicer to look after.

Attention can make you feel special – but it all depends on what it’s for.

Does it sound like I’m being cold? Like I don’t recognise the above and beyond that many of the people I’ve been helped by have gone to. Like I don’t appreciate the intensity of an eating disorder – and the intensity of the relief when someone else takes charge.

I do.

But I’ve also learnt – the hard way – that when you’ve been a patient for a long time, you can become accustomed to cotton wool and soft lighting and white kid gloves; and that, whilst these things are nice, being able to stand on your own two feet is slightly nicer.

Even if the transition from patient to person can feel a little hard.

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.


Anorexia felt like an achievement – at first. It was a goal – losing weight – that was being met. It was a demonstration of my control and evidence of my self-discipline.

The hollow pang of hunger was a comfort – for a while. It was something to focus on. It meant that I wasn’t being greedy, that I was really earning every morsel that passed my lips.

Resisting food was about not needing.

Denying hunger was about not feeling.

Calories and grams and pounds and kilos can be managed in ways that life can’t be –

Bulimia seemed like a good idea – at first. It was a way of pursuing the goal – when the hollow pang of hunger stopped making me high and started making me desperate.

Throwing up was a relief – for a while. It was a secret get out clause when resisting food stopped being an option. It was a way of getting rid of all the things that I didn’t want to think or feel or deal with.

Binging was about blocking it all out.

Purging was the physical release.

The whole process satisfied – and then re-started – the desire –

Being thin was the bond that held everything together.

Nothing else matters providing that the scales keep creeping backwards.

Nobody can touch you if, when you go to sleep at night, you can feel your hipbones and encircle your wrists.

No one will expect anything if your appearance says stay away and they’re scared you might shatter….

Or so it seemed.

So, I can understand the appeal.

And I can remember the highs.

But the attraction’s hard to palate now that I’ve started paying the price –

and the “benefits” are a little less enticing now that I’ve cottoned onto the trap.

Help Finding Melissa to challenge the pro-anorexia message.

The first admission was the worst. My head wasn’t in it. The anorexia was just settling in and it wasn’t giving up so easily. It was, at that point, a friend and a necessity. It was impulsive and naive and formidable – and its existence was being threatened, so it fought like hell.

The defences were up, the claws out. I was too young to understand what was going on, too scared to try and process it.

It felt like I was being attacked. It felt like I was being robbed. And, as a petulant teenager, I was going to prove my point. I was going to put up a fight. I might let them think they’d won – but I’d show them.
You’ve got to take recovery slow. You’ve got to know what you’re dealing with. The guns blazing approach doesn’t always work.

I complied, eventually. I wised up to the whole eating disorder game. Picked up a few tricks of the trade – inevitable when you’re hanging out with a group of experts – and heightened my resolve to get back into the driving seat.

Not a great success but, as I said, it kept me standing.

Admission number 2. We’re still in Eating Disorder Unit (EDU) territory here; still in the luxury of children’s services and private hospitals. This one was my own idea. A case of realising that I needed to change – we’ve moved from friend to foe by now – and wanting someone else to take responsibility – the patient syndrome again.

I thought I was ready, that I’d had enough – but I wasn’t quite there yet. The cornered thing kicked in again. The panic and the fear and the feeling out of control. I didn’t really fight though; I just mastered the art of deception.

Without realising that I was the victim.

Another non-starter which, unfortunately, confirmed the lessons of the first experience: getting better was incredibly scary and incredibly difficult.

It was hard to keep going.

Admission number 3 came after a long spell of day treatment. We’re out of en-suite bathrooms and Sky Televisions and expensive food now: when you’re over 18 and an insurance risk, good beds are hard to come by. Number 3 arrived in the form of a Section. It was a little unexpected, very much resented – and completely necessary. I wished they’d done it sooner.

By the time they finally got round to signing the dotted line, I had totally lost the plot. This happens with an eating disorder. When the physical effects really get hold, you can’t behave rationally and you certainly can’t look after yourself.

Welcome to the wonderful world of adult psychiatric units.

Ironically, this was probably my most effective inpatient treatment. For three months, I was watched and followed and monitored and contained. I fought like a savage animal until I was exhausted, and then I reluctantly complied, and then I began to grow a little bit stronger and a little bit more confident and a little bit more hopeful.

I learnt that food could be okay. I learnt that I didn’t need to throw up all the time. I realised that there was more to life –

But I also tested the boundaries and got hooked back in to the addiction.

Another important lesson. Intensive interventions can work – but three months doesn’t stack up too well against 9 years.

Admission 4 caught me off guard. A body can only take so much abuse: the deterioration was quick, the result, a bit of a shock. Hardcore psychiatric treatment. You don’t come out the same person – but it’s up to you whether the post version is better or worse.

I chose the former.

It was a great impetus for change. It put everything into a whole different perspective.