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I began consumed with counting calories, I became withdrawn and deceitful; punishing myself for being such a 'horrible' person by not allowing myself food.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