My Experience Of Body Image

I do a lot of pretending.

I pretend a lot that I’m going better than I really am.

I pretend that I’m happier than I am, or at least, not as unhappy as I really am.

I pretend that I have a lot more hope than I do in reality.

And I pretend that I don’t really want to be ‘thin’.

I don’t know what to say to explain that one!

No, I really do NOT want to be emaciated, or even ‘too thin’. I feel like such a failure, and that everyone can SEE it when it’s that obvious. It’s not a nice look at all, in fact, it can be quite disgusting. Have you ever seen someone who is emaciated’s bottom? There is this big… concave HOLE there. And the anus that is usually hidden by flesh is.. stretched out in the middle of that hole. Too much info right?

Grossed out yet? Imagine LIVING WITH THAT. Still want to be thin?

And yet, I would give anything to go back to being almost 15 kilograms less than I am now. I don’t care how gross it might be. I don’t care about people looking down on me or treating me horribly because of it. I don’t even care that it might kill me. I am too much, and I will always be too much. At least in my mind, I am too much. I know in reality I am not, far from it. But to me, always too much. Always. And even at my lowest weight, I never even started to not be too much.

My body image is SO distorted. Even when I was at my lowest weight, on a good day I would see a normal, maybe rather fleshy person. On a bad day, I’d practically be able to roll myself around. And yet, under all that, my wise mind was constantly saying “But I’m too thin. I know I’m too thin. The ‘numbers’ say I’m too thin. And yet what is this incredible fleshy hulk I’m hauling round with me every day?”

Every now and then I’d catch a glance of what I called “Michael Jackson” in the mirror – a glimpse of how I truly was – and scare myself terribly. But that lasted for a glimpse and a few moments post-glimpse – before “too-much” loomed over me again, threatening to squish the ‘me’ right out of myself.

Okay, I know my nose is bigger and it’s REAL, but yeah. Scary stuff.

One of the common myths is that people with anorexia and/or bulimia enjoy their disease, enjoy the ‘thinness’ that many of them achieve. I think the reality would be closer to we don’t even get to experience it let alone ‘enjoy’ it.

How do I really see myself?

Imagine your body is SO heavy and huge that you find it hard to move. You find yourself very weighed down. Sluggish. One of the reasons my dancing started to fail in uni was because, yes I’d gained some weight initially, but after that, even though it was plunging DOWN, I felt heavy and unable to MOVE properly due to having so much flesh stopping me. It was a complete utter delusion.

You can’t walk with your legs together because your thigh rolls prevent that.

You can’t put your arms down properly to your sides because the rolls of fat under them and on your torso are too huge.

And it all feels SO REAL. So completely utterly REAL.

It’s not just about the body image way of being ‘fat’ either. It’s about being that aforementioned ‘too much’.

I experience the world as though I’m towering over everyone around me. I am more tall than I am short, but I’m not THAT tall, and I still feel this way when the person next to me is actually a lot taller than I. The same with width – I feel monstrous next to everyone else, even if the person beside me outweighs me by 100 kilos.

Even without the comparing of size, I just feel too much ME.  I’ve spent my life trying to squeeze myself out. Trying to disappear. To be invisible. Apologising for taking up too much space, for being so wrong, for being so grossly overimposingly massively HERE.

The way I experience my own size against that of the world has also see-sawed along with my actual weight, except that it’s strayed ever further than reality each time. The first time I ever lost weight, I felt tiny, I could feel myself and see myself shrinking. The world became huge, but only in relation to my own size.. Then I was refed, and although I grew, oh boy did I grow bigger, the world seemed to stay the same size. Each time I went down after that, the world got bigger while I stayed the same size. And each time I was refed, I grew bigger and the world stayed the same size. Can you understand that? We were becoming more and more skewed the more I lost and gained, I growing ever bigger, the world ever smaller.

Whoever invented those carnival mirrors, I wonder if they knew what this was like to live with?

This is just how I see my own face! My brain stretches it out so that it appears smeared.

So my problem is, I guess, that it’s so hard to live in a body that you feel so wrong in, one that you constantly wish you could literally unzip and step out of.

And while I struggle so much with my body image, I guess I have had to get to a place of maturity – listening to my wise mind and rationality over my discomfort and my desire to strive for something I find more pleasant to both see and be. 

Not everyone has reached that place.

Eating disorders are NOT about food, shape, weight – that is surface stuff. That is the language of our culture. That is the language we fall to first, when we are not happy, worried, anxious, have problems, and have no other way to express them but “I hate myself, I am so ugly, I am so big, if I lost weight, my problems would be better.” But food and weight and body image issues are often triggers for eating disorders to begin – and for the malnutrition that they cause to trigger the cognitive deficit and irrationality that leads to it becoming a mindset and something that overpowers us easily.

It’s very dangerous to be constantly giving us images to which we are expected to conform when they are physically not even possible for most. So many of us are struggling to even accept ourselves, let alone find ourselves acceptable in context of the rest of the world… and we are bombarded by reminders that apparently we never WILL ‘size up’.

What do you think of this?

And here I will end my ranting and leave you. Do you feel you ‘size up’ or are you too much? Is your body image distorted, or normal, or can you even tell when you only see what YOU see? How do you know if what you see is the reality?

If you have an eating disorder – how much do you feel it’s about food, weight, body image? Do you find that if you take those issues away, you still are stuck with your disorder and the problems that are underneath?

Do you find yourself yearning for something that is forbidden and dangerous? How do you deal with that?

And – if I don’t get to post again before midnight tomorrow - HAPPY NEW YEAR!! May 2013 be the happiest and most positive year all of you have lived to date – with better things on the horizon. xx

(Image Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 taken from Facebook.)

You Can’t Change People – You Can Only Get Away From Them.

