anorexic, ana who?

My emotions are so erratic and unpredictable at the moment. A swooping roller coaster of drastic ascents and descents, I long for an

Am I free yet?

Following a beyond fabulous weekend of drinking in excess, dancing and barbecuing with my family; completely unplanned food and a general nonchalance of no fucks being given, I subsequently am finding myself on a Monday morning swamped by crippling depression and a habitual inability to drag myself from my bed. The saying ‘two steps forward three steps back’ bears far too much correspondence at present and I long for the freedom I felt previously both pre-eating disorder and at the weekend.

It was whilst dwelling in amidst my extreme self pity that my thoughts wandered over the fact it was Monday, and ante meridiem - when has anyone enjoyed a Monday. 

It seems there’s a global agreement that Monday mornings are by no kinder way of putting it, shit. 

Why? I guess, and I can only gather my assumptions on this as, as far as I am aware, there is no scientific explanation, is that a combination of a horrendous feeling of dread of the forthcoming working week, the come down from a care free fabulous weekend and the simple fact you probably had a few late nights and it’s early and you have very recently woken up.

As utterly, mind-numbingly horrendous Mondays are; if we were to live everyday as a weekend we would find something else to hate. We would no longer relish days spend doing nothing and long for the hustle and bustle of a morning spent on the tube or commuting towards the beginning of a hectic 5 days spent going through endless paperwork.

Now sitting on a train, heading towards Brighton whilst relishing my day off spent with a beautiful friend, I’m fully aware of the work I should be doing and the impending days work tomorrow.

I have decided to try and endure this feeling and enjoy the time I have off as opposed to spending it dreading a Monday.

Anorexia to an outsider

'Why can't you just eat?' 'Why can't I?'

'Do you just not get hungry?' 'Im constantly starving?'

'But your thin already?' 'Not thin enough'

'Do you think you're fat?' 

The million dollar question.

For an outsider looking in, for someone not consumed by the thoughts of a destructive, life (and soul destroying) demon, who has moved into your brain and shipped the majority of your personality and emotions out and replaced them with a manipulative, vindictive existence of calorie counting, food restriction and exercise; Anorexia can appear to be a 'phase' or a 'diet'. 

Living with Anorexia, or should I say existing with Anorexia, is far more than a quest to be thin. I don't remember when or how Anorexia moved into my brain, or when Heidi, moved out. It was a slow drawn out process that began with a diet which my perfectionistic, high achiever, competitive traits grasp onto as my life began and body began to change and I began to grapple control of anything I could.

Anorexia mostly happens to people of a highly competitive nature, a need to please everyone and usually intelligent individuals. It is not known why these clever people develop this, perhaps there is a genetic disposition that makes people vulnerable to anorexia, it's not proven yet. Ticking all of these boxes I was the last person everyone expected to develop anorexia. 

'What Heidi?'

'But she loves food?'

'But she's so clever?'

'But she was never fat?'

You do not have to be fat to be unhappy, unhappy is a feeling. Fat isn't. I developed an inability to distinguish the difference between 'being fat' and 'feeling fat'. As I studied for my GCSE's I set myself ridiculously high standards, took a crippling number of them and chose a competitively, academically strong sixth form and applied for a numerous amount of hard A levels. 

As I left school, started A levels, began to grow up - I was faced with many different challenges. My home life although stable was a rife with arguments, though none significant we all lacked respect for each other.

Restricting my food seemed to give me control and as I cut back on 'bad' foods, the weight dropped off me. I was noticed! I started cutting out more and more food, exercising to extremes. If I ate  something too fatty or too high calories, I was overridden with disgust an guilt. I was fat, ugly and completely undeserving of the food and space I took up. 

I began consumed with counting calories, I became withdrawn and deceitful; punishing myself for being such a 'horrible' person by not allowing myself food.

As my weight dropped my hair fell out, I got spots and my period stopped. I became achey, lethargic and freezing cold. I was consumed by the need to be thin, I felt the only way of being in control was to not eat. I felt something superior when I didn't eat.

I became bruised and my heart rate dropped significantly. There was less and less of my personality and the thoughts which at first felt like mine became difficult to distinguish as mine and some other beings.

I was no longer ablest to allow myself more food, food was bad, food was the enemy.

I desperately was hungry, I was preoccupied with this extreme desire to bake and would spend hours trawling round supermarkets and reading recipe books.

I never thought I would be the girl with Anorexia but I was taken unable to make choices controlled by the demons in my head.

