I've got soul but I'm not a soldier

The thing with recovery that you have to learn to accept that whilst its two steps forward there's always that crippling one step back. 

You eat the ice cream, after endless tiresome battling, but look in the mirror and feel compulsed to do 250 crunches and 300 jumping jacks. You know the drill.

Never ending torment with yourself, the enemy, but also your best friend. I often find it hard to distinguish between me and my anorexia. More often than not she becomes personified. Similarly she becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. 

Three steps too far forward, and you are thrown backwards. You've got the strength but don't fight.

I've got soul but I'm not a soldier. 

My anorexia wants to grasp every single part of my body, grapple on to the littlest piece of control it can have. The stronger I get, the weaker it gets. I just have to battle on.

Six months, 14 kilograms and apprxomately 360,000 calories down the line

After tentatively mustering up every strength to destruct my already frail body by forcing brutal exercise sessions fuelled by minimal to zero food. I can remember very little just this bleak feeling of cold. Not the crisp Christmas morning cold, the middle of September, 4:30 pm wet, harsh, wind. I remember being so cold I ached from being so tensed up all the time. I can remember my skin stinging and bones throbbing. Every step I could feel my muscles burn as I relentlessly marched up and down stairs, tapped my feet or jigged my leg - anything to remove calories. I can remember standing up and having to brace myself for the momentary blackness that blinded me as I waited for my blood pressure to normalise and my weary body to readjust to the extra strength having to be applied to standing. I'd often fall back down, only to have to force myself back up again. Yet I felt strong, invincible, like I could take on the world. In hindsight, I couldn't even spell words properly, let alone take over the world, my brain was so warped and shrivelled by the need to punish myself, push myself further and further down the treacherous path I was stumbling down. As the scales dropped lower and lower, the food became less and less. The ham with my salad became too much, the tomato went from one, to a half, to none. The lettuce went in the bin soon after, the Pepsi max was limited to a can a day, 1.5 kcal was enough. I didn't deserve anymore. 

I don't remember what changed, I wish I did, I wish I could recall the exact thought process, the whole meticulous procedure; so I could share it with all of you. So you can live too.

I just remember it began so hard, but the more I ate, the more I gained, the easier it got. Be it that I was more rational, be it that the food was so good, what will be will be. I didn't wake up one day fixed, I don't believe in fixed, I'm healing. Constantly healing. 

Whether ill be 'healed' I do not know. I hope so. Planning is key, enjoyment is essential, food is paramount. Everything else will fall into place. 

I have so many posts that I wish to write, so many things I wish to share. I have so much work to do, both college, work work and mental work. How I am coping I do not know.

The fact is I am.

Where it all began

Adoration of Pepsi max

I am completely infatuated with the new Pepsi max advert, though I am by no means surprised that such a delicious, beautiful product could produce such an amazing advert. 

The new advert feature beyonce, an all round fabulous woman and amazing role model with a curvaceous, healthy figure. The slogan used is, 'embrace your past, live for now'. I think it's a brilliant message and it's so enlightening. There are so many negative messages fed from the media and to have something like this fed from something that is, maximum taste; zero calories, makes me realise that it's not all bad.

Embracing my past is difficult, presumably I'm supposed to learn from it, if I'm honest I feel I am being haunted by it if anything. I can remember feeling horrendously unhappy, though the majority of the time I was blissfully happy, yet all I can remember is negativity. I want to be able to embrace where I've come from, but I'd rather be something new. Perhaps the key, learning from the past, 'embracing' it as it were may translate and interpret to realising your past is where you've been and don't want to go again. So you begin shaping now, as you live for now. 

A relapse?

