A Difficult Start

The start of a new year brings hope and the idea that we can start anew. We expect to forget all the painful experiences of the past year and move on with our lives, to work towards new resolutions/goals/intentions/whatever you want to call them.

This is how I started 2018, full of hope and happiness. I spent the last week of 2017 on holiday with the person I love, living life as if I haven’t struggled with an eating disorder for the last 6 years. It was an incredible feeling. And despite saying in my last post that I wasn’t naive in thinking the process of recovery was going to be easy, that’s exactly how I entered the new year.

Of course, the moment I returned home I came crashing back down to reality. The reality I’m facing is a 6 year habit of binge-eating, and more recently bulimia. This is a very difficult reality to face. Being completely honest, the last 4 days have been awful. I feel completely disconnected from the girl who was on holiday last week. My anxiety has hit me like a truck, I’ve binged on repeat and then, I’m ashamed to say, tried to purge. I’m completely terrified of what’s happened to me.

But what I’ve realized is I’ve been beating myself up for it, as if the start of the new year would somehow erase my history of mental illness. Every day I’ve binged, I’ve been full of guilt and shame. I haven’t shown myself any kindness, like I would a friend if they were having a bad day. I need to show myself a little more compassion. At this moment in time, I am doing the best I can to cope the only way I know how. As I begin to recover, I will learn of new ways to care for myself and tackle my problems. But at this very moment, I am doing my best and that is all I can ask of myself.

So this is me drawing a line under this difficult start to 2018. I am wiping the slate clean and forgiving myself. That’s not to say I won’t binge again. I realize that recovery is a process that takes time. I am likely to binge again- in fact I will probably binge several times again in 2018. This is because it is my body’s coping mechanism, what it needs to do to survive after not being fed for so long. I understand and accept this. This is my reminder that recovery is not going to be easy. In fact it’s going to be bloody damn hard. But it is also going to be completely, 100% worth it. I will thank myself for the difficult times, because my life will be a million times better when I am free of this eating disorder.

(I appreciate that my problems are insignificant to others, but I’m trying to be honest about what I’m going through and not just ignore my problems like I have done before just because ‘other people have it worse’).

2018: Goodbye Diets. Hello Life.

I am so unbelievably tired of being at war with my body.

I’ve been dieting since I was 15. I’ve experienced disordered eating since I was 16. Binge eating kicked in about a year later and my weight yo-yoed. I gained a lot of weight. I then lost a lot of weight when I was 20 through restrictive eating. I then fell into bulimia. I began to purge and vomit to undo the damage of each binge.

With each binge-purge-restrict cycle, my body is becoming more and more damaged. I am becoming weaker. Now I feel broken. I cannot go on being at war with myself. My body is my home and I want to respect it. I want to make friends with it, to care for it and look after myself. I am so tired of feeling like shit.

I’ve lied to almost everyone I know and love because of my eating disorder. I have become a social recluse. An anxious wreck. A girl obsessed with controlling her body, exercising till she feels exhausted. I feel in control when I’m exhausted from exercise and hungry from lack of food. This is my supposed ‘happy place’.

It’s no wonder I’m losing the grips on my life. I can barely look after myself. I binge multiple times a week, wasting 100s of pounds and damaging my body in the process. I have regular dizzy spells and lightheadedness, chest pains and nausea. My stomach has been stretched to its limit on countless occasions. I’ve had food sweats and shivers. I’ve stuck my fingers down my throat more times than it bears thinking about (sorry for the TMI). I’ve felt ashamed for 6 years. I’ve felt disgusted by what I see in the mirror, wanting to shrink and take up less space. I am a shadow of the girl I used to be.

Looking forward to 2018 I want this to be the beginning of my life where I just don’t give a fuck anymore. I read a blog post (by The Little Plum) about 2017 being Chloe’s year of being fat and happy. In summary, Chloe decided she was no longer going to make herself miserable by restricting food and counting calories, all in an attempt to make herself smaller. If she gained weight, she gained weight. Although she did not feel completely comfortable with her body (feeling more body neutral than body positive) she decided to make the effort to accept her body for what it is and to just let it be. Reading the post, I felt something click inside of my head. It seemed so liberating, the idea of just not giving a fuck anymore! I wanted in…I want to respect myself and look after my body- if that means I gain weight then so be it.

And so the journey begins. This is going to be so bloody difficult for me, I’m not naive in thinking it’ll be easy. Of course it is slightly more complicated in that I’m suffering from an eating disorder, and will likely have to seek professional help along the way. However, over these past few months I’ve slowly come to the realization that my body and mind can not keep up anymore. I am wrecking both my physical and my mental health. I am missing out on life and what should be some of the best years of my life. I don’t want to miss another thing.

So 2018 is the year I’m giving up diets. I’m giving up my disordered eating- if that means I need to get help, then so be it. I’m giving up giving a fuck what my body looks like. Instead I’m giving a fuck about my friends and family, my relationship and my degree. My future job and my hobbies. I’m not spending any more of my time on the worthless bullshit that is diet culture, which makes women feel like they need to physically and psychologically harm themselves to look ‘better’. I am the bullshit with love and friendship and rest and self-care. I want to look after myself the best way I can and dieting is not, and never was, the answer.

So goodbye 2017. Goodbye diets. Goodbye excessive exercising. Goodbye eating disorder. Hello 2018. Hello recovery. Hello self-care. Hello freedom.