I learnt at a really young age that I can’t rely on anyone else in this world. In a way this brought me some peace. My mother used to just abandon me in places for hours. Usually it would be after some class like ballet. She would drop me off and go, I would take my class, then wait through the next class, then the next, then the next – this would be hours. Then it would be late at night. Classes were over. Everyone had gone home. The hall was closed up and dark. The teacher wanted to just go home herself and was waiting because she wasn’t going to drive off and leave a kid sitting alone in the dark. And then mum would deign to rock up, after another hour or so, all smiles and not even acting like there was a problem with this.

Different variations of this happened over the years, again and again, through all the different places I needed to go. I learnt to accept it.

I used to stare at the road, watching the cars, and when it was dark, watching the headlights that approached, willing the next car to be my mum’s, willing it to turn into the parking lot. And it never would be. Every time my hopes were raised and it wasn’t her, I was dashed again. Already feeling dread and fear, I spent these hours fretting that my mother had been in some accident or she had just completely forgotten about me and wouldn’t come at all.

Over time I started to say to myself “I can’t make my mum arrive. I can’t make the next car be her. I can’t hurry her up. She’s late, and she’s going to be later, and I can’t change that. All I can do, is accept it, and sit here, and wait. Worrying isn’t going to make it any different”.

Looking back I think that’s a big thing for a kid to realise. We are talking, 7 to 13 years old here.

I also learnt that I can’t change people’s nature. I can only do what I can to protect myself. But that wasn’t such a good thing to learn and it didn’t help me much. My brother used to go off in the most violent vile rages most days. Throw a tantrum because he couldnt’ get his own way like a spoilt brat – except he was a freaking huge spoilt brat a lot bigger than me. So my mum and my older sister would lock themselves in mum’s room because it locked. I didn’t even have my own room, I shared a doorless space with him. So yes, I copped it. And they knew that. But they wouldn’t protect me or let me in with them. So there was a lot you tried to do to mollify the beast. He wants his chores done for him? Do them. He wants you to move your butt or give him the yummiest bit at dinner? Hell yeah. And I will never forgive him his cruelty to my first cat, Hotchy.

My sister, was awful in her own way. So much older, and more like mum’s confidante – she was granted huge power over us, and she used it cruelly. She let pets die, and she killed pets. I now know it was SHE who drowned ducklings, beheaded ducks, beat our dog, etc. At the time I thought it was my brother since he was so violent and he was cruel to my cat since she was mine I guess. My sister was into witchcraft which she later made more ‘acceptable’ by going into natural therapies. But she’s still into the dark stuff, as evidenced by a nasty blood soaked voodoo doll she left for me one Christmas only a few years ago at my last flat.

When I was in my teens, she started stealing from mum. I don’t even know exactly what was stolen, it sounds like it was old books, and old family things. And of course, my sister’s junk cosmetic jewellry was also stolen. My sister ‘found’ these things in apparently, pawn stores in the city, in an area I was yet to even explore myself for the first time. Ironically close to where I now have been living.

Any idiot should have been able to see it wasn’t me. But my sister said it was. She was on some amazing mission to hunt down all the things I had stolen and sold all over the city when I was 16 years old, and bring them home to mum. It didn’t seem to matter that 1. I had never even set foot in a pawn store, 2. you have to be 18+ with 100 points of ID to sell anything at a pawn store and 3. they don’t put that stuff out to sell anyway – I’m not sure what they do with it, but it does not go back out to be sold. Especially when according to her it wasn’t sold to them, it was loaned in – so 4. how the hell did she know which of the many pawn stores in that area (it’s full of them, and what a coincidence, she worked and studied in that area at the time) to go to, exactly what was there, and have the TICKET to get it?

DUH.

IT HURTS SO MUCH that mum never, ever believed me. She never stood up for me. She never wanted to see what was the truth. I begged her and begged her to LISTEN. I made excuses for her for years – she couldn’t see past my sister’s manipulation, she didn’t know the truth, etc. She was dumb. NOW I know she was fully aware – and she just enjoyed me being the family scapegoat. Cold, callous, narcissistic, unloving. And I still craved a mum. A ‘MUMMY’. Someone who would cuddle me and protect me and be excited by my triumphs and comfort me when I fell. She never existed, but for years I kept searching for her in my mother – kept going back and trying to create a real relationship with her when that ‘Mummy’ never even existed and never would – because she doesn’t have the capacity to actually LOVE or emphasise.

It hurt so much when my brother was violent all those years. As you would do – I would try to defend myself. If he was yanking my hair out, I would hit out to try to get free. If he was punching me, I would put my hands up to try to field off the blows. Etc etc. And hell, at times I got so ANGRY at what he was putting me through that YES I did more than fight back in defence, I hit out at him, out of anger. Wanting to hurt him as much as he hurt me. And my mother never, ever defended me. She criticised me for fighting like cats and dogs with him. She called me nasty. And if my fingernails ever broke his skin, she cut them short. Which added to the humility and anger and pain I felt – just to raise your hands to an oaf who his bashing out at you, if you are like me, a teenage girl whose friends were cultivating long nails and lovely clothes and starting to shave and pluck and really care about how they looked, you will have the beginnings of longer nails. I never had more than the beginnings because as soon as they were no longer short, bam, they’d break his skin and I’d get them hacked off by force again.

Not to mention the added humiliation and pain and fear from the bullying. The relentless bullying. For being dirty, for having clothes that were torn, stained, too big, too small, wearing the ‘emergency’ school uniform because mum wouldn’t even buy me a school uniform that was size 16 (I was barely an 8). Wearing shoes that were so painful – from the 1980′s – my sister’s old school shoes, held together by nails that I had bashed into the inside of them the night before to try to keep them together enough to walk in. It worked, but as I walked they worked their way up inside the shoe – I was literally walking on nails and it was excruciating. Or having shoes falling apart so badly the art teacher held you back and suggested she help you tape them up with the art tape and helped you paint it black to try to make it less noticeable. Having your schoolbag literally spilling everything out, not having the required books and stationary, staying back because you couldn’t go on excursions.

