Eating Disorder Awareness Week - Hindsight is 20/20

So This week is Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and I didn’t want to not honour the week with a post as it is something close to my heart. This years theme is “Come As You Are - Hindsight is 20/20” and I often reflect on how my journey started with anorexia. I’ve written a few posts now highlighting my troubles with disordered eating as a child, the first one being last years mental health awareness weeks post which focused on body image, you can read my post on that here. I also wrote the post The Lifelong Recovery Of Anorexia talking about how my struggles with anorexia changed my life, and how they still affect me now.

And it’s true, anorexia has affected me for a big part of my life. I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa aged 12, plagued with thoughts that I was obese, that I was ugly and fat and worthless. I couldn’t look in the mirror without being filled with hatred and self loathing. It’s almost 10 years on from the beginning of my mental health journey as I reflect on how I’ve changed and grown, one thing that sticks is how I feel about my body and the way I look. I'm still often filled with self loathing, hatred and paranoia towards my appearance, and try to mask this in various ways, baggy clothes, bright hair, tattoos etc.

But I have changed in many ways too, I no longer restrict my eating, I don’t avoid lunch times, I don’t stop myself from having a treat, I don’t self harm when I do eat or when I feel hatred towards my body and purposely cause myself harm to feel better. I don’t exclusively eat cheese slices and digestive biscuits to fulfill my daily intake of food. I don’t cry myself to sleep ignoring all those pangs of hunger and the pain I’m filled with.

But I do carry the guilt I used to hold onto so dearly. I eat a meal, even treat myself to a dessert and my inner voice goes “.. but should you have done that?” “Do you deserve to eat?” “You’ve had enough, you’ll only get fatter” and it’s a voice I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quieten. A voice that I have carried with me throughout my years of recovery, that I have fought so hard to overcome and ignore. But it will always be there, the voice of my old toxic enemy Ana.

I once considered Ana to be my friend, my companion, the voice of reason I so desperately needed to hear. When I’d throw away my food or restrict my diet I’d get a “well done” or “you did the right thing, you’ll weigh less the next time” “you know you didn’t deserve it anyway” and feel a sense of pride, that I was stronger than the gargles coming from within me. That if I could withstand my hunger and need for food I was strong inside, I was worthy of looking in the mirror and I was worthy of my anorexia diagnosis. For me it wasn’t a diagnosis, it was a badge of honour, I’d lost enough weight, I was thin enough and I was finally beautiful.

But that wasn’t true. I was unwell, poorly and my body wasn’t what it needed to be. I was tired, dizzy, having panic attacks over food and meal times, filled with anxiety about how I would get out of the next meal. My every thought was food and how to lose weight. I would sit in class, a tiny year 8 child, thinking about how many hours I could work out on my wii fit to work off the morsel of food I’d eaten that day. No child should think like that. No person should think like that.

It's frequently misconceived that to be diagnosed, to struggle with anorexia, you must look the part. You must be extremely slim and have your bones visible, your skin mottled and your hair and nails weak. You must look sick enough to be your diagnosis.

But this isn't the case. For me, to begin with, it was largely an internal thought process for someone who didn't understand the consequences of her actions or ultimately, illness. It's not to say that eventually, having fallen into this downward spiral, looking the part may then become an attribute of the illness. But it certainly doesn't define the illness.

My true reflection of my eating disorder is that it may have been the start of my mental health journey but sadly it also wasn’t the end, I was then diagnosed with depression, anxiety and finally borderline personality disorder. My childhood was filled with therapists, consultants, psychiatrists and diagnoses. But my eating disorder taught me I am strong, not because I can skip a meal and be “okay” but because I can overcome something and someone that was my entire life, my entire being and my entire thoughts. I can ignore Ana, I can be stronger than her and what she whispers into my ear as she sits heavily on my shoulders, and I can be well again.

Meg x