Me, Myself and the Predator

Self. When used as a prefix, this word can form words that many misconceptions of Anorexia Nervosa describe- self-inflicted, selfish, and self-centred but to name a few. It is very easy to see why people would describe any eating disorder as a cry for attention, due to the consequences and reasons for developing such a malicious illness. Attention seeking is the last thing on our minds, as anorexia truly thrives on secretiveness and lying through our teeth to ensure no one interferes with our control over exercise and food intake. Anyone claiming they have an eating disorder purely to gain attention is lucky, I seriously would not wish this on anyone, as anorexia CANNOT be turned on and off at will. In my opinion the idea that the disorder is self-inflicted however, is one shared amongst its sufferers. Due to the nature of the illness and the fact it is a mental disease brought upon us for various reasons, it seems to me that we could have helped prevent ourselves from succumbing to it unlike a person unfortunate enough to develop a physical and unpreventable illness much like the big killer cancer. This inevitably leads to a huge guilt constantly hanging over my head, as I believe I am at fault for every pain and misery caused within the family and around me. I don’t want to seem like a martyr and therefore hypocritical in saying the illness has not made me egotistical, but it feels to me like I am a huge nuisance to everyone and I can see the frustration people hoard when they are around me.

Anorexia has a tendency to make you a different person by heightening the negative attributes you may have. In my case the fact that I have always striven to be independent in life and reject any idea I feel has been pressurised or forced upon me, has led me to become an increasingly stubborn person. This therefore has wreaked havoc on the people trying to help me recover, as any advice offered is immediately shot down by me, due to a feeling that this idea has not been made by me. Recovery unfortunately, can only come from its sufferer and only when the sufferer wants to and therefore it is very difficult for anyone to interfere with the disease and offer help. This I have found in particular with both my dietician and dad, as even the mere suggestion of eating something with more calories will make me build up my defences and I will refuse this idea without even considering it as a good piece of advice. Many times I have contemplated increasing an aspect of my intake, however as soon as a person other than me voices the exact idea aloud, I won’t want to do it anymore and I have to build up the idea and courage within myself all over again. 

I now have a worrying tendency of having eating ‘rituals’, creating an almost OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) like method of eating food. I have been asked by my mum whether or not I have OCD, but I can answer without feeling I am in denial, that I do not. Upon her asking me this, I felt an extreme anger that she was building my illness up to new heights making it seem worse and worse as it went. I already suffer from two severe mental conditions (anorexia and depression) must people really believe I have yet another on top of that? I can see however, how she might have been fooled because my way of eating is not normal and could not be acceptable in a social environment such as in a restaurant. For starters I must eat things with a particular spoon or drink my coffee from a particular mug and then I will sometimes eat my food in a special order. However, the most worrying of my rituals is the time I allocate myself to eat a certain food, as if I eat too ‘quickly’ then I have an intense feeling I’m being greedy. I have set times in my head when I should start eating or finish eating, generally allowing myself a lot of time due to my slow pace of eating. It is as if my whole day revolves around the meals and I feel not only extremely uncomfortable, but as if I should punish myself if anything disrupts my ‘agenda’. I have recently thought of a theory behind these quirky needs, one which took me a lot of time to realise but makes some sort of sense to me. I believe I use eating rituals as a form of distraction from the fact that I am actually eating food or from comparing my portion to others around me, this is on top of the obvious and repetitive notion of control. This enables me to eat an entire meal with some sort of ease, as my mind is occupied elsewhere. I accept that it is not healthy to occupy myself in such a way, but I find that whilst recovering, it is a reasonable substitute to obsessing about the amount of calories, portion size or fat content in food, which will physically stop me from lifting a fork to my mouth. To me eating is a chore and I can’t allow myself to see food as an indulgence therefore in recovery I hope to dull down these thoughts so that I can enjoy food to the vast extent I used to before.

Following my decision to take a gap year in August and the subsequent departure of my friends, I was left in a dark and lonely place, where I had absolutely no motivation to either leave my house or even recover. This was when I relapsed. During this time I kept a written diary and on Friday 16^th September 2011 I wrote an entry:

‘I ate so much at dinner and felt sick and my parents didn’t help by going on and on and on and they were drawing attention to what I was and wasn’t eating.  I can’t handle that. I was in the middle of eating and it makes my stomach constrict so I can’t anymore. I told them to stop or I would stop eating, but they wouldn’t. I physically can’t eat when they do this... I can’t bring myself to eat infront of anyone. It would make them satisfied and I can’t handle that. I feel so WEAK right now. I should be able to fight this but all my friends leave this weekend. I have no job no health no nothing. I’m nothing. I feel so alone. I can’t.’

What drew my attention to this particular entry was the manner in which I wrote it, scoring deeply into the page with my black biro to truly convey the rage and emotion I had pent up inside. Even now, having regained motivation for recovery, I will shy away from any social approach or invitation by making myself a social recluse. This is due to a constant anxiety that I cannot explain; I sometimes have to sit for hours just breathing and staring into space to calm down. My house and my family have become my safe place and despite my want to be independent I am now genuinely scared to leave their sides and be left to my own devices in the company of others. The illness has reverted me into becoming a small child again, utterly dependent on my parents for comfort, support and safety.

Depression is a term used far too regularly and one should really stop and think before using the term so colloquially. The true consequences of having this increasingly and worryingly common mental condition are not to be taken lightly and the many who have been depressed can safely vouch that it is not a mere ‘sad phase’. Anorexia can be far more complex than you first believed; depression will often come hand in hand with a low weight, which is not surprising when you consider how low our self-esteem becomes and how hard we are on ourselves. Like any good predator, depression hunts down its prey, striking when you are at your most vulnerable and devouring you with no mercy, only to leave behind an empty carcass of the person you used to be. I do suffer from depression and I have consequently given up any hopes or dreams I may have aspired to. To me my future is so uncertain that it is like a black hole with no idea where my life is going, though I can safely say I am fortunate enough to have never entertained any ideas on suicide. It is easier said than done to stop wasting my supposedly care-free youth on what appears trivially to others as a distorted view on perfection. My mind has led me to exaggerate my perceptions of success and failure, leading to an increased feeling of being let down along with a huge insecurity and lack of confidence in myself. Trying to imagine myself in the future is near impossible, as my mind has literally barred the way as a way to preserve my feelings. It won’t allow me to build expectations anymore creating a future which is black and dark, leaving me in the unknown. As a result I have a heightened fear which will reduce me to tears, as the anxiety of the unexpected takes hold of me. The trouble with the depression is that it coaxes the anorexia along, due to the aforementioned pleasure achieved from control and restriction. If there was one way to make me feel good about myself, it was to cut back calories.

Like in Pandora’s Box, hope was left to last. I always aim to end on a positive note. I instinctively veer towards pessimism and so instead I wish to inspire not only myself but potential others into belief of recovery. There will be a light at the end of my tunnel even if I am not prepared to open my eyes to it yet. However, I urge anyone to never suffer alone no matter what you are going through. I do not want to sound typically soppy or cliché, but there is ALWAYS someone out there who will listen to you and support you, which is something you tend to forget. I can’t recover alone… and I’m glad I don’t have to.