Confessions of an Anorexic

It is like a full time job just trying to appear normal for friends, family and work.

The lengths I go to to hide my eating disorder are fucking insane. Also sometimes sad, downright selfish or wasteful.

I lie all the time about my food intake. This is pretty obvious.

Lie more about where I’m going or what I’m doing - eg at work “I’m just going to get some lunch”, comes back 20 minutes later with a can of coke zero and an empty paper bag. Where did I go? What did I do?

I spend an awful lot of energy finding creative ways to make food disappear without eating it, like if I’m eating out or at a work function. The plate becomes empty, but I didn’t eat the food. Nobody ever notices.

Trying to make it look like I am ‘snacking’ when there is food around, again like at work or parties. I always have food in my hand, but how often does it go in my mouth.

I actually make food and dirty utensils, or buy food and leave the empty packaging laying around to make it look like I’ve eaten. Such a fucking waster. This one in particular makes me hate myself.

My eyes are always red and puffy if I’ve been purging. Yeah, it’s my allergies. I mean, I do have terrible allergies, so blaming chipmunk cheeks/purge face on allergies is really passable for me.

I get gastro a lot. Like, A LOT. I also get a lot of food poisoning. Nobody every says anything but I’m sure people probably think this one is suss. It’s a terrible excuse and I have to stop using it because nobody will believe it anymore. Maybe I’ll tell the truth: “Yeah sorry I took 90 laxatives last night so I’m going to be in the bathroom all day”.

Someone said this to me the other day. Fair enough. She was probably right.

I’m one of those people who just attracts drama (or rather, is attracted to drama if you believe the title of this post). I have had COUNTLESS FUCKING DRAMA’S lately, but not just lately, my whole life.

Since she said this, and she’s said it a few times now, I’ve really been thinking about my ‘drama’. I’m by no means a drama queen, but I’m definitely one of those annoying people who is always ‘tired’ or ‘sick’. Realistically yeah, those thing’s are true - I’m always tired and sick because I never fucking look after myself. The dramatic part about that is I’ll quite happily say every day “yeah, I’m really tired, I didn’t sleep last night”. This is not a lie, I don’t sleep well, but I could just stop with the drama and be all like “yeah mate I’m great, had a good night, how are you”. Maybe I’ll work on that - note to self, be more “great”.

But when I think about the more ‘dramatic’ things that have happened in my life, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I created those.

I certainly didn’t create child sex abuse

I didn’t create my mothers mental illness

I didn’t create the time I was raped (although some people like to try and make victims believe they asked for it, I stand my ground on this. I never asked to be raped). I could have not gone to the party, but it was just a party. It’s not like I knew ahead of time that I’d be assaulted there and chose to attend anyway

I didn’t create any of the stressful things my husband went through at work that affected our whole family (literally, how could I even create that?)

I semi-created my whole living situation when I was pregnant with my first child. I was young and irresponsible, I’ll wear that one. It ended well at least.

I got chased in the dark by a strange man a few weeks ago, I didn’t create that. I actually tried really hard to avoid a drama with that, being super careful and everything.

Some random lady yelled at me the other day while I was on the footpath. No way did I create that, I did LITERALLY NOTHING to her.

I’m in two minds about creating my eating disorder drama or not. Probably depends which expert you ask really. I spend an awful long time trying to hide it that’s for sure.

So after spending a few weeks really really worrying about this perception of me I think I have come up with an answer. For the most part, I don’t create my own drama. I have choice in a lot of things I do, and sometimes I make the wrong choice. But I don’t do this on purpose. Every human is a product of nature vs nurture, their past and their environment. I probably didn’t have the best start, but I’ve made it this far. The drama I do create is not so much the things that happen, but the way I RESPOND to them, that makes me seem like such a fucking pain in the ass. I have this thing where I NEED to talk about what I’m feeling, to a person, at the time I feel it. Otherwise I get all fucked up. But, I need to learn to let things go, to not be ruled by fear, to live in the present and not in the past. So, my action plan to be a normal person:

