Denial. Deception, lies, secrets
and excuses are what the parasitic disorder Anorexia Nervosa feeds on whilst depriving
its sufferers of the true and beneficial sustenance- solid food. The illness is
extremely cunning in the way it will fool its victims and force them to be
deceitful to even the most trustworthy of people. In many cases the Anorexia
will leach its way subtly through the mind, benefitting from the control it
gets by creating false pleasures from restriction and over exercising, much to
the detriment of its helpless host. It will therefore often be too late to stop
the disorder, as it has already taken over the logical mind releasing toxic
thoughts and feelings, which invade like a virus in opposition to the person
you used to be. Describing anorexia metaphorically is the only way to convey
the harm it causes, due to the complexity of the human mind. If you try to
explain any emotion such as anger in words, it is near impossible to reveal
what it feels like without saying ‘it’s when you feel angry’. We have ALL at
some point experienced this sensation and therefore it is easy to sympathise
with the person unlike the thoughts fabricated by anorexia. This is why there
is so little known about the disorder, as any verbal description can only lie
close to how it is like to experience it. There will unfortunately never be a
truly effective way of showing a person blessed with the opportunity to never
go through anorexia exactly what it’s like.
Surely I must have known that I
was succumbing to anorexia… -a contemplation often pondered aloud to me. I
question myself a lot at times whether or not I could see it coming and
therefore could have prevented it from becoming an obsession. Although I try to
think of ideas to blame the illness on, there is only one thing at fault-
myself. I feel I can’t hide behind any other theory. Travelling as far back as
the summer of 2007 when I was 14, I remember noticing my body was changing and
there was a subsequent appearance of stretch marks over my thighs. Like many
teenage girls, I obsessed over their apparition, wondering whether I put on
weight in those areas and led myself to believe I had to tone up and so I got
the notorious step-machine. We all have a part of ourselves that creates that
niggling feeling of a need for change and this asset is all we seem to see when
looking in the mirror. Fortunately being relatively young and carefree, I
decided to move on and accept I was going through puberty and so the step-machine
lay in my room gathering dust. However, then came the summer of 2010 when I had
become highly confident in myself, taking pride in my appearance and becoming
conscious of how much I weighed. As previously mentioned I had unconsciously
lost a little weight that year and felt happy with my figure for once and so
over the holidays when I had broken up for dance, I started using my
step-machine to keep fit. My sister and I would take turns on it, encouraging
each other to stay on for half an hour sessions. At the time it was all healthy.
To me it was simply a way of MAINTAINING the weight I was at. My sister soon
got bored of the monotonous form of exercise, but I became curious as to how it
could tone the muscles up on my ‘problem area’ should I continue to use it
regularly. So I did.
