You Were Bad Enough

‘I’ll recover when I get to XX kg’ ‘I’m not bad enough to get help’ ‘If I was ill someone would have noticed.’ ‘I want to be worse before I get better’ ‘I’m not bad enough’

Sounds familiar right?

I hate that the stigmas of mental illness steer us towards stereotypes – we have to act a certain way or look a certain way to be seen as ill or be treated with the understanding and respect we deserve. Like just because I never collapsed into a bundle of bones on the floor, I don’t get thrown the life ring.

I feel like in a way I am writing this to convince myself that I was ‘bad enough’ – whatever that means. As if everything I lost wasn’t enough, as if the rest of my life has to be dictated by the voice in my head telling me I could have been worse.

No one in a good place mentally wants to be ill. It is not a sign of failure it is a symptom of sickness. If you have a voice in your head telling you that you aren’t bad enough, then you are bad enough.

What we want to hear is ‘yes, I can see that you are hurting, you don’t have to show me through your body.’ But that isn’t reality. For most of us, our body disappearing doesn’t come close to reflecting what we have lost of our soul.

Glad That I’m Alive

I must have tried almost 100 times to write this post, but every time, the thoughts come out jumbled and don’t make any sense; or they make me sound selfish, attention seeking, fake. Both of which end with me pressing the delete button. However, I know I can’t possibly be alone in feeling like this. I’m hoping that in sharing this post with you, however uncomfortable it makes me feel, it will let you feel less alone. I’m hoping that by sharing this, the guilt I feel for having these thoughts might finally lesson, knowing that I am not the only one that feels this way.

It seems to me that the only anorexics that don’t want to go to hospital are the ones who have already been there. I know that maybe that is because they have experienced the horrors of inpatient, but I think that a certain validation is achieved, that those of us who have never been there, are still searching for. Those of us to whom tempting death isn’t an option. 

I have craved validation and safety and help. I know I’m not alone in that. I’ve always felt that unless I got ‘bad enough’ to be admitted to hospital, I never really achieved anything – and there was no reason to my so-called recovery. Maybe it’s because I need people to know the pain I’ve felt, because otherwise it feels pointless, like I’ve suffered for nothing. Why do I have to suffer if no one cares and I don’t achieve anything. 

My mind is like a battlefield, the two sides fighting so hard that I can’t even work out what they are saying anymore and it’s all just one big jumbly mess that I can’t make sense of and its constant. It’s like that feeling mid panic attack when your thoughts are racing but it’s always and I’m exhausted. Recovery or relapse, I always end up somewhere in the middle, wishing for one or the other to take me in its arms and hold on tightly. 

Sometimes I hate the fact that I feel jealous of the people who are still so in the grips of the disorder, but that is the disorder trying to reel me back in, to pull me back into a miserable, terrifying existence. That is not what you want, you want the opposite of that but maybe you don’t know how to say it or how to feel it yet but you will, because life always finds a way, you know and I think maybe life is finding a way some of the time, which is a relief because it feels like it’s been too long coming to this. But eventually, soon enough, I will feel better and I won’t be as scared anymore and I can succeed at being me and not at being thin or broken or fragile or sucked into a glamourized illness, I can have a good old go at just being me and living the life I want to live, safely, without being watched all the time.

I can live at university and I can study, and I can be up till 4 am watching tv and eating popcorn, or fruit salad or pizza and it doesn’t matter because I will be free of all of the voices. And maybe it seems too good to be true at the moment, but maybe soon it might become reachable and I’m so thankful for the people who have helped me exist and not destroy myself from the inside out, because I tried really hard. And my disorder is here saying ‘not hard enough though, you didn’t try hard enough to destroy yourself because otherwise you wouldn’t still be here.’ But guess what I am, and I am glad that I am alive. 

Stay Safe,

Abbie xx

please note:  when I refer to anorexia I am talking from my experience and obviously all eating disorders are valid.

A Waiting Game

Getting treatment for any illness can be difficult. Although we are very lucky to have the NHS here in the UK, it can be frustrating because the system is overworked and overwhelmed. However, when it comes to mental illness its a whole different ball game. Especially concerning eating disorders.

It takes a long time to ask for help, and then when we ask, we are met with ‘you aren’t bad enough yet‘ ‘have you ever fainted… no, okay well we don’t need to worry yet‘ ‘your bloods are okay for the moment‘. It kind of feels like they are daring us to get worse, to prove that we need help, in reality everyone is just doing their