My struggle with Anorexia/Bulimia

This is taking me a lot of courage to write this, but i know its going to be good for me. The reason I'm doing this is so i don't have to bear the burden of having a this secret. To get my past onto (virtual) paper and to think of it as history. It's not going to be easy, but if it were than it wouldn't be worth it.

I started developing my eating disorder at approximately 14 years of age. I was never overweight, or slightly bulbous, and i should let you know that many times developing eating disorders really has nothing to do with being overweight or wanting to be skinny, for the sake of being skinny.

A collage I made

I still can't be sure of why i developed my eating disorder but i think i have a pretty good idea. I'm a perfectionist, and if something wasn't quite the way i wanted it then i had to start over or make sure i was 110% happy with it. This perfectionism has caused me a lot of troubles, but sometimes its not all that bad.
     I had to get great grades, I had to have a tidy clean room. Everything had to be in its right place. I would write down my schedule for the day according to each hour. I decide what to wear the day before, fold them perfectly and place them on my piano seat. Presentation was everything.
    It may sound like a desirable attribute but it is still problematic for me today, years later. I will often leave work until the last minute because I'm to scared to start because i know that once i do, it has to be perfect and that's not an easy thing to achieve; impossible.
    I was a very smart kid. Extension in my classes, getting 'excellence' grades for most things. But intelligence has nothing to do with developing an eating disorder. You can be smart as hell but still fall in the black pit that is an eating disorder.

Anyway, this ideal of perfectionism caused me to go through a lot of stress. I felt like a failure all the time, even when receiving distinctively high grades. I succeeded in everything I did, but i believed i was a complete failure. If i got positive feedback, i would think it was pity; if i got a high grade, i blamed the marking system.

I felt like i couldn't control anything, and i started developing pretty bad anxiety. I thought anyone snickering in the background was making fun of me, i always had to check myself a few times before going out to make sure nothing embarrassing was about me.

I needed a fix, and i needed it bad. I had no idea, but this was the very beginning of a terrible illness. But damn it felt good to have something i could keep to myself, my own secret, my own plan; something I and many people in a similar position to me call AnaMia (Anorexia/Bulimia).

It started pretty innocently as it usually does. I would do exercise in my own room and it didn't seem harmful at all, and i still believe that it wasn't. Sit up after sit up, pressup after pressup, starjump after starjump. As you may know, exercise releases endorphins which make you feel good, a kind of high. And i liked it!

My drawing

But, after a few weeks of this, i started to extend this AnaMia type behaviour to food; that is when it really started to spiral out of control. I felt like food was challenging me, and i accepted this challenge with little hesitation. At this point i was still completely unaware of what was evolving...
    I was curious as to what power i had over food, as to what i could do, how far i could go, what my limits were. It was a simple thing to start with, as its something so common among us all; we all eat. And i wanted to challenge this. I started restricting my food, in small innocent amounts. Nothing too drastic to being with but I was kind of impressed with myself. It felt like i had accomplished something; a feeling that was foreign to me for quite some time. This sense of accomplishment encouraged me to go on, to go further, to keep testing myself.

This kind of behaviour continued on and off for about 2 years. Nothing too drastic or harmful, but it was still abnormal, and it was slowly progressing.

Trouble started to arise when i was 17 or so....
Stress of school had increased as i was advancing in the levels. I was doing a higher work load, and i still wanted it to all be perfect, and this lead to everything bad.
   As my stressed increased, so did my anxiety, and i started feeling things i hadn't ever before. I got involved in some pretty bad circles and seeked substances to ease this anxiety, these negative feelings of failure, worthlessness and shame.
  I have no doubt now that this substance abuse lead to dependency and depression. I found myself in a pretty lonely place, which triggered me to befriend what i didn't know would soon be my enemy... AnaMia.

I wasn't exercising excessively anymore, or much at all. I had switched from that kind of behaviour to restriction my food intake. I started to think that eating was a sign of weakness, and if i ate i would have failed myself and proven to everyone that i really can't do anything right. So for once, i wanted to do something so wrong, so right. A year or so of this kind of thinking was on and off, still, nothing too crazy, nothing far too harmful.

Around the age of 18-19 is when it really took a fast and scary turn for the worse...
  Food felt like my enemy, like it was patronising me with its colours and scents. But i soon started to look at the whole 'eating thing' as a game again. And when i thought i was winning, i was losing. I was losing weight, i was losing my concentration, i was losing vital nutrients and minerals; i was losing my mind.
Food turned from being into my enemy to being dead. I learned how to not look at food, to ignore it completely, and i felt like a master for it. I worked in a supermarket at this time and i would see people coming in with their trolleys loaded with food and i would laugh under my breath. I thought 'What pigs! The fools, they're so weak... so vulnerable, so meek'.

Up until this point i did not care for losing weight, or for being a particular shape or size.

But i soon had people telling me i had been losing weight, and i wouldn't believe a word they said. I was wondering what the heck they were on about, i felt exactly the same? But what i did notice is that when they told me these kinds of things, they said it with a pinch of envy, with praise! And i slowly developed this idea that being skinny was really admirable, that people wanted to be skinny; these are thoughts i had never had before, i was never image conscious in this way.