I wish I could say I woke up one day and was fine. But even now at a healthy weight it can be a struggle. Anorexia is a disease of the mind, it doesn't live in the fat in my thighs. It is incredibly hard for someone to look at me and not see I'm still ill. I painstakingly count calories but I accept this, I shall one day be free.

I made a huge decision to decide to gain weight, to choose to feed myself. An addict; I had to face eating my drug everyday. Do I look at myself now and think I'm fat? Yes, I suppose I do. But now I know food is not a punishment, I have energy, I get fulfilment from a yummy cake and am able to quash the feelings of guilt with pride. I have chosen life and health. I can laugh. I'm no longer completely numb painfully trapped in an Anorexic career. I had no feels as an Anorexic and now I laugh, frequently! My life has enjoyment in it again, I'm thankful for that.

Heidibelchamber.tumblr.com

I have decided to transfer this blog to tumblr! My tumblr link is heidibelchamber.tumblr.com 

Planning to do nothing

I've really discovered that for this recovery malarkey to work I need to be kept busy, distracted constantly from any destructive thoughts that may lead to relapses or negative behaviours.

I precisely plan what I will be doing when, particularly  after meals. Now I'm not saying this is the cure to anorexia - DISCLAIMER RIGHT THERE - I'm merely saying this tactic seems to aid me. 

A downfall of this is that whenever I haven't planned and am faced with hour upon hour in companionship with the thought in my head, that I'm terrified. This is resulting on me constantly on the go. 

I recently have realised that I do need down time, compulsory to a healthy lifestyle the opportunity to relax, be them far and few, are key to me being able to get up and fight the next battle I am faced with. 

I have developed a strategy of, therefore, planning to do nothing, I make no plans and merely accept the fact that on that day I can lounge and watch movies and aimlessly browse eBay and to be honest after getting over the initial, harrowing, anorexic thoughts of 'do not be so bluddy lazy' I managed to relish in the fact I deserve to be lazy! Why wouldn't I? 

Putting recovery to test

Presently I am nearing the submitting deadline for my college coursework. Up-to-date and previous deadlines smashed, I spent Monday waiting for work to be marked, I have enormous issues with the use of time, I really struggle with the concept of time being wasted as therefore I find it really difficult to spend a day doing nothing. My anxiety grew throughout the day but I managed to keep my treacherous mindset from seeping into the strength and management I have mustered up recently to keep my eating disorder at bay; by pacing backwards and forwards between the library and my class and aimlessly downing cup upon cup of black coffee. 

Monday night dinner was a complete catastrophe in the form of a voluptuous pasta bolognaise; which may I add I reluctantly ate after considerably persuasion but as the night wore on I found it hard to distract myself from my academia worries. I just couldn't contemplate the idea that my work might not be marked, leaving me no time to correct errors, meaning I wasn't able to achieve the ridiculously high grades I had set myself, I may have well have failed, there was no point to life. To the outsider my irrational thought patterns may seem over dramatic, excessive and pathetic but to me the lack of control; mixed with the idea that I may not have excelled, mixed with the prospect of not having enough time petrified me and worried me profusely. 

After a ridiculous gym session I got home and had the first of 5 anxiety attacks of the next 18 hours. Suitably calmed down and moderately reassured I was probably overreacting I attempted sleep. 

I cannot place the precise moment I fell asleep but it was certainly past the tomorrow mark. As Tuesday began I became more and more anxious.

Several horrendous cups of cheap college coffee, a cluster of anxiety attacks later and I had distinctions in all my work. But I was not calm and 'anxiety-free' until I had completed my lunch. 

I am asked so often how to recover and it pains me horrendously that I cannot tell you how to cope. All I can say is what I've learnt today and that's the important part food and weight gain has had on my recovery and being able to cope. I would never have been able to cope in my emaciated state I was in six months previously. I would have been crippled with anxiety and preoccupied without of food. But instead, today, after a minor meltdown, I was able to collectively realise that my teachers weren't going to let me fail and that restrict my food intake and not eating/ being thinner was not going to change my grades for the better - it would worsen them, not would it speed up the teachers marking, these were factors beyond my control. And today, fully nourished I could just about except that. Food is the fuel for success.

My Favourite

The favourite, something we all want to be. The favourite is the most loved, popular and preferred. Aren’t they?