Were we poor? Yes. And no. My mother and my sister were not poor. They had so many clothes that they could not fit them in their huge wardrobes and they hung in our shower and in every other possible space. And they went on many more clothes shopping sprees – two girly friends together having a lovely day out buying new clothes. We existed on single parent pension, maintenance from my dad, extra money because all three of us were ‘disabled’ or ‘sick’ and God knows what else since I witnessed my mother taking advantage of people quite a number of times. I do know now one of the reasons I initially struggled to get help when i first left home was because she told them I was still living with her and continued to collect disability payments for me, and maintenance for me from my father right up til I was 18.

So we could afford all the things we went without. My mother just couldn’t be bothered to make sure we had them, out of greed.

It hurts to know you are so unloved and unwanted. It hurts to know that you never were loved by your own mother. It hurts to have no family – real loving family.

I am now building my own family. They love me and they care. They are honest. They don’t beat around with bullshit in which you are constantly kept guessing. They don’t care more about themselves than anyone else in the world. They are honest – with themselves as well as everyone else. And they are good people.

I’ve learnt from this that there are many good people in this world – I just have to look for them, and that I cannot change people myself. Only they can do that.

I’m sorry for the rant.. i really felt a need to write this today. Thank you for listening.

source

Belonging – Or Not.

I’ve been thinking over the family side of things a lot more lately – since going No Contact with them (not that they probably even realise) it’s really hit home how much they never did care about me.

Image Source

My mother is a narcissist. She exists for herself. She has no capacity to really truly love or feel empathy for another (although she’s a good actress).  She believes she is special and everyone else in the world is inferior. She has no love for me – she has been a cruel mother and used me for gain in any way she could.

On the flip side – she took me to ballet, my life’s passion – a passion that kept me going when I couldn’t see any other reason to live. She taught me to read – encouraged a life time love of books – another true gift.

My older sister is a full-blown classic sociopath and perhaps one of the most horrible people I’ve ever met in my life. And yet, she appears so lovely to the world. An upstanding mother and citizen. A Naturopath and Justice of the Peace.

This is a lady who has sexually abused children. Who has engaged in cruelty to animals, causing their deaths. Who has dabbled in black magic.

This is a woman who stole from her own mother, in order to make her think that it was me.

This woman proves that there are evil people in this world.

My brother, I will not say much about, except that he was violent and vile. He might have changed now, but he will never apologise or own his past behaviour and when challenged, will forever deny it and aggressively try to turn it all back on you.

And then there is my little sister. I love her, but I have lost her. And that’s my fault – for shoplifting (she is disgusted). I was caught on the day of my Dad’s funeral. I didn’t think they even knew, I thought I’d managed to keep that a secret and make it seem like I’d just been a lot longer on the walk I’d gone off on.

I was  not coping with the days before Dad’s death, trying to help my stepmother, trying to be strong. I spent all day at Dad’s side, and all night in my room, bingeing and purging the night away. It was the only way I could survive at the time. And I don’t expect her to understand that because she never could.

But in her eyes, for that I am evil.

So there is my family. Gone. I am better off without the most of them.

And yet, I grieve. I grieve the dream of a family who love me and truly care. A family who realise how hard I’ve fought and how far I have come. Who understand who I am as a person.

I realised when I was eighteen that my own family, who had lived with me for nearly seventeen years, did not even know me. They did not even have a clue about the very basic things that made me the person I am. They had spent their lives either not caring, or trying to make me into who they wanted me to be and only seeing that person.

I realised when I was in my twenties that my mother would never love me. I was in emergency, having been rushed there from the Eating Disorders unit, and my heart was struggling because my potassium was so low and my bicarb levels so high. They told me that they did not think I would live through the night, and asked to call someone. I gave them Mum’s number – this was before I made my friends my family and my next of kin.

My mother lives a ten minute drive from the hospital and yes, she drives, and yes, quite long distances and at night. But this night? She did not want to come in. She did not care if she ever saw her daughter alive again.

I did not die  thankfully! But she didn’t know that would happen. Her reality that night was that her daughter was going to die and she did not care at all.

It broke my heart. But it also gave me the push and the shock that I needed to start separating myself emotionally.

They do not know where I live now. They never will again if I have any control over it. From here, I will eventually cross the country, change my legal name, and vanish from their lives for good.

Image Source

And they will not even know I have gone – because they did not care if I was in their lives to start with.

My family are my friends. They are amazing people who love me, accept me, understand me, are honest with me. Who are there in bad times as equally as good times. Who actually know me. Who I can trust with every fibre of my being.

And they are all I need.

Image Source

A Ray Of Sunshine and My ABC’s

Thank you to the amazing Melis for nominating me for the Sunshine award. Melis certainly has brought a lot of sunshine into my life, is one of the blessings of ever having had an eating disorder – I would never otherwise have started blogging and met her, or my other wonderful friends.  

I’m also going to tack the Liebster Award on to this post – all three birds with one stone, so to speak! Thank  you again, to Melis!

Second Step: (first was linking back to Melis!)

Yes, you get to share some tidbits about yourself. More. Stuff.

Favorite Color:

All the colours in the rainbow!! And sharing this link that Melis shared :

What Does Your Favorite Color Say About You?

Favorite Animal:

Cats are THE best. I love them so much. Especially Shalimar, and my first cat, Hotchy, who I had growing up.

Favorite Number:

Four. Things seem to be neat and tidy as fours. It’s kind of an OCD thing, twos as well. But four is the ultimate for some reason.

“As a Libra.. Balance should be everything“  Said Melis. I agree. Fours and twos are pretty balanced numbers.

Favorite Non-Alcoholic Drink:

Tea – plain black tea with plenty of milk, very sweet. I have to kick my artificial sweetener habit though, it’s really bad for you!

Facebook or Twitter:

Facebook. It just suits me better. I’m not a constant updater, I’m more of a watcher-of-others. People watching on-line, I guess.

My Passion:

LIFE is so precious. And we only get one. We only have RIGHT NOW, let’s make it count.

Getting or giving presents:

I hate shopping, and I am always so embarrassed when I either get or give presents. Much prefer giving, but would wish to be able to hide under the table when my loved one unwraps it, or to give it to them and quickly run away!