1. Stop telling people that I’m tired

2. Stop talking about things that upset me

3. Stop being an anxious fuckwit

4. Stop carrying on about scary things that happen

5. Come up with more believable answers than “I’m fine”

6. STOP CREATING DRAMA

I started a new job

A job that is very important for me to keep

To do this, I need to make sure that nobody finds out that I am absolutely fucking mental

I did fine for like, 2 months

Then I fucked up

I started to relapse

I went through that typical “beginning to relapse losing my mind judgement is off need help might die fucking hate this shit so sad can’t function get help before it’s too late” stage

Told my life story to a co-worker in a time of tears, hunger and weakness

Thankfully she’s fucking lovely and (as far as I know) hasn’t told anyone

I still do my job really well, but....

I have gotten to that point in my ED journey where I am truly beginning to believe that recovery will never fully happen to me. I am aware that by allowing myself to think this way, I am accepting it as the truth and therefore making it difficult to alter my behaviors to encourage recovery. What I don’t know is if I just don’t care, or if I’m genuinely cognitively impaired from my ED.

I have never really wanted to let go of the ED. I have always said “yeah, I want to recover” to anyone who asks. But that’s only partly truthful. The full truth is “yeah, I want to be able to eat normally and stay underweight”. I have been convincing myself for years that this is possible, and I KNOW it isn’t, but I refuse to accept it.

That my friends is why I cannot recover.

But why? Why can’t I accept that. There has got to be something really fucking wrong with me that I continue to torture myself when there is no happy ending. I am truly fucked up. There is no motive, no secondary gain. It’s just what I do.

I want to believe the experts, the research, the line “eating disorders are not a choice”, but there comes a point where I have to accept that I hold that choice, and I make that choice every single time I engage in eating disordered behavior. I have nobody to blame but myself.

The guilt and blame is becoming too much to handle anymore. Each time I slip or lapse or relapse or engage in behaviors or whatever the fucking term is now for “enjoy having an eating disorder”, I get more fed up with this life.

I have so much to live for.

You hear it all the time, how eating disorders are glamorous. If it’s not said directly, it’s implied. There is something so alluring about self-starvation. The willpower, the strength. The ability to achieve (or surpass) society’s physical ideal. The problem, however, is that nobody ever talks about the darkest, grossest parts of an eating disorder. Sufferers themselves are often too ashamed to share this information that nobody wants to hear anyway. But this needs to be heard. I need to highlight some of the suffering that accompanies and eating disorder because it’s not all about being hungry and occasionally fainting.  

Enter: Laxatives. That word alone is enough to make people cringe or burst out laughing. It invokes and uncomfortable response from the greater community. Poo. It’s such a taboo subject. Nobody talks about it, despite the fact that everybody does it. Before I jump into the disgusting details, let me first state: Laxatives DO NOT increase weight loss. I know this. Most people who abuse laxatives also know this. This is not why we do it.

The first time I took laxatives was because I genuinely needed them. I had just had a baby and was extremely constipated. The ‘natural’ stuff wasn’t working, and I was in intense pain. I hadn’t shit for over a week. I bought a box of bisacodyl and took the recommended 1 tablet before bed. The next morning I experienced the promised relief. I don’t really know how my addiction spiralled from there, it just happened. Even though I knew that they couldn’t, and didn’t, cause weight loss. There was something so comforting about the feeling of emptiness that I was willing to torture myself repeatedly.

1.       The Pain

The pain caused by repeated laxative abuse is excruciating. It begins slowly, towards the top of the abdomen and progresses downwards until it is smothering your pelvic region. It feels like your insides are trying to claw their way out whilst simultaneously squeezing you to death. You will cry and scream. You will wake up in the middle of the night and run to the toilet, praying for it to be over only to realise nothing’s moving yet and you’ve still got hours of this. The best comparison I have: Labour. I shit you not, abusing laxatives is like going through labour every day. Except you can’t scream and nobody congratulates you at the end. You will be hot, sweaty, nauseas, exhausted and your ass will burn. Just like labour.