Favourite - ‘a person or thing that is preferred to all others of the same kind or is especially well liked.’ – Oxford Online English Dictionary 2012. After reading this and thinking about something that I would consider ‘My favourite’, I found it hard all of a sudden to decide. Writing about my favourite person for example; ‘a person that I prefer to all others of the same kind’ - Oxford Online English Dictionary 2012, would prove an almost impossible task. How on earth would I be able to find a person of the same kind as someone else? How do you separate people into ‘kinds’? Does that mean putting people into categories?

The noun ‘kind’ ‘a group of people or things having similar characteristics’ - Oxford Online English Dictionary 2012, led me no closer to a conclusion. However, it was something on the same page, ‘one’s own kind’ (people with whom one has a great deal in common’ - Oxford Online English Dictionary 2012) that I found most interesting. Surely if you were to use this in conversation it would be suggesting that you were better than someone else or that you would not mix with someone who was different to you. If I do not stand corrected that is borderline racism.  When you think of the expression ‘someone’s kind’, for example ‘I don’t apologise to her kind’ it is always used to express disapproval towards a certain type of person. The use of the word ‘type’ is similar to ‘brand’. We ‘brand’ objects, a popular ‘brand’ of ketchup. I’m not sure I would want to be branded. Suddenly, people have become objects. Maybe it isn’t always such a coveted position to be ‘the favourite’.

Favouritism for instance, ‘the practice of giving unfair preferential treatment to one person or group at the expense of another’ - Oxford Online English Dictionary 2012 as children and even as adults we resent the subjects of favouritism. When someone is receiving preferential treatment you begin to question your significance. Why are you not preferred? We strive to be the favourite, be it for our own egos, for the feeling of being the chosen one or even to feel wanted.

Being the favourite comes with the pressure to remain the favourite. It becomes difficult to understand, in an instance where you are treated the same as everyone else, why are you not being favoured? The need to remain the favourite means conforming to someone else’s preferences. Do you lose your own identity?

Perhaps to be the favourite is not always best? When stopping to consider someone else’s feelings, is it better to all be equal? Perhaps, picking a favourite should be kept to objects rather than objectifying humans. The importance of equality is always being expressed yet surely we are discriminating against someone else by saying we prefer them to someone else? Its better surely to be the person you prefer to be, than be preferred most to someone else.  From experience this only creates a false relationship with someone.

I feel like you can learn so much about someone by the way they drink their tea? The britsh are avid tea drinkers; breakfast tea, earl grey, green tea, peppermint. Famous for our cream tea, Brits are very particular about their teas. Working in a tearooms you witness some bizarre tea drinking sights and I genuinely feel that the state in which you take your tea is very personal. 

My incredibly wise gay surrogate father, Micheal Jones told me his friend believes that, if you have a weak tea you are a feeble person. I'm sure its deeper than this.

One bite at a time

A very beautiful wise friend of mine, Miss Bhanderi, who at present is very poorly, told me, she was going to do this, (by 'this' I mean recovery) one bite at a time.

It's weird how significant a quote this is, because where most people would take things day by day, we take things bite by bite. Our whole world changes every time we merely contemplate a single mouthful.  

I remember a dreary time, in November where there was a ritual behind every meal. Wash hands, go to the toilet, wash hands again, get a glass of water in the tall glass. Get the ketchup and BBQ sauce out. Walk to door. Walk to table. Walk up to my room. Walk to bottom of the stairs. Walk to top of stairs. Walk downstairs. Sit down. Take a mouthful of water. Take in the meal before me. Strategically begin planning how I could hide or escape with eating as minimal amount of calories at possible. Separate the foods. Make space for ketchup. Begin eating veg, one centimetre square at a time. Placing my knife and fork down and taking a sip of water between each meal. Chewing 30 times no more no less. 

Someone forcing me to eat something extra, a mere grape would send my thoughts into disarray, as anorexia clawed at every opportunity to destroy me. Painstakingly measuring and calculating how much of each food I could eat. It's so hard to break the habits.

The decrepidness of the situation escalated to a point where I had to count between each mouthful to 20, if I was interrupted I'd begin again. I'd only sit in a certain chair, ate at certain times and with certain bowls. 

People still are victims of the common preconception that anorexia is I won't eat, it's more I can't or I can but only this and now. I cannot even delve into it now its far to warm.

 I wish I could say I woke up and stopped separating food, it would be so much more simple that way. I also wish so much to tell you how to escape, there really is no specific method. It's just a huge want to be free, mixed with obscene amounts of willpower as you sit and bite by bite undo all the pretentious time consuming habits. You just have to pull it apart until you are the stronger being.