Favorite pattern:

The clouds in the sky, amazing, always changing..

Favorite day of the week:

Saturday.

Favorite Flower:

Honeysuckle, smells so sweet. Or nasturtium – makes me nostalgic, grew everywhere when I was a kid.

Image via Wikipedia

Also, Melis nominated me for the ABC’s award –  and you can read her amazing alphabetical list of films she has enjoyed here

a) Add the logo to your site,

b) pass it on to 5 other bloggers, and then

c) use the alphabet to make a list of words describing yourself so that your readers will learn more about you. Oh joy, I know you’ve been dying to know more about me… not!

This is certainly a challenge… here goes..

I like to think that I’m a very accepting sort of person. I see beauty everywhere and in everyone. I’m crazy and I love cats,  especially my beautiful Shalimar.

I used to be a dancer. I used to be a dreamer. The eating disorder stole both from me, but not forever. I have a very strong faith and trust in God. The more I read the Bible, the more I believe with all my heart and the more hope I have.

I’m very  inquiring and will drive people crazy asking questions all the time – because this world is amazing and I want to know everything about it and the people in it!

I love a good joke, but I’m better laughing at them than telling them. Some people have the knack – I don’t.

I can’t knit to save my life. I don’t know why that irritates me but it does! I want to do karate or something similar some day and attain a black belt in that – just because I can.

I believe in kindness with all my heart.

I love licorice and anything of that flavour. Black jelly beans are the best!

I actually love the taste of meat, mostly chicken, fish, white meat (pork) – and crave it constantly. I wish that I could be vegan, though, because of the cruelty factor. I’ve had to give that up though because I just can’t live without it. My body seems to need animal protein.  We are part of the food chain, I guess…

Image Source

I’m constantly bombarded by nostalgia. Flashbacks are a problem for me, but the flipside is that the good memories come constantly too, and make me wish those good times were happening again!

I want to hear everyone’s  opinions as long as they respect mine.

I’ve come from a background of poverty so my appreciation for the simple things in life is overwhelming. I’m not a quitter and I never will be. No matter what life throws at me I keep on fighting. I know I’ve survived through the hardest of times already, I can take anything it throws at me now.

Reading is one of my favourite past times (as is art) and you will rarely see me without a book to read. But my most favourite, beloved thing of all? Not a thing, really – my cat Shalimar. She is my everything.

I’ve long wondered if I’m really an ’extra-terrestrial‘, like ET.

Phone home for me, too!

I’m really scraping the barrel here… too many letters in the alphabet.

My ultimate dream now is to be healthy and happy and contented – I want to be a mother, both of my own children, and a foster mother. I want to help kids. I want to help people full stop. If my past can help one person’s future be that little bit better, then what I’ve gone through is not pointless – it was worth it.

I want to raise awareness about violence of all kinds – in and out of the home. The more we speak out about it, the less of a ‘dirty secret’ it is. Noone deserves to live in fear for their lives.

I want to help young people realise that they ARE WORTHY, Worthwhile people. I want to help them develop their self esteem, coping skills that are healthy, a sense of self that’s strong enough to stand up for themselves when life throws them curve balls, and a deep conviction that they do not deserve to be abused in any way – that they deserve respect as much as everyone else alive. I hope that this also will lead to them treating each other with more respect and kindness.

I don’t know how eXactly (<–yes, I know, lame) I will achieve this, but the possibilities grow as I grow – and every day that I survive is one of more growth – on the inside where it counts the most and yet is often so invisible.

I’ll leave you all with a Great Australian Myth – that we used to be terrified of as kids – you can’t go on a camping trip without hearing a scary story about the Yeti! (Even though it’s not really Australian..)

Yeti? Or did Kevin Rudd forgot to shave?

Image Source

Maybe....

Image Source

I’m sure that politicians are a different species, really.. and now I have proof.

Phew I’m finished… almost.. and since we have started talking about politicians, I’ll do what this sort of talk always does for me….

zz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Image Source

Goodnight!

Oh, first – I nominate -

Elizabeth

Emma

Nicole

Kath

Nataly

Lyn

Keira

Eliza

Lollirot

Congratulations to you all!!! xxx

In Captivity.

I’m watching The Biggest Loser on TV and.. squirming. As are the contestants – they are in the middle of a challenge that has them literally stuck in the mud. I don’t like how these shows humiliate the contestants, especially when they are as vulnerable and broken as a lot of these people are. Last night, they had a temptation challenge where they locked all contestants in their bedrooms – with a room full of junk food – for twelve hours. Sausage rolls, pies, choccy bars, chips, cheese, flavoured milk.. and no dinner, on a diet of 1000-1200 calories a day (which is NOT ENOUGH, even without the 5 + hours of training a day they have them doing).

That is just cruel. You starve people and you lock them in a room with a heap of junky food? Recipe for disaster.

Moving on – I’m no stranger to humiliation. Haven’t I done it to myself over and over during the years of this eating disordered hell? I sure have. Vomiting on myself, on the floor, in front of nurses, friends, the whole ward – so great was my fear of what I’d been made to eat. Throwing plates of food across the room. Having to be watched in the toilet and shower, and generally 24/7. Having to have someone else toilet you and wipe your bum. Being sat on and force-fed, or tied to your bed.

Humiliating.

Then there’s the out of hospital stuff. The constant buying of food. Being named the ‘cabbage girl’ at my local fruit shop because of how much  I went through. People sneering and grimacing at me because of how I looked. Passing out in public and being walked over because people thought I was a drug addict.  Being spat on for being a skinny vile creature, being told how selfish i was to buy food I obviously didn’t eat when people were starving.. hello, and I was not?

And on, and on.

Very humiliating.

Why do we do it to ourselves?

Why do we keep ourselves so captive?

We are only as captive as we think we are...

Image Source

Why do we tell ourselves that there is no way out? That is what I have been doing.

“I can’t do this”

“I am trying… trying.. trying..”

