Weighing Up the Consequences

Guilt. Being guilty comes from the actual perpetration of a crime but the sentiment of guilt has an altogether ulterior meaning. Guilt is a feeling that occurs upon the realisation of any wrongdoing we may-or even in some cases may not- have done; it is often followed by an inevitable regret. We are all guilty of many things and depending on the type of person we have been raised to be it always differs to what degree we wish to admit to having caused offense hence embracing to being at fault. Occasionally, we are so wrapped up in our own lives we inflict pain upon others unintentionally, which leads to a natural feeling of guilt. This is exactly the case with Anorexia Nervosa sufferers. Having been so insular these past months I could only speculate at the hurt I caused my family, blaming myself a lot of the time for any argument which had arisen this past year. I can see that I appeared very selfish and so that guilt has overwhelmed me to the extent of nearly destroying me; I can never be sorry enough.

Asking my closest relations to write their sentiments behind me and my development of Anorexia was not an easy feat. I was touched by their acceptance of the task and in the mature way even my younger sister handled reliving and visiting the obvious resentment towards me. I willed them to be as honest as humanly possible, as only from a true testimony can one really understand what it is like for the family members. I respect them for their honesty. I knew it would be a gruelling read having had a prior inkling of what their true feelings were. In reality, I could never have been truly prepared to read what they had to say. For once I can see what it must have really been like for them after having had the harsh honesties lain so starkly in front of me. Every poignant revelation was a truth I had deep down known to be a fact but had attempted to turn a blind-eye on, as it hurt me too much to accept. My brother would always say ‘the truth hurts’ when we would play fight as younger children. Though I had always been sceptical of its meaning due to the way he had always used it to mock me, these words spoken by a young boy are some of the wisest. I can no longer hide from these accounts. They are genuine…

I dedicate my post this week to both my parents and my siblings will follow next week. My dad, with whom I have now formulated the most comforting and trusting relationship since the beginning of my ordeal, is probably one of the single silver linings to have come out of such horrific times. Due to the full-time job he has held during my whole childhood and my many out of school activities, I was never particularly close to my dad only seeing him in the early mornings, evenings and briefly at weekends. To me he has always been a father figure but I had never seen him as someone who would always support me through life- instead, being there to discipline and teach me. The knowledge that I can now rely on him in so many ways is reassuring, as we understand and respect one another so much more. Having been forewarned by him before I began reading that, should I wish, I could omit any of the contents he had included, I immediately knew I would not take him up on the offer. No matter how much the text may portray me in a shameful or embarrassingly selfish light, I felt that in not including the whole truth I would be erasing the realities of what I have done to my family over the past year by shrouding myself from any blame or guilt. My gratitude towards my dad for his efforts left a lump in my throat even before I began reading. And so I built myself up to read what I knew was bound to be a heart-wrenchingly bleak narrative.

‘Solene has an outstanding talent that with words and for expressing her deepest feelings in an extraordinarily courageous way. I feel immensely proud of her for what she has been undertaking in the past few months and by what she has achieved for herself and for others.

The people closest to the problem are often the last to know or see. How true. We used to joke with her mum when Solene discussed with us about friends who had eating disorders that she was the least likely person to ever become anorexic, so much had she been enjoying meal times from the youngest age. I now have learned so much from Solene, and I have realised that the disease for her was not really about weight or food but about control. The necessity that Solene was feeling to gain control over her life after extremely stressful months, or the bitter realisation that one never really has entire control over their life, could have ended up expressed in many ways, such as drugs, alcohol or other worse life-threatening conducts. Anorexia it had to be, and it happened insensibly in the first few months, frighteningly quickly at the end, once she admitted her eating disorder and that the last barriers of social restraint were broken.

My first reaction when faced with Solene’s anorexia was to find a solution, a quick fix to the disease. This is the gender-associated response, as well as that of the scientifically educated father. I tried the persuasion, the rational reasoning, the coercion even, without much success, except having achieved to maintain some dialogue with Solene, while keeping a seemingly unemotional attitude. However, I had many feelings of guilt at the time: where is my fault, what have I done wrong, have I pushed her too much to succeed? I have not been the perfect parent, who is? But I could not help remembering my lack of patience, my angers, and my occasionally aggressive conduct when she was younger. I very much regret this now and I apologise to my children, I believe that time improved me. I am still proud to have been able to keep the communication with Solene in the recent, very difficult times, and riding with her on the rollercoaster of the disease resulted in a much closer relationship with Solene than ever before.

After my initial fighting reaction against anorexia, acceptation of her disease and the ability to live with an anorexic daughter came little by little. I learned that the desire to recover must come from Solene alone, not forced on her by others, regardless of how well-intentioned or emotionally involved they are. Nevertheless, it was heart-breaking to see your child rendered deeply depressed and apathetic through anorexia, not forgetting the terrible moments when she was on the verge of hospitalisation due to life-threatening weight loss. Solene has well enough described her physical and mental health during those times; I will not delve on this further. It is nonetheless frightful to realise that, after a while, I got used to seeing her new skeletal body, as well as being less and less bothered by her obsessive eating behaviours at meal times.