Coping with stress and trying to concentrate.

At my almost target weight I am the heaviest ive been in over 18 months, I eat more than I have in over 2 years, I have more energy; so why am i not better yet? I feel like im stuck, in a limbo between the healthiness of my body and the instability of my mind. I'm nearing my college deadline but all i can focus my attention on is calories, food and calories. Did I say calories twice?

Why is it that it is only once your better you really are able to notice how much you've royally fucked up your body (apologies for the language but there is no other term for it), I am grateful for the perks oif recovery and i can honestly reassure you that it is heaps better than being consumed in a warped world of your eating disorder but my god, its tough.

At a critically low BMI i felt strong, like i could take on the world, that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my concentration, that i was the best. I obviously am aware that that is not true, but here I am a 'healthy weight' i have no excuse to be 'struggling' yet I'm sitting here correcting the fact I've written 'hear' not 'here'. I know full well i am overly critical, but there is no reason to not be able to concentrate now, i am no longer malnourished ir starved, so why am i so distracted and pre-occupied all the time.

A background information post

I could write this predominantly about my anorexia but that's only taking up a small portion of my life. Though I can't deny that it will forever be with me, I am determined that I shall have only lived a fraction of my life as what I call a 'practicing anorexic'. At an almost healthy weight on this day and feeling horrifically undeserving of the small space I worthlessly take up I found myself reflecting on what I've overcome this year already only 5 months in not to mention what I've achieved throughout my life. 

I was, and I guess I still am or could be; a model student. Excelling in the majority of my subjects but never excelling enough by my extortionately high standards. Being the best was always my aspiration. Maths, science anything even to one handed cartwheels I would tirelessly practice. Though I was tall at a young age I was never fat. In hindsight I'd want my old body back. I can remember complaining to my mum how I was too big and too tall. Why it mattered I do not know. 

My childhood was fabulous. I couldn't have wanted for anything. The eldest of three girls, we were spoilt rotten but appreciated everything we were lucky enough to have. My dad earnt enough money but I believe my competitive urge and determination came from him. A powerful man who could dominate a large amount of people simply with a look. I can remember adoring my dad and to this day still do. My mum; a beautiful woman with the most caring instinct in the world. Everyone says that about their mothers but I genuinely believe I have the best mum ever. I bickered with my sisters but we played alot together also and strove to get on amicably a fair amount of the time. We holidayed at least twice a year and were given treats all the time. From a young age I wanted to do everything to the best I could, maths, spelling tests, homework and auditions. I loved drama, I believe there is a difference between being a confident person and a self confident person. And although i was never very self confident i was good at talking and could convince people of lots of things, I believe that although my mums side are talkers that my dad is a good negotiator and can persuade people with words very well. I danced from a young age and was constantly performing. Me and my sisters would perform shows for my parents often. 

I always remember being happy.

Though we haven't always lived in the house I live in today it is the only house I remember living in. In a rural village called icklesham, in my opinion it's a brilliant house. We have a huge garden and my room was plenty big enough for the huge collection of toys I had. 

My paternal grandmother was a fabulous woman. Very shy and meek but with a wicked sense of humour. She had amazing stories and I could sit for hours in her company. My maternal grandmother is glamorous and lives the life of a vibrant 30 year old. Her and her husband, my grandfather, an antique restoring, base player and my favourite person on earth are an eccentric couple, who drink home brewed wine with lunch everyday and eat out more often than in. My grandfather is my idol. Regardless of the situation, where I am I know if I needed him to be, he'd be there. He's so kind and funny and I love him. Everyone adores him and his generosity and it makes me feel proud that he's my grandad and not their's. He spells of distinctly of wood burner, wood glue and wood and I don't know what I would do without him. 

I just want to make everyone proud.

Mixing things up

Choosing my future seems to be the predominant topic of conversation at the moment. 

There are so many people sharing their opinions or more accurately telling me who or what I should become. A future is something that yes, is important but not only is it something you choose but it is changeable. We are given daily challenges and choices that not only shape but can change our futures.

If I decide to study and become a nurse then if I want it that bad and work for it ill achieve it, similarly if twenty years down the line I want to become a tattooist there is nothing to say I cannot train to become one. 

A future is something you choose to live with it is not something disposable. A future is something you are given, to shape into whatever you choose.

Don't let anyone change your future