What is wrong with DOING it?

I’ve always done best when I’ve just quit weighing in on the argument in my mind and JUST DONE what I need to do to stay alive. Sure I’m freaking out about the weight gain. Sure I’m feeling filthy and guilty and full. Sure I’m having flashbacks and just want to make it stop.

But when did feelings and thoughts ever kill us? They can’t. WE do what kills us. And that is what I need to remember.

When I give into the anxiety, the fear, the pain – I am hurting me. I am putting my life at risk.

When I stay with those feelings – they never last forever. They come to a peak, but no matter how unbearable I think they are, they are bearable. I’m still here at the end of it all. I’m still alive. And the feelings have passed.

Not only have they passed, they are less intense the next time around.

It’s time we were all kinder to ourselves. Think about how you treat yourself on a daily basis. How do you talk to yourself? Are you mean, are you sharp? Do you endlessly blame yourself for all that is ‘wrong’? Do you ever remember to congratulate yourself for a job done well?

Would you be mean and nasty to this child?

Would you say the things you say to yourself, to this little girl?

Image Source

It’s harder to be cruel to such an innocent, precious, trusting soul, isn’t it? It’s harder to blame her for everything that ever went wrong, be frustrated, be hateful..

Well remember, you were like her once. You were young, trusting and innocent too.

You still are that child! You might have grown up, you might be older in body and mind – but you are still that child. You always will be.

It’s time to be kinder to that little child. To yourself.

Update – I went to the GP today, and while she doesn’t think I have a bowel obstruction she is investigating the possibility of  a partial one, so that means bloods, x-ray and ultrasound to be done tomorrow and monday. I’m glad that nothing invasive needs to be done, that was one of my bigger fears. I’m pretty sure that there is a problem in there and hoping that whatever it is will be picked up so no more bloating, cramping, gas, etc.  Until then, I hang in there.

Another strange thing, before the ultrasound and  x-ray, I have to fast for 6 hours, fair enough. But I was strictly told that the fast includes chewing (eg gum) and smoking! I’ve never come across that before, and it’s interesting because it must mean that just working your mouth by chewing or having something in it will spark off some sort of reaction in your stomach? I know that digestion begins in the mouth.. Time to consult the encyclopedia of Google. 

Thank you to all of you for your support and encouragement, and for being honest in telling me that I need to keep fighting. I appreciate it, and YOU ALL more than I can say. xx

Why I hate hospital. A cautionary tale of Bulimia and it’s costs.

I was asked by Nicole in the comments on her post The Obese Bulimic to write about my experience with bingeing and purging in a public setting – and I’m inspired by Emma’s honest and courageous post about her own struggles with binge eating.

My eating disorder has very blurred beginnings, as I was weird with food from a very young age – hiding food and restricting as well as eating everything in sight when we were allowed to, from as young as four years old. I lost a fair bit of weight in my last years of high school (dancing full time at a state ballet company dance school) not just from the insane work load, but from depression caused by what was going on at home and school – there was never any way out of hell. Eating, most of the time, was just too hard, not to mention that I started strangely being paranoid of the girls who bullied me seeing me eating.

Probably, they bitched about everything else with me, they had bitched about how gross some of the food I had was. I imagined the next thing they would pick on would be the way i ate. Shame and food were inextricably linked early on for me.

After fleeing home, at first, eating was difficult, but i soon realised I COULD eat. There were no limits aside from what was available. And I ate, and ate, and ate. It comforted me. It was warm, like a hug. I didn’t have to think about anything when I ate. Hurting about my past and being so rejected and unloved by my mother didn’t hurt so much when I was scoffing tim tams.

Do we even NEED an excuse?

Of course, as a dancer, the weight gain (which I hadn’t expected, funnily enough, since my mind had never before been focussed on losing weight or dieting) – was disastrous. I soon linked weight gain to all the problems in my life. And being told by the lecturers at the university where I was now dancing full time that I was too big and needed to lose weight helped crystallise for me that weight loss = everything will be soooo much better!

For clarification – weight loss =/= solving your problems (or happiness, popularity, inner beauty, employment or promotion, wealth, confidence etc etc etc). this I know now.

But I launched myself now on diet after diet.  It became my obsession, i researched every single diet known to man as though I was enrolled in nutrition or dietetics rather than dance.

The ultimate JUNK food..

Long story short, after a number of failures (because diets do NOT WORK, I can’t say that enough) – Ed took over and created rules taken from the books I had ‘dined upon’ – took them too far. For example low carb = NO carb. Low fat = NO fat,  and if calories were so bad, why not just cut all of them out completely? Not long after that, guess who ended up in the hospital for her first admission in the eating disorders unit?

Yes – me.

I sincerely did NOT believe I belonged there. It took a couple of admissions before I could admit to myself that I did. I was powerless over the anorexia. I could not put anything in my mouth that was against my rules. But I relaxed enough to gain weight eating ‘safe’ foods and be considered ‘better’ and be discharged (in those days, many years ago now, the eating disorder unit I spent so much time in barely had a program and food and meals were pretty relaxed.)

Of course, I would go back to where I started – only worse. For some reason i kept getting worse. I would try to follow the meal plan they wanted me to follow, but I couldn’t trust myself. I threw out a lot of food because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to stop at one meal of it – and then just gave up and reverted to starving.

While all this was happening I was being abused and raped by a man. He did not live with me but came and went as he pleased. I didn’t want to be with him in the first place – he simply picked me up and put me in his car when I tried to walk away. After what he did to me, I just wanted to throw up. I was so defiled and dirty and had to GET IT OUT. But I couldn’t. Not for want of trying! But I just could NOT throw up. (probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn’t eating ENOUGH to throw up anyway.)

During this period I drank copious cups of warm water and epsom salts. Please do NOT try this. It’s disgusting. The worst thing I ever tasted. And dangerous. For me, remembering my mum referring to it as what they used in ‘her day’ as a good clean out of the system, it was the only way I could feel ‘clean’ after the bastard had his way with me.