But it fills my heart with joy and hope to witness the huge progress that Solene has recently made and is still making, physically, and even more so, mentally. In many respects, Solene is returning to be her old bright and cheerful self, she seems to enjoy life again, meets her old friends and makes new ones, opens to the outside world, has projects, goes out with the family. For the first time in months, I feel confident about the start of University in September.

As she very well points out, it remains a long and slow path to recovery; anorexia may still grow new heads like the mythical Hydra but I am now in no doubt that Solene is strong and knows enough about herself, having surmounted the terrible times of her relapse, that she will win this battle. We will be there with her for as long as she needs us.

Solene, you have learned and revealed so much of yourself in this blog; however I feel that you have not yet accepted to explore all that led you to the path of anorexia. Please try to overcome your last resistances, even if it results in uncovering aspects of you or your family that may be hurtful. You will not have to let others than your therapist know, if you do not want to, but you owe it to yourself. You have come up such a long way, thanks to you we will all be better persons and hopefully form a better family as well.’

My dad as he so rightly described himself has always aimed for emotional detachment in all situations and so upon being faced with this tremendous pride within the first lines of his testimony, my heart flipped. I always had a saying ‘you never believe it until it is in front of you’ so though he had always made his pride in me obvious in his actions, having it written down for all to see consolidated this. I have therefore no doubt in me that what he has written is how he really feels no matter how much I feel I do not deserve his pride. I feel more like a troublesome child; a hindrance in what could be a happy family.

I feel pathetic in contemplating that it must have been extraordinarily arduous to watch the child you have nurtured so tentatively demolish themselves in such an appalling way and know there is little you can do about it. I knew how much he wanted to help me because he always tried (and still does) to offer his advice on my diet and how I could reintroduce elements into it and struggled to refrain from doing so upon my request for it to cease. He says that he accepts that recovery must come from me and I believe he knows it, yet it does not and will never stop him from trying to cure me- paternal instinct. It pains me to see how he is apologetic of the way he has raised my siblings and I, though he should not regret his actions for it has shaped us into better people; we are closer than ever now, something he can be grateful for. In no way should he put any blame of my susceptibility to have succumbed to Anorexia on himself, nor do I hold it against him.

I seem to have written a lot on my father’s support during my descent into Anorexia yet I must insist that it is not without acknowledgment of an equally crucial figure during my disorder, my mum. Having been through some severe and potentially fatal physical diseases in the past few years, my mum has suffered a lot health wise. It was with this in mind that I could not initially open up to her about my Anorexia in what I can only justify as a desire to protect her. Due to her being more vocal about her sentiments, it led me to believe she was a more emotionally vulnerable person as she has previously suffered from depression. I would therefore not allow myself to risk further health misfortunes through causing unnecessary stress by burdening her with my own misery and what I saw as a self-inflicted and preventable illness compared to hers; I did not feel comfortable complaining to someone who has dealt with unavoidable illnesses. I have come to realise that she has a yearning to consistently put her family above herself, ranking her children’s despair over her own no matter how hard we try to shelter our more drastic feelings from her. She is far stronger than I have given her credit for and undeniably the ideal mother figure.

 I do not resent the amount of time it took her to come to terms with my Anorexia- probably growing with an understanding of it at the same rate I was-yet the original lack of understanding caused a tension-filled miscommunication between us and we just could not tolerate one another. I could not be prouder of her for admitting that she too needed help to deal with her bitterness towards my disorder and taking the opportunity to join the monthly carers group, having now become an ‘asset’ to the group. We started meeting my therapist together back in January whereby we were in an enclosed environment, enabling us to reveal all our feelings to one another and relieving our stress in a constructive way. Since, we have built up an even better relationship than we had before my Anorexia and she has now learnt to deal with it with the utmost patience that is required. Having taken a long time to perfect her post in her wish to not disappoint me with her less eloquent style of writing, I knew she had poured her heart and soul into it which therefore took me several minutes to pluck up the courage to delve into it.

‘In April last year, just back from a wonderful long family weekend in New York, I realised there was something wrong with Solene’s way of eating. At that time, I thought she was drastically dieting but nothing really too bad.  The following week, Jean-Eric was away and Solene, Juliet and me had dinner together and I observed a little bit more closely Solene’s eating habits: a large glass of water before eating, smaller portions, cutting the food into tiny pieces and eating slowly. It was suddenly evident, I shouted:  YOU ARE ANOREXIC. Too late, the word had been said and it was the beginning of 8 months of hell.

