Tuesday 21 November 2017

The Powerful Truth About Not Looking Anorexic

Hello,

I am typing this in the early hours of the morning having just wiped my tears because I looked in the mirror and I wasn't emaciated anymore. I feel like I am in the wrong body, I am tortured constantly, I fear food so intensely yet I wake up and I am medically healthy. I step on the scale and there is nothing differentiating me from a normal healthy girl yet my mind is so different.

I have been underweight before, I have had people whisper concerned comments about my figure and ask my friends whether I had anorexia but now that I walk down the street in a healthy body people expect me to be healthy, both physically and mentally. Yet the truth is, I am not healthy, my mind is a volcano that is constantly erupting. Everyday my urge to restrict is so immense that my whole body shakes at the thought of food. I feel guilty for thinking about food but it is all I think about. I imagine myself eating food all day, I watch others eat and I wonder how it tastes yet if I was presented the food I would struggle to manage it. I am still ill no matter what the scale says.

I often feel like a fake, that I am not anorexic and I never have been. People come up to me and say "I am so glad that you are better," but what do you reply to that when you are feeling worse than ever. "Thank you? but in reality I had a panic attack after breakfast?" No I feel embarrassed, embarrassed that my body and my mind don't correlate. I had just left treatment that forced me to gain weight yet nobody would know that, nobody would know that my mental health was at the lowest point it could be. Yet so many people would congratulate me, praise me for finally beat anorexia but I am still suffering.

I am writing this because I am an anorexic in a healthy body and that is okay, only 20% of people suffering with anorexia are at a unhealthy weight. Yes I was once visibly suffering but I am not anymore and that doesn't mean that the mental torment has gone away. One day it will, one day it will be okay if you say "Im so glad that you are better" and one day I will be recovered. But today I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep completing each meal and maintaining weight and that is okay if that is my priority right now. Because I am still ill, no matter if I am not underweight.

Rosie

Friday 17 November 2017

Never let a stumble in the road be the end of your journey

Hello,

Its been an incredibly long time since I have wrote a blog post yet there are many many many reasons for that. But the big one and the main one I will be focusing on today is my mental health. Everyone has a state of mental health, sometimes people are in good states others in bad and recently mine has fallen in the category of the latter.

People have always told me there will be good and bad periods in recovery and I knew that, and I firmly believed that but I thought I had hit rock bottom before and that my mental health would never get 'that' bad again. Yet over the last few days I have come to realise that sometimes you hit rock bottom a few times, but that doesn't mean that you wont ever recover. It just takes time.

I fell into a very quick and very unexpected relapse in terms of my depression but my depression got so loud it dragged the hope and strength I had in terms of my anorexia recovery down with it and sadly I sit writing this just having come out of yet another hospital admission. I never thought I would enter hospital again but it happened but I am glad to say that I left hospital on monday heading for home around my supportive and amazing family.

I knew I would trip over in my recovery and there would be bad times and bad days but I truly thought that I had beaten the majority of it, in particular my anorexia. Yet I think that in life there will always be the harder times, there will always be the times my mental health isn't on top form and I have learnt in the past few days that that is okay. Recovery doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be real. It is okay to admit that you are not okay, it is okay to hit rock bottom, it is okay to just be surviving everyday.

I didn't want to believe that I was getting sicker, so much so that I pushed every negative thought out of my head far far away but I have learnt that this is unhealthy. You cannot just push away a mental illness, you cant force it away no matter how hard you try. I am ill, and I am accepting that on a daily basis and even if it is hard to admit, I need to prioritise my own personal recovery.

I am so sick and tired of my mental health interfering with my life and trying to get in the way of my dreams. But this time I want to recover, I don't want any piece of me to be affected by mental illness. Having a mental illness makes you seem that you are so clouded that you stay in your comfort zone in order to protect yourself, you listen to the demons in your head, you go with what they say out of fear that you will only deteriorate if you try recovery. For ages I have been stuck scared of both recovery and relapse, constantly staying in the middle ground. Never recovering but never relapsing either, but this time was different. Staying in the middle ground prevents you seeing what you are actually doing and that is relapsing, if you are not recovering you are simply relapsing and there is no other way to put it. There is no 'stable' in terms of mental illness, you are either giving it your 100% or you are slipping. I have now learnt that I need to give recovery my all, I don't want to stay in the middle ground. I don't want to live with mental illness. I want a healthy life, one that I will not be able to get with mental illness in my life.

So I write this shaking having a breakfast I have never had before, putting each foot forward and continuing fighting against anorexia and depression. I am strong enough to beat this, I am not weak for having a mental illness. I need to fight this this time and I will.

Fall down 7 times, stand up 8

Rosie