Anorexic- A social taboo subject,
little understood by many people. Although it is obvious by looking at me, I am
facing my demons by being both embarrassed and very scared in admitting to suffering
from this social stigma. Society generally categorises us by this name and
shunning us for our eating disorder due to a common misunderstanding and there
is a shared prejudice amongst many that sufferers are just seeking attention.
Yet we are individuals. We are not ‘anorexic’ we are people like all of you who
SUFFER from anorexia nervosa. This fact being difficult even for ourselves to
understand as we are consumed by the illness and the disorder becomes a huge
part of us, incredibly difficult to separate yourself from. It is important to
distinguish us as people with an illness rather than the illness itself, of
which many are afraid of due to the often frighteningly skeletal appearance of
its sufferers.
The common misconception that people have is led by the naivety around the subject. Never did I have it explained to me fully to me and therefore I distinctly remember my 10 year old self believing that an anorexia sufferer survived only on glasses of water. Wrong. I wish that whilst having been in an all-girls school for the whole of my secondary school life that we would have had the opportunity to learn about the subject. My school was incredibly academically orientated, therefore putting immense pressure on all its students creating the stressful environment in which many girls found ‘comfort’ in an eating disorder to cope. The school failed miserably to deal with this huge issue due to their lack of knowledge surrounding the subject, proven when my year group were all gathered into the school hall after the toilets had been blocked with sick and told to ‘stop being so stupid’. As a society we are also led to believe that the main reason behind the illness is the media and the pressure put on us to look like the airbrushed models we see on the covers of magazines. This is an extremely superficial way of explaining how someone might come to develop an eating disorder. I for one know the main reason for me is control, as you will come to discover as I delve deeper into my story.