Then, a few years into the constant hosptialisations, I got talking with another girl on the ward, who claimed she had bulimia (she did not. She had munchausens – bulimia was another in a long list of  illnesses she manufactured for attention, but was soon found out.) She, in front of me, ate an entire loaf of bread, toasted, smothered in butter and jam and honey, drank an entire 2 litre bottle of full cream milk. I was just goggle-eyed… I had never seen anyone eat so much, not even my brother who could polish off enough for four big adults in one sitting.  Seeing my horror, she pulled me by the arm, we snuck down the hallway to the toilets and she quickly locked us inside. Where she proceeded to step-by-step demonstrate throwing up. It was DISGUSTING to watch, but something clicked in my sick, sick mind – and when I later tried myself, I was able to throw up my meals.

So I became a restricting anorexic who threw up her lettuce leaves, and the spiral of sickness plunged ever deeper.

Another few years passed – this time the fellow patient was rabidly bulimic – she was in utter hell. She did not CARE who saw her bingeing. She was that desperate. She stole half chewed food off the elderly patient’s plates. She ate from the bin. She hoovered up everything in sight, even when nurses were trying to pull her away. One day on an earned walk off the ward, i ran into her in the hospital canteen where she was buying a HEAP of food. She asked me if I would like to join her, and curious, I did. She ate and ate and ate! And soon I joined in. We went from canteen to canteen, I ate five paddle pops! At first I thought to myself – I have been so good, working so hard, gaining weight – come on Fi, you deserve a treat. Have a paddle pop. But then I had another paddle pop, and soon I’d had five. And then we were in the toilets throwing up before going to the next canteen (there were three on hospital campus back then.)

click to go to Binge Eating Therapy site.

I later learned she went to a popular buffet restaurant, Sizzlers, every day and just ate and purged and ate and purged. I later was friends with one of the young people who had worked at that restaurant (small world!!) who told me of the horror and dillemma that the staff there were in – after all it was all-you-can-eat, and you can’t exactly say to a patron, you are eating too much. that is what they have paid for – free for all. But THIS girl was throwing up and coming back for more and more for hours at a time. They could see it, the other diners could see it – she simply did not care as long as she could binge and purge. Their biggest dilemma was the fear (and real risk) of her collapsing or dropping dead in their restaurant. It was an ethical minefield, and most of the staff were really just kids themselves still.

Click to go to the Alliance For Eating Disorders site

Myself? i continued with my purging behaviour, but ‘every now and then treats’  (really binges) grew in size and regularity. Soon after being discharged, I had fallen into an endless cycle of starving all day and binging and purging at night in place of even attempting to eat meals.  I felt like I was in a dream a lot of the time – no longer did I need to deny myself when I was hungry or craving (which was always) – it was anything goes. As long as I got rid of it. I also became physiologically ‘hooked’ – blood sugar swings so violent that a few minutes after purging I would be dizzy, shaking, blacking out and terrified,  and frantically searching for more food to binge on just to feel like I wasn’t going to pass out or worse.

From then onwards, I really was in freefall. My weight plummeted. The hospital quit trying to make me gain as much weight – my discharge weight set by them fell to just-clicking-over-from-bmi 13 to bmi 14. That too made me feel that they had given up on me and were just keeping me alive because legally, me being under their care on an involuntary treatment order – they had to.

My bingeing behaviour became the only way I coped with life, and when things were harder, I was out of control. On my numerous admissions to restore weight or medically get me out of danger, the staff decided to keep me in a locked HDU rather than let me join the program. I was never out of control to the degree my friend had been, but because I was so medically compromised and so underweight (as low as BMI 9) bingeing and purging was deadly. Not only did it strain my body terribly, but it took just one purge to make my potassium levels plunge dangerously low – which potentially could lead to cardiac arrest. Even when I was doing ‘better’ and not bingeing or purging, they refused to consider letting me on the open ward like anyone else.  From then on, when I was admitted, they automatically put me in there, no questions asked.

The HDU is a horrible place to be, it’s reserved for the sickest patients. The violent ones. All your possessions are confiscated, even shoes and underwear. Often eye glasses and dentures are taken. I had to fight for my hearing aids. The idea is that ANYTHING in the hands of a crazy person can be turned into a weapon against themselves or others. And after several fires, that included paper, books, etc. You were restricted to hospital pjs, no underwear in case you hid something in your regular clothes. So I sat there, day after day, in a bare white room. Nothing to see, do, read. No clock to tell the time with. No pen or pencil to write with. It was utter hell and I lost more and more of ‘who am I?’. I forgot who I was, I forgot there was a world out there. And I slowly became a blank nothing.

As I grew sicker, they had to resort to feeding me intravenously – via TPN. As pulling out a picc line was so dangerous, I was restrained with two point restraints (your wrists are tied to the bed on either side when you lie on your back) to prevent any possibility of pulling the line out.

Psych nurses here are rarely required to care for someone in that position. I had bedsores, was left dirty after toileting, was bathed irregularly, my mouth was allowed to go so dry that the nursing director threatened that heads would roll. And lying on your back in one position for weeks on end is very painful.

This is a cautionary tale. Rarely when we set out with something that seems like a good idea at the time, do we envision what it could very well lead to. We often don’t think that the worst could possibly happen to US. I certainly thought that. Bingeing and purging when I started seemed an amazing way to eat all that yummy stuff I’d not had after subsisting on pretty much nothing for years – and not pay for it. But you pay. You always pay. And dearly. Many people pay with their LIVES. I am lucky I have not – but every single time I do it, I am putting my life on the line – I could die. So could you. I have had friends die from it.  A couple died after they STOPPED doing it because it was too late to reverse the damage they had done.

So please, please, seek help. And try your best to help yourself in the community. Hospitals and treatment centres are minefields of tips and tricks passed from patient to patient. Ways to cheat, ways to compete. You only ever cheat yourself in the end.