I had complete control over food, and my focus shifted from controlling food to losing weight; because these two things work together directly it wasn't going to be very hard for me to do. It still seemed innocent at this stage, it felt like some sort of game, task or challenge.

My printwork

I would see how long i could go without food and sometimes it was several days. I used water as my vice to keep my belly full. But after these starvation cycles i would get quite hungry, and found myself eating large amounts of food and it felt awful. I felt like a pig, and i will admit it was pretty piggish. This is what we call a 'binge', an excessive consumption of food with feelings of loss of control, automatic feeding, pace. I felt like a robot at times, eating as much as a packet of biscuits, a couple peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, a pudding, a pack of 2 minute noodles, a chocolate bar and a bag of sweets. After these binges i would cry, i would hate myself, i would feel like i had been somewhat possessed and i would rage. The only way i could resolve this issue was to purge everything i had eaten. It would take far too long to work it off and i couldn't have that amount of food in my stomach. I would hang my head over the toilet and put my fingers down my throat. It was such an uncomfortable and shameful feeling, and i couldn't quite do it at first but i got there. So after these binges i would vomit and it felt pretty good. I realised that i could have both - food and lose the weight! All i had to do was throw it back up again. Of course, now i realise this is a terrible thing to do, but at that time i thought i had discovered a miracle! After a while i didn't even need to use my fingers any more, i could just bend over and vomit; as easy as breathing.

So there i was, restricting, purging and losing weight. I didn't know at the time i was losing weight, in fact these warped perceptions started to take place of my once healthy perception of my body. I started to think i was truly overweight, and not just by a few kilos. I felt, saw and believed i was huge! I was far from huge, i was between the lower to mid range of normal weight. I started to get angry, i started to feel completely ugly  and i would hear some kind of 'voice' telling me i wasn't good enough. Some type of commentary almost, judging me and telling me what to do.

So i persisted to lose weight more vigorously. I will never forget these few weeks i am about to describe to you.. I was a couple months over 18.
I went days without food, i really starved myself. I lied to my closest friends and most shamefully my family. For the first few days of this restricting period i completely hid the fact that i wasn't eating to the people around me. I would frequently say things like 'oh, i already ate!', 'no thanks, I'm not feeling too well' or 'i might have some later, not that hungry thanks.'. But it got harder to hide after the first week. In that week i wouldn't have eaten over 1300 calories which is less than you should eat in a day. I had lost weight, but i didn't think i had at the time..
    The second week i started to lose some colour in my face, i became dizzy and faint, i had some troubles breathing, my hands were shaky and i was always cold. My beautiful mother noticed this and when she asked my if i was feeling okay, i replied with 'I think i have a flu, i don't really have an appetite but I'm trying to eat but my body just wont keep it down!'. I was lying, and i didn't enjoy it. But nevertheless i continued.
    After about the second week i developed something called 'psychological nausea' which is when i always felt sick. I actually started to believe my own lies, i thought that there was something biologically stopping me from eating, but in fact it was all in my own head. I did try to eat, but i believed that i was sick, i truly believed it and so i was. I could no longer keep food down, and my stomach became pretty intolerant of having anything inside it. I was worrying my family and friends and i really hated that. So i tried to eat; i started with liquids like a weak soup, but all i could think was 'im failing, Ive only been going for a couple weeks and here i am already ruining everything'. It was impossible for me to even have a weak soup.

Another of my drawings

That starvation phase lasted about 2 months until i had reached approximately 53 kilos. I was anorexic, yet i still felt massive.This is when i was admitted to an eating disorders clinic even though i still didn't believe i was underweight or had a problem like that. Several tests were carried out as there was big concerns about my health. Starvation of this kind causes many things and can be very detrimental to your health. Things like reduced electrolytes, weaker pulse and low potassium can be pretty dangerous, and this is what usually occurs.
When they had told me the results of these many tests i absolutely broke down. I panicked, i cried, i finally accepted the fact that i had a problem and i really didn't know what to do from there.
They had told me that my heart could no longer beat very strongly so blood would be sent around my body quite slowly, they told me my weight was in the anorexic level, they told me the electrolytes in my body was so low that i could have a cardiac arrest at almost any moment, and the last bombshell was that because i had starved my body so extremely and i was consuming next to nothing my body had to start feeding off its own muscle, and the most rich muscle in the body is the heart; my body was essentially consuming the protein in my heart to run itself. This was the most shocking for me; my heart had become very small in size..I remember when they told me that, i gently placed my hand over my heart and cried. I couldn't deny this science, i couldn't lie to myself anymore.

Ever since then i have been having a struggle with my eating disorder, but i have progressed by leaps and bounds and i know that it is possible for me to overcome it. Eating disorders are not glamorous as portrayed by the media, they are terrifying and miserable things to deal with. Do not wish for anything of this nature, it may seem enticing or pleasing but it is the complete opposite. If you think you have an eating disorder please speak to a psychiatrist or psychologist; you can get help and the sooner the better! It is not a sign of failure if you ask for help, its a sign of courage :]

I have shared with you a glimpse of my struggle to hopefully shed some light on eating disorders and expose them for what they really are. It does make me sad to think of what it has done and is doing for me, but i will never be defeated by it, because I am better than it hehe!

If you have any questions or you want any more information please leave a comment below!

Dr.Nourozi: Diagnoses - AnaMia.