I don’t want to end up having one of those blogs that is nothing but whinge, whinge, whinge!! And yet if I am true to how I’m feeling lately, that’s the way it’s going to go.
Depression is the pits… it’s really weighing me down and tormenting me. Add to that the fatigue… and I’m out for the count. When I’m not sleeping (or trying to sleep) I’m slow, tired, tired, tired tired… boring, selfish, unable to engage in the chats with my close friends meaning that they wonder what THEY have done wrong when it’s really just me being blah…
And this is all part of the whole nightmare of my eating disorder. And there are people out there who WANT TO BE THIS WAY? Call the men in white coats! They are the nuttiest of the nuts, believe me.
Yeah… i don’t understand people who want to have an ED, and why they think they HAVE an ed a lot of the time. I’m sure most of us have seen way too many examples of the people I mean. The “I <3 Ana 4eva” kind of person, whose current weight is over 200 pounds. They call their diet Ana… WTF? If only they knew the reality. Why are there so many of them out there? They infuriate me.
This is a mental illness. A lot of the time it isn’t really even about the food and weight apart from on the surface. The illness is like that onion where you just keep peeling layer after layer away and it takes a lot of peeling and tears to reach the core of it. I know for me, it’s more about just coping with an un-copeable life. With abuse, when I couldn’t bear to deal with it. With self-hatred, when i could only express it in terms of my body. And so much more. But take away the food and weight and it’s still there.
This is not a choice. We don’t have a choice to develop anorexia or bulimia. We don’t just wake up one day and go, “cool, I want to lose weight, I think I’ll go ana.” The only choice we have, is when we know what the beast is, to fight it. I have been fighting it but OH it’s an everlasting pain in the butt.
This post is a bit of a pointless ramble. I wanted to blog, but I had nothing to blog about. life isn’t amazing and glamorous with an eating disorder. It’s stressful, boring, miserable, EMPTY. I don’t work. I don’t play. I don’t do much to report. I go to appointments, I sleep. I have added back walking, reading, computer time, hydrotherapy… and that’s still about it. You can’t have a life and an eating disorder – the two just don’t go together.
So the next time you think you want to lose weight the ‘glamorous’ way and how cool that will make you… think again.
next time you obsess over how pretty ana or mia will make you, consider dry flaky skin, wrinkles, falling out hair, rotten teeth, blue hands and feet, infected nails, infected everywhere, skin infections, acne like you can’t believe.. and that’s just the outside tip of the iceberg.
think of how pretty you will look in your coffin.
If you still want this…
I pity you.
during my hardcore bulimic years, i rationalised my disorder with, “i’d rather be ‘skinny in my coffin’ than ‘fat in the living world.’ sickening. so sickening.
i can’t wait for you to have an enjoyable life. there is so much more than doctors appointments and being controlled like a freaking anorexic puppet. you need to experience that, fiona. i am your biggest cheerleader. well, next to shalimar and gwendolyn.
x
I so agree – I remember always thinking I didn’t care if this killed me – at least it would be over then.
I’m so fortunate to have friends like you who understand, and yes, cheer me on. Life is actually getting better, it can be hard to remember that when you are in the pits of depression – but it is. And as long as I remember that, i’m okay.
I’m glad you and I both have gotten to that point where we would rather LIVE than lose our lives as long as it meant we were skinny.
I’m so lucky that I have friends like you who I can be inspired by too – it’s by no means easy and you are by no means fully recovered, but you are on your way there. And you have proven that it’s possible and desirable, more desirable than the ED was.
I heart you and Gwendolyn xxxx
Erk. Sorry to hear things are so rough at the moment…though sometimes it must feel like degrees of roughness, hey? I spent ages trying to justify my “odd eating habits” to my ex, who said to me at one point (the clincher) well…if you want to lose weight, why don’t you just do it the healthy way?
ED had no answer for that, because as you say – although the appearance is about food and weight – the underlying issues and causes are not. it took me a long time and loads of therapy to admit that, and it’s still something i struggle with every day. you’re the second person in 24hrs to bring my attention to ~I~HEART~ANA~4~EVA type people.
I’ve never really visited pro ana or mia websites; why not? I’ve never needed to. I’ve been living this shit since I was 14. 19 years later, I have periods of “remission”, but it’s always there. I don’t think “recovery” is impossible for everyone, but I have come to think that perhaps remission will be as good as it gets, and I just need to learn to handle the relapses better the next time around.
Noone, if they’d ever really had an ED, would want it. My mother (such a treat), made some comment last year, just before I was about to be hospitalised, about how I had stopped being pretty as a result of my weight loss and that men wouldn’t find me attractive. I just stared at her, totally mute for several minutes, before pulling up the legs of my jeans to reveal nothing but bruises and cuts and peeling skin. I said “Attractive? Do you think I actually believe this is making me ATTRACTIVE? It is NOT about that.”: Of course, the poor pet tried to convince me two weeks later that I did not have a mental disorder because she’d watched a TV show about it………..
So sorry to rant on and complain on your blog as well…just *hugs*. Sometimes, complaining helps process the depressive feelings towards an issue. There is nothing wrong with relating exactly how you feel, when you feel it – and if that means you are angry or frustrated or sad…this is your space to share that. Thinking of you. xo.
*hugs* the comments space is your space. Thank you for sharing this with me. I wish you didn’t have to go through your mother being so unhelpful… unsupportive.. ignorant.
I agree with the ‘remission’ thing!! So it’s a surprise that you used that word too. I often think that I will be able to at best achieve a remission, but recovery is pie-in-the-sky sadly.
I never even got onthe internet except for my uni years when I didn’t even KNOW I had an ed – until about 2 years ago. And I was infuriated and disgusted by the proed world. You are right – you don’t need tips to have an illness. And it can be such a secretive, shamed thing, something we keep to ourselves, something we are terrified of people finding out and perhaps thinking differently about us or trying to take it away from us because as much as it is hell, it’s the only way we are coping.. I just can’t even see myself ever getting online with a bunch of other nuts and gushing over how much I love this.
it’s scary and sad, how we KNOW we are doing things that will make it harder for ourselves, even kill ourselves, and not be able to change. I just commented on your blog about how my long term ed behaviours have made it more likely that I will be bigger than if I’d just not done this – I knew that for years, and I still did it. I know right now that not having breakfast is going to make me more likely to binge later for example – and it doesn’t make it any easier to have it. There isn’t any rhyme or reason or sense to that. I guess that is why it’s called a mental illness. Not a diet, not a lifestyle choice..
I hope so much that both of us can at least achieve that remission – and hopefully stay there xxx
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