The best advice I could give to someone who had to go to a hospital or treatment centre would be to keep your eyes on your own plate in all ways – literally when at the table. On your own journey – because so many of us (I did too) compare our journey – “That girl is so much sicker/thinner/more disordered/eats less/purges more than me”. We will NEVER win this way. We will ALWAYS find ourselves wanting, and have lost a valuable chance to work on what is really the problem.

Because it’s not the food or the weight. It’s something far, far deeper than that. And it needs to be addressed in order to stop needing your eating disorder to cope with it.

Click to go to the Butterfly foundation page (Australia)

Click to go to the Academy Of Eating Disorders (worldwide)

What do you think should happen when someone is obviously bingeing and purging at an all-you-can-eat restaurant?

Have you been affected by other people with eating disorders that you have met? How?

Thank you so much for your nominations… please be patient with my tardiness..

I’m chuffed to have found that in the last few days, I’ve been nominated for a few more awards – the Versatile Blogger award again, and the Tell Us About You blog award.. (did I remember that right? I’m too tired/lazy tonight to check anything out properly..) Thank you so much to Eliza, Melis, Nataly, Elizabeth, Emma, Halfway between the Gutter… have I missed anyone? Thank you so very much. It hasn’t been long since I didn’t know any of you, and now I’m addicted to your blogs, in fact, a lot of the time i don’t write my own posts because I’m too busy reading yours

 

I am going to spend tonight and possibly tomorrow coming up with who I’m going to nominate, but tonight I’m going to tell you 7 things and maybe more, about me here we go!

1. I am crazy about my cat. You already knew that right? Well I’ve always been nuts about animals. For some reason, we get on. We click. Growing up, we had a lot of pets – dogs, ducks, geese, budgies, doves, guinea pigs, cats, mice… I often felt like my family didn’t love me, didn’t GET me – but the animals did. There were many late nights outside in the dark, stargazing, dreaming and planning about ‘when I get out of here and am safe’ while a dog leaned up against me in companionship and, I felt, understanding. My first cat, Hotchy, DID keep me going, the whole six years of her life. The last years of her life were some of the hardest years of mine. I truly think I would have given up if I had not had her. After she died, it wasn’t long til I had to leave home, but had she still been alive I would not have left, because I could not bear to leave her. I think she was meant to only live six years now, painful as that was to lose her.  Now, Shalimar, fills some of the gulf left by Hotchy, but is beloved in her own right. Shalimar, too, has been with me through some of my life’s hardest years, and sickest. I would not be alive had she not kept literally spiking my face with hundreds of little claw marks to wake me up from the mini-comas I kept slipping into. I would not be alive had I not constantly fought because I couldn’t bear to be without her, to leave her behind. I am so ashamed and sad that she’s not had the best life, but I’m determined that from now on it will be.

2. I love the smell of rain. And the trees. Grass. Flowers. I love thunderstorms and lightning. I love the stars!! They are awesome! I love the frost on the grass in the morning, that makes spiderwebs look like jewelled webs. I love the sunset and the sunrise. I love the crickets chirping in the evening. I even love seeing a shimmer in the air on a deathly hot day like we have been having here lately. I think this world is truly amazing..

3. Despite my eating disorder, I love food. And hate food. But love it more.  I actually have not tried a wide range of foods and that means that at an age where many people have pretty much ‘tried it all’, every foray into a restaurant or cafe or to eat with someone else, or even to a new food store – brings a new surprise for me. I can’t wait to someday have not so screwed up a relationship with it, so that I can just LIVE and food be another wonderful part of that life.

4. I’m fascinated by trolls. The internet kind. ‘Why’ is one of the reasons – why bother? but also, on more research, it led me to think more about ‘sheeple’. People who stop thinking for themselves and adopt a herd mentality. It seems that the oldest trolls popped up to try and divert this herd from the topic of whereever on the net they were. Fascinating stuff.

5. I’m very socially phobic. I would always rather be hidden away alone. I guess I’m used to my own company. But I constantly challenge that – these days I enjoy my friends company and never regret being with them, they are amazing people and they make my world go ’round.

6. I used to be scared of escalators and still am phobic of lifts. I used to think that if you didn’t jump at the top or bottom of the staircase on the escalators it would eat you, the steps looked to me like they were disappearing into a gaping toothy maw. My fear of lifts is because I seem to have an uncanny knack of getting trapped in them…

7. I love Golliwogs and am so sad that they are disappearing since being declared ‘racist’. I used to fear them – for example, when the plug was pulled out of my bath as a child, if I was still in it when the last of the bath water swirled down, I would be eaten alive by the golliwog who lived in the pipes.

As you can probably tell I’m a very sentimental person.. very nostalgic. I love some of the memories that pop up from my childhood and they are usually based around the natural world or the fantastic beliefs I had then. Sadly I spend a lot of time focussing on the now and blocking those memories as everything is a trigger at the moment. But one day, I’ll be able to revisit them with ease and have so many good memories from NOW that I might not even desire to!

Well I am all talked out, for now. Anyone still awake? I’m nearly asleep myself. I’ve been trying to discover my new area, but keep getting hopelessly lost. For some reason catching a bus anywhere isn’t simple, there never seems to be a bus BACK.  Ridiculous! I guess i have taken city transport for granted. There’s a bus everywhere when you live in the city!

Not that i miss it. Not one little bit. It’s heaven here

 

Shalimar agrees

I will be back, hopefully tomorrow, with nominations!! Goodnight my friends and thank you for reading xx

 

 

Home

Well here we are – Shalimar and I are truly home. And it feels wonderful!

It was worth the waiting, worth the stress, worth packing and cleaning and packing and cleaning some more. It is just truly beautiful. It smells lovely – like flowers and trees because it IS surrounded by flowers and trees. It’s DARK at night! It’s quiet! It’s like paradise for us both.

I haven’t let Shalimar outdoors yet, but she’s loving being so much closer to the outdoors even while inside.  She was NOT happy when I put her in her cage yesterday, and even more NOT happy when two burly men turned up and started hauling HER stuff out of HER home.

