If I could tell people just one thing about eating disorders, is that it’s not about the food. It was never about the food. If I could have been thin without starving myself, I would have. I would have traded years of my life to be thin, and in a way I did. I thought that if I was thin that people would think I was pretty. I was taught that if you’re pretty then people will look at you, they’ll notice you, and maybe just maybe they’ll begin to like you.
“…it’s not about the food. It was never about the food.”
I felt completely unlovable. I was empty and not eating gave me a purpose. I would find joy in the endless calculations I would do, and I would do them all the time. I would scrawl addition tables on the back of books, on sheets of homework, and I always had the calculator app open on my phone. I was too busy working on my disordered mathematics that I didn’t have to think about the fact that I was desperately unhappy. And I had been for months. In fact, I don’t know if there was ever a time I didn’t feel numb.
“Still to this day do I struggle to tell people that I had anorexia.”
Still to this day do I struggle to tell people that I had anorexia. It feels like a dirty word. I feel the shame even now, writing this piece. I fear what all anorexics fear; that people will take one look at me and think ‘No, she’s too fat to be anorexic’. I remember I would lie to people and tell them I was bulimic because I felt so sure they wouldn’t believe me, that they would laugh and scorn at my ‘attention seeking’. And you know? A few did just that. I remember in response I cited my weight, and I don’t know if it was to convince them or to reassure myself. But it was never enough. How could I convince others that I was sick enough to deserve their care and their sympathy when I didn’t have a tube in my nose or because I wasn’t hospitalised for months on end? The shame almost swallowed me whole.
The media only seems to have sympathy for the emaciated. Help seems to only come when your body shuts down and even then, most turn a blind eye. In the end, I was the one that sought help. I was the one that took myself to the school’s nurse. I was the one who called the GP. I was the one that sat my parents down and told them. And do you know what my mum told me? She told me she knew. She told me she knew. She knew and she didn’t care. I thought back to the time, a couple of months before, when her boyfriend came round to the house and he called me a pixie, and they both praised my petite frame. The frame my mum knew I was starving myself to obtain. She knew. And she didn’t care.
“I think one of the hardest parts of recovering from a mental illness is the shame. The shame stigma creates.”
I think one of the hardest parts of recovering from a mental illness is the shame. The shame stigma creates. Whilst most people at school thought I was only anorexic for ‘a few months’ the truth was I struggled for years. The hardest part of recovery was when people thought I was done healing. When I had gained the weight. When I was ‘normal’ again. But it was never about the food. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to eat, it was that I couldn’t. Eating made me feel sick. Physically sometimes. I was so deeply disgusted with
myself, and that feeling doesn’t just go away when the doctors write you off as ‘healthy’ again.
“I didn’t eat because I felt I didn’t deserve to.”
It took years of taking two steps forward and one step back to be in the place I am now. There were many reasons why I didn’t eat. I didn’t eat because I felt I didn’t deserve to. Because my mum, my stepdad, they had made me feel like I didn’t deserve to. I internalised their hate for me, and I punished my body for it. But not anymore. I accept who I am. I am an imperfect person. I’ve hurt people, I’ve lied. I’ve felt envious. I can be judgmental and self-centred but who isn’t? But I will love myself even if they never will. Especially because they never will.
At 20 years old I can say I understand that what my mum said wasn’t normal. How she treated me was cruel, but I have friends now. Lots of friends. Lots and lots of lovely friends – and they love me. We cook together, we bake cakes for each other’s birthdays. We go out for food, or we order pizza in and have twilight movie marathons. And I eat everything.
“…it was never about the food, – it was about love, and now I let myself have both”
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it; it was never about the food, – it was about love, and now I let myself have both.
Eating Disorder Resources in England
• Beat https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/about-beat/
• NHS Overview – Eating disorders – NHS (www.nhs.uk)
• Mind Types of eating disorders – Mind
York Ending Stigma
To find out more about our work and to join us to end mental health stigma in York, please refer to our website https://yorkcvs.org.uk/york-ending-stigma/ or email us on yes@yorkCVS.org.uk