 2.       The Tolerance

It doesn’t take long to build up a tolerance to laxatives and before you know it you have gone from the recommended dose of 1 to 2 tablets to upwards of 100 a day. Yes. 100 laxatives EVERY DAY. Imagine what that does to a person’s digestive system. It kills it. Literally. After abusing laxatives you will be lucky if you ever shit again without taking something to help it along. The digestive system is reliant on them and stops working on its own. I have known many other with eating disorders who have had bowel obstructions, bowel surgery and colostomy bags, all because of laxative abuse. Personally I have gone 3 weeks without pooping after coming of laxatives. The pain and bloating was excruciating. I fixed it by taking more laxatives. It’s a vicious cycle and it can kill you.

 3.       Organising your life around toilets

The most important aspect of your day will be how far away you will be from a toilet at all times. Need to catch a train 40 minutes into the city? Forget about it. Have an appointment at 11am? Better hope they have a toilet. Stuck in a traffic jam? Shit. Literally. Do you know how stupid it feels to excuse yourself 6 times in an hour to go to the bathroom? It’s not like it’s socially acceptable to blurt out at the restaurant: Sorry guys, I know I just ran to the bathroom but I took 58 laxatives this morning. BRB. Yeah, that can’t happen. So either you need 937592 good excuses as to why you need the bathroom constantly, or you need to stay home. After years of this laxative crap I have pretty much figured out when the laxatives will hit. I can think about my plans the next day and time my dose so that they hit when I’m safe. But that doesn’t always work. I get caught out ALL THE TIME. Usually they hit within 10-12 hours. But then there’s that time that they hit after 3 hours and I’ve still got 5 hours of work and I absolutely cannot go to the bathroom because I’m so busy. The amount of times I have had to work through the hours long ‘warning pain’, forcing myself to stand up, trying not to cry, and doubling over at every chance I get. It is miserable. Then there’s the times that they never hit. 18 hours, 20 hours. Nothing. So you think it’s safe. Guaranteed the minute you leave the house there will be tsunami of rusty water trying to escape while you walk as quickly as possible with your butt cheeks clenched together and your breath held so as not to have an accident.

 4.       Accidents.

Are they still accidents if you know they’re happening? Because you’ll know about it, but you’ll be powerless to stop it. Better hope you aren’t anywhere important when it does. This is unavoidable and if you abuse laxatives this will happen to you. Places where it has happened to me: In my bed, in the shower, in the bathroom, in the car, in the middle of the city, in the middle of a grocery store, whilst changing my eldest child’s nappy, at an airport, in hospital. There’s more, I’m sure. I knew I hit rock bottom when I was packing my handbag to go out for the day and I packed spare undies, pants and a plastic bag. I’m 27 years old and I still shit my pants. Lovely.

 5.       Death

Perhaps the most serious part of laxative abuse. Really you have 2 options. Quit the laxatives or die. Continuous laxative abuse can cause dangerous electrolyte disturbances, particularly if you are purging (vomiting) and/or restricting food. You will dehydrate very quickly. Your weight will go down (yay). Your body will respond by retaining fluid. You will experience abdominal distension, swollen hands, feet, ankles. Your weight will go up higher than before (oh). You will be upset about this and take more laxatives to excrete the fluid. You are at risk of fatal cardiac arrhythmia's that can cause sudden death. Think it won’t happen to you? Yeah, me too. Until I had an arrhythmia while driving 110 km/h on the highway. I passed out in my car and ended up on the cardiac ward. There are no warning signs.  You can die. Don’t waste your life with laxatives

 I have had an eating disorder for 13 years. I’ve had too many hospital admissions to count. But I NEVER thought I would need a hospital admission to detox from laxatives. Unfortunately I did, and not just once. Laxative addiction is no joke. It is not glamorous or cool. It doesn’t make me thin. It doesn’t give me anything positive, yet I cannot stop taking them. I understand how crap my situation is and I feel powerless to do anything about it. I am a smart person and there is no logical reason for me to continue taking laxatives like I do.