I find it hard to distinguish what a relapse is. The difference between a minor blip in the never ending pursuit of freedom and a full scale relapse is so fine I cannot decide where I am. From the outside I'm fine; 'healthy', 'glowing', 'curvy' whatever society chooses to label it as. From the inside I'm also fine, but by fine I mean 'mediocre', 'not great', 'average', closer too 'completely rubbish' and stuck in between recovery and relapse. I know almost certainly that I don't want to go back to the horrific days of little more than a diet coke and several cigarettes on the side of a six mile run and a dessert of chewing gum and 2 hours cardio. But I am still longing to hold on to the smallest bit of control I still have. I really do not feel ready to release the grasp of the anchor that I believe, yet know it is a false avowal, is the only supportive coping mechanism I possess. I am desperate to find something so numbing and powerful as the control I get from monitoring my calorie consumption. I am compelled to starve myself yet I am today under the realisation that the strength and determination I am using to defy my eating disorder is by far more monumental and momentous in contrast to my ability to starve myself. I am a strong and august person and I one day hope I believe that. But for now I shall settle with being cemented at fine.

Crying over milk spilt

Though fortunately I have moved on in my eating disorder and progress far enough into recovery to be able to aptly deal with a milk spillage with out a severe breakdown resulting in an anorexic meltdown, I am sorry to say that I still react over dramatically and incredibly badly to a minuscule misdemeanour. I find myself punishing myself with unnessecary force. I am proud now that I have moved on from thinking I was the worlds most useless person simply because I knocked over my milky night beverage and in concordance with this disallowing myself food for the foreseeable future. Spillage of a drink now would mean a brisk squirt of kitchen cleaner and a wipe of a cloth. It is not needed to cruelly punish ourselves for a mere accident that someone else would think nothing of. You are no less useful than the next person, it may simply have been a clumsy glass.

Bank Holiday Monday

As a child i can remember the anticipation i felt in the days prior to a bank holiday, as i relished in the thought of an extra day off. Now at 18 I dread a day of work in a busy cafe full of rude impatient old age pensioners eagerly awaiting an afternoon cream tea. Not even time and a half is enough to deter my angst towards the thought of screaming children and upper class Londoner's seeking solace from the busy city streets only to find themselves knee deep in foreign students with manners almost appalling as their's.

I can remember being desperate to grow up and gain independence and earn money; yet now as i consummate a fair quantity of money and am finally able to drive, i find myself longing for the carefree days of my preteens. Where my biggest worry was who i was going to sit next to on the coach on a forthcoming school trip or what i was going to wear for mufti day. I find myself faced with somewhat substantial life changing decisions such as university and foremost which path i choose to take my life, whilst I cant even make a small change to the amount of milk i have with breakfast. I am faced with an impending feeling of doom that this will last forever.

It is while writing this that I am telling myself that i am the author of this here life and coinciding with this it is my choices that decide how i am controlled by my eating disorder. Making decisions ultimately that now may go against my better nature may petrify me profusely will do me a greater deal of good in the long run. For if i was to deny myself the mere grape i have been craving or the slice of fruitcake ive been looking at for so long i would remain stuck still in the depths of the portentous demon in my mind. For if i want to be free you must push yourself. Break the barriers and habits formed. I don't want to fear the unknown i want to relish it, the spontaneity of life. I want to be 65 and at the drop of a hat deciding to go sky diving, because i coud afford it, was healthy enough and because I wanted too. I want to look forward to the buzz of a busy workplace on bank holiday Monday, share the excitement of children as they enter the cafe ready for ice cream and cake. I want to be able to sit with my children and eat cake and ice cream with them and savour the taste both. The time is now for me to escape anorexia, im over being controlled by the alarming desire for perfection.

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. -Abigail Adams

too many posts, spoil a blog?

Much the same as 'too many cooks spoil the broth' I am plagued by the idea that if i am posting too many posts people may find me irritating, there are just so many things i wish to write. So many experiences and lessons that i've learnt and wish to share. But for fear of scaring you all away im disheartened to be a frequent blogger. ive tried to stick with a post a day but already i have completely infringed this original stratagem. So as follows this post there will be another, my apologies.