By the way, the picture I used to illustrate the last post turned out to be quite prophetic. My case manager and I thought we had a TRUCK and two men coming. What turned up was a UTE and two men. We looked at the ute, looked at my HOUSEful of stuff and both said.. “nah..”

But they did it! The ute must have had the same magic as Mary Poppin’s Bag.

Would be VERY handy

(source)

Well, when we got out of the car here at the new place, and Shalimar saw and smelt the GREEN… she just.. Ahhhhh. I could visibly see her let out a sigh and relax. She knows she’s come to a good place.  She’s settled in very well, and very fast!

Today she was pouncing around like she was nuts or something. I looked out the door and there was a bird about a metre from the screen. She was actually pretending she was out there… LOL. I’m not going to let her get any birdies!

I’m totally exhausted, I really went far past what my body feels it CAN do in the last week or so.  Yesterday I started tidying up and checking the last of the packing at 7am, kept going all day, finished unpacking at around 8pm. It feels really good to have it all done, and it feels really good to have NO useless junk and NO clutter and NO rubbish here. But maybe I should have slowed down because today I feel like a little old lady – sore and weary. I need to learn to listen to my body and stop when it’s had enough. Not hard to do.

I’m sorry I’ve been tardy with commenting on the blogs of people I follow – and you are some amazing writers with really good, interesting, mind-stimulating posts. I read them and enjoy them, but lately I’ve just been too frazzled to string many comments together. If I do, it’s a miracle. (well more accurately, it’s because the post is just SO well written or thought provoking that I HAD to no matter how tired I felt).

I’ll be back to full Fiona-ness soon

How am I really? Today has been the first full day here at my new home. After all the excitement and stress, suddenly I’ve plunged back into deep depression.  Major depression has dogged me all my life, I first was ‘diagnosed’ with it at nine, when (apparently – because I take everything my mother says with a major HUNK of salt) I wrote a suicide note. At nine???? I find it hard to believe a paediatrician would even consider diagnosing a kid of nine with depression – but that’s what I’ve been told. And looking back, I was very miserable during a lot of my childhood – for obvious reasons. I’ve never met a happy child who was being abused.

I recently saw a show called Twins , and one part of it featured a set of twins where one had anorexia, the other major depression. An interesting thing that they said, was that it’s possible that the SAME gene that causes anorexia, also causes major depression. If that’s true – and it’s likely to be – then it sounds like I have had a double whammy of it!

Maybe I'm twice the nuttiness?

(source)

Anyway, blathering aside, i have a lot of settling and exploring to do. Today was a FAIL – I ventured out to get to know my local area – this is the first place I’ve ever lived that I didn’t have a CLUE about before I moved here – there wasn’t much to find on the internet. Well it was so easy to hop on a bus somewhere, but to come back again? Every bus that went past, the driver first seemed clueless about where he was driving to (“um… I don’t know… do we go to —?” i mean, what the heck do they do, just follow the road wherever it goes?) Every driver finally shook his said and said that the next bus, five minutes behind him, was the one I wanted. And then that driver would say the same thing! But I made it home eventually. Phew!

Next time I think I’ll go prepared.

Ready for anything

(source)

Well that’s my news! I’ve missed my blog friends and I’m still blown away that any of you are actually reading! So I look forward to getting back to it.

In the meantime, i’d love to hear about what your first week of the New Year was like. I can’t guarantee I’ll comment back, but I’d love to hear anyway. Cos you guys rock xx

P.S, Shalimar wanted me to post this. Just because. (So did I actually..)

All we can say is.... YUM!

(souce)

Chocolate should be free for everyone!

 

 

Meet Shalimar!

First I would like to say a huge thank you to my lovely, amazing friends – you know who you are. I am totally overwhelmed by your offers of help moving! I appreciate it more than I can say. You guys rock.

Now that it’s so close to our move to our new home, I thought I’d take up Nicole’s suggestion of creating a Shalimar’s Adventures section of this blog. Like Nicole’s gorgeous puggle Gwendolyn, Shalimar is essential to my even being alive – i love her with all my heart and soul, and I know without a doubt i would not be alive today without her.

So today, enjoy! Meet Shalimar, my 9 year old, RSPCA Special Blend moggy who i adopted at just 8 weeks old.

Today we have been packing my home up – and she knows something is amiss. She has her ways of telling me she does NOT like being left behind -

You are NOT leaving me behind when you move!

This is a variation on her usual position :

I want to come with you!!!

Of course, Shalimar LOVES going outside – but living in a unit block upstairs, she is largely an indoors cat.  We also live in a very heavily trafficked CBD area. Our unit block is literally an island between some of the city’s busiest streets. Luckily, directly across the road is a beautiful church with beautiful gardens, and this is where we go:

Hurry up!!! Hurry up!!!

And this is why we are so dirty when we come back!

Like a pig in mud..

Then it’s back home for a little mauling of the toys (this is how she takes out frustration directed at those birds she could catch if only I wasn’t there to spoil her fun!)

Well now, it’s bed time for us both. I’m sure that she needs it, what a yawn!

Packing is hard work for cats, too!

(the bags hold clothing destined for charity )

Do you have a pet? Would you like one?  

Foster kids and food… It sure can be a fucked-up relationship. « I Was A Foster Kid

Foster kids and food… It sure can be a fucked-up relationship. « I Was A Foster Kid.

I had to reblog this – just had to.

I have never been a foster kid – only because I never removed from my home although child services certainly had us on their radar. My family was just too good at hiding the reality.

Also I was terrified of what would happen – Mum told me many times, if we were taken away we would be put in a home and beaten, starved, etc. Not that we weren’t already being, but at least we were at OUR home with OUR family.

So I lied, every time I was asked – and it was many times – if I was okay, what was happening? I lied. I told them again and again, everything is okay at home.

It wasn’t.

When I read this post, it was like reading about ME. That is my relationship with food, the why, the how, the everything.

Has your childhood impacted your relationship with food seperatly to your eating disorder? How?