Since then Solene had no needs to hide her illness anymore and her calorie intake quickly diminished.  My first reaction was the anger: why has this happened to us after all the problems we have already had these last years, why does she do that to us, are we so bad as parents, what did we miss? This exasperation lasted more than 2 months. Contrary to my reaction, Jean-Eric was patient, calm and a good-listener (he spent time in reading and learning about anorexia), I had the feeling of being the baddie in comparison to him.

For her A Levels, Solene was very weak and was not able to sleep properly. It was a very stressful period and the sadness and the tiredness replaced the anger, I stopped talking to my friends about Solene’s illness, did not mention anything to our relatives and reduced my social life. I remember visiting my GP and crying for 20 minutes. After her exams, she agreed to see a GP and seemed to be a little bit better. We realised later it was just because she really wanted to go to Kavos with her friends. With Jean-Eric, we discussed a lot as we did not know whether it was really sensible to let her go (drinking a lot without eating for a week!). Finally Solene went to Kavos with her suitcase full of cereal bars and a week later came back still very skinny but alive and it was a relief. Then we went to Marrakech, where it was really heart-breaking to see her so frail on the pool side.  I had the feeling she was wearing her anorexia like a banner and I was convinced all eyes were turned towards her. The A levels results arrived and they were so good that it was another stress but we left her to decide, hoping that she would take a gap year.

At the end of September, every morning, I noticed an acetonic smell when entering Solene’s bedroom and I started to spy in her diary and count her daily calories. My sadness was changed to panic. We met the Medical Team with Solene which was a little bit reassuring. Solene’s attitude started to change but the main improvement happened in January when she started to write her blog. My panic gradually disappeared and the house atmosphere was much less tense. It took me time to start to understand the complexity of anorexia nervosa and I am still learning with Solene and my Carer Group. I am very proud of her and I trust her to fight this disease however I am conscious it will still be a long way to full recovery.’

I knew my mum had always blamed herself for my rapid spiral into anorexia. After it had been revealed and I had accepted it, I no longer needed to be secretive and hide so I completely let it take me over. What she does not realise however, is that whether she had expressed her anxieties aloud about my disorder or not, I was still very much suffering from Anorexia; if anything her exclamation forced me out of denial and I could then begin thinking ahead to recovery. Had she not said anything, I honestly believe I would not be where I am now; she pushed me towards help by plunging me into admitting to myself that I was ill. Turning to anger was a way for her to express her emotions- we as humans all react differently to stress and anguish with some seeming inappropriate such as when people laugh at the news of death. I see it as a coping mechanism. But like with my dad I do not blame her style of parenting into leading me to seek comfort from Anorexia, having been a happy family up until I disrupted the harmony. In my eyes no one is or can be to blame apart from me.

Certain of her revelations have really stung me, the first being the fact she thought I could ‘parade’ my Anorexia with a sense of pride. Though I tried to maintain an air of confidence last summer whilst in a bikini by the pool, I was constantly aware of the critical stares I received but I was determined to treat the holiday as a relaxation and therefore merely adopted a semblance of confidence. I so much wanted to feel like myself again but inside I was in turmoil at sticking out and being stared at so judgementally. I would never feel gratification from achieving such a skeletal figure. Despite only vaguely mentioning her own collapse in social life, this struck me the hardest as I am mortified to only just learn this. I am responsible for her shying away from the support she so needed from her friends as a way to detach and escape from the melancholy I had created. I was however aware that my mum had betrayed my trust by reading my food diary behind my back, yet I did not realise how long she had been doing this for. I believed up until now that it had been just the once. Initially upon finding out I was tremendously distressed that she as a parent could deceive me in such a way and invade my privacy by reading my most intimate feelings. Now I can accept that had she not plucked up the courage to potentially offend me and read my diary out of genuine concern as opposed to what I saw as an invasion due to curiosity, I would have continued to be trapped in my Anorexia and depression. I have her to thank for taking that initiative

As predicted, it is hard to have someone who shares many of my most cherished memories recall the happier times before going on to reveal how much I have changed in comparison. I realise however, that it is important for me to see who I became as a result of my Anorexia, and acknowledge how far I have come in my recovery since then. We rarely are able to observe changes within ourselves, but my family are clearly acutely aware of every minute detail, proving how attentive they are and how much they care about me- writing that has awakened a cynicism, whereby I find it hard to accept that anyone bothers to worry about my well-being (I clearly punish myself by denying any notion that people CAN love me). I am bursting with joy with the fact that both my parents now trust that I am getting better, especially coming from my mum who had voiced on a few occasions her feelings that I did not want to recover- even going as far as telling me that I must want to die. It has been easy for me to tell everyone I am getting better, but to hear it from someone else pushes me to continue along the right path. Clearly my dad believes that there is a restraint in my mind which I am not allowing myself to access which would reveal why I did in fact develop Anorexia. He may be right and I know I have both my parents’ support in coping with coming to terms with what truly led me to such a desolate and lonely place. I hope therefore that in breaking down this hypothetical barrier, that a true recovery can be achieved.