Beautiful girls,

Wash off that unneeded make up, you're beautiful as you. Quit dieting and exercising on the perilous quest to be perfect, for who is? Your flaws define you, they shape and teach you. Learning is the key of your success. Wear the crazy clothes you want, fashion is wearing the clothes that you feel happy in, for it is there to make you happy not anyone else. Ditch the friends who tell you you are stupid and unsuccessful, don't let anyone crush your self worth. You are the author of your life, learn from the paragraphs, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Bloopers are things that make for a better ending. Having to work at being you is the first you can get from being real. Falsities and fakery make a deceitful happiness and that will not lead to purposeful living.

Breathe, put down the blade.

Smile, and stand up tall.

Delete the negativity out of your life

Illuminate the successes 

Embrace the hilarity of your falls

They are a mere fragment of the making of your positive attributes which shape the beautiful you. 

My darling Miss Binns

This post is dedicated to one of the very few positive influences anorexia has had on my life. 

Had we not have been thrown together by the demonic, veracious grip of our eating disorders she wouldn't have aided me in the saving of my health and rescuing of my self. 

I remember first meeting Miss Binns at the taster session for our intensive Multi group family therapy course* we had been told to go to by our CAMHS** workers. At this point firmly in the grip if Anorexia I can remember thinking why the hell am I here? These girls are tiny I'm huge... Sitting in tears I saw a minuscule blonde girl walking looking absolutely petrified. I caught her eye and I can remember her just giving me this look which almost said, it's ok I'm scared to. Since first meeting her although I didn't speak to her for very long at that initial meeting we began texting. We texted all day everyday. For the first time someone understood, it was such a relief to be getting such amazing support. I received endless encouraging text frequently reminding me why I was doing this, not to give up and tell me how beautiful I am. At fifteen Miss Binns had been through so much but was still going, she's incredibly brave, clever and not to mention beautiful. He's bloody hilarious and if it wasn't for her I think I'd be in a hospital somewhere frozen in the wrath of my eating disorder. She's fiercely determined to beat this and I'm in debt to her entirely.

My darling, you're beautiful and clever and amazing and I am blessed to know you! You deserve the fantastic life planned out for you and adore you. You can do this! Fuck gretel you need to go out partying! I'm stupendously proud of you for working so hard and studying so hard with your exams! You deserve to do incredibly well. 

I love you 

There's a time and a place to die

As I lay here in bed at 9:46 after a hell of a day, exhausted and aching from working all day I am reflecting on the past year or so of my life. It was approximately a year ago I was doing the same but with much a contrasting view on things.

This time last year I was nearing the end of my first full year of full blown anorexia. If I was to tell you all about my anorexia in this first post, not only would I bore you and scare you off but I'd have very little else to write about. I can remember spending my nights laying in bed calculating how much I'd allow myself to eat (or not eat as the case was, more often than not) before I fell asleep as I tumbled down a perilous path of self destruct with the ultimate goal of disappearing completely. I wanted nothing more but to starve, be thin or die and thinking over that now I am really saddened at how miserable I was. As I lay here now I am suddenly thankful at my failure to kill myself. I have realised now that the fact my body did not give up on me, besides being nothing short of a miracle, was also because there is a time and a place to die. There was a reason, however significant, for me to stick around. This journey has taught and is teaching me to appreciate that everything happens for a reason, what will be will be and that you cannot mess with fate. We do not and cannot choose where our life ends, we may miss out on the amazing oppurtunities that have been planned out for us. The lessons learnt and tests we face on the journey to love ourselves are mere setbacks in the saga of our lives. Giving up is not an option, for it is out of our hands. There is no telling what is around the corner but accepting that nothing is perfect as things are always changing and it is acceptance that we must seek as opposed to flawless immaculacy. Our lives have been bestowed upon us with such a responsibility to go out and live them as we are the lucky ones, some do not get given a life. We must embrace our life as we have a purpose to live as full, happy, enjoyable, hectic and crazy life as possible. Embrace the immaculacy, the craziness, the hurt, emotion and beautifulness. Accept the flaws and do everything to strive to be you and not conform as tomorrow is a Monday. A new week. A new start. Save your own life. Sometimes you're the only person who can.

Concluding this possibly a little bit pretentious rant, I'm not fixed but I'm on the road to greater happiness and I cannot wait for my next challenge.