Story of my fucked up eating disordered life. Hungry and thirsty all day. Maybe multiple days. Succumb to the dehydration and have something to drink. 100mL if I’m lucky. Instant regret, must purge. Well, if I am going to purge anyway, I may as well eat something. Eat an apple. 2 crackers. 50mL more water. Purge. Also take 15 laxatives to make sure there’s nothing left. Repeat every second day. Try not to die.

Sometimes, when I am well or in the early stages of relapse it is easy to forget all the negative side effects of my eating disorder. I quickly forget just how bad I feel on a day to day basis. I find myself wondering WHY was I so desperate for a hospital bed, why was I agreeing to go into hospital so readily when I knew I would gain weight?

Then I have a few days where I start to feel physically really awful and I begin to remember. It’s because living like this is torture and hospital offers me relief from that.

I can hardly walk. I cannot breathe easily even at rest. I have to stand so slowly because I get light headed every time. My heart is either deathly slow or racing. I feel nauseous constantly. My entire upper abdomen is in excruciating pain - maybe hunger??, my legs ache, I’m always shaking, I am freezing, no amount of socks and blankets can keep my feet warm. My nail beds are dark purple, scary palpitations, weird sharp pains in my back and kidney area, random joint pains throughout my body, sore jaw and teeth, headache, constant thirst, dry mouth and throat. I have lower abdominal cramps constantly. I just want to sleep all the time. My eyes barely stay open. Lastly, I am lifeless. I cannot smile or cry or frown, my face is just resting at flat.

I’ve just been busy - doing exactly the same thing. I sill have an ED. I’m still an RN student. I’m still a mum of 2, still a wife. I’m still working 2 jobs. I’m still exactly the same. I’m still. right. here.

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m feeling very flat lately. Very nothing. 

why is it, that when everybody is in bed and it’s late at night and I am EXHAUSTED and also should be in bed, I stay awake and be all eating disordered. In my own company, all by myself, just me and my head.

wth is wrong with me?

I'm having trouble getting food into myself at the moment because I just have so much going on I genuinely don't want food. I'm not craving it, I'm not having to 'try hard' to restrict. I just don't want to eat, no desire what so ever. It's like a disgusting chore that you keep putting off. I know this is entirely the wrong attitude to have about food, I know it's the ED, I know I have to fight it. I'm trying so hard but I feel so broken and exhausted from the fight.

Which got me to thinking, what if I never regain the desire to eat? What will I do to stay alive? I'd probably have to have a permanent NG tube because I just can't tolerate the thought of eating at all, let alone regularly. I hope I can find my desire to eat, even just a glimmer of it.

Today we got some pretty bad news that is just going to f with our lives for the next few months. It affects our entire family. I am at a critical point right now with my eating - it's pretty bad, but it's not so far gone I can't pull myself up. But sometimes there is only so much one person can take before they break. I feel like I'm running in autopilot, just getting everything done day at a time but I'm not really enjoying anything and I don't feel worthwhile. Trying to navigate through life is CONSTANTLY REALLY REALLY DIFFICULT when you add an ED into the mix. It hangs around just waiting for any tiny thing to go wrong so it can grab on and drag you down.

This is how I engage in my treatment and recovery:

IOP Day Program - twice a week, 5 hours a day, 3 meals each day

Psychologist - weekly, sometimes twice a week

Dietitian - weekly or fortnightly

GP - weekly or fortnightly for bloods and ecg (depends how sick I am)

Psychiatrist - Monthly

I have not really had to navigate this before, trying to hold down a job and go through a pretty rotten relapse at the same time. Now, I'm working two jobs that require me on my feet all day. That's no easy feat on a calorie deficit. Sometimes I just wish I could eat more for work and not have to worry. Always I wish that. It started out like that - I would eat a bit more on days that I worked because no fucking up my job is important to me. But somewhere somehow everything exploded in my face and now nothing fucking matters anymore and I can't eat enough. This week I fully passed out at work TWICE. I'm so embarrassed. Then at least 9475793024 I couldn't see straight after bending down and standing up etc. I feel so torn because I am NOT someone who enjoys those displays of weakness and desperately need them to stop, but I JUST CANT. There is no good reason why I can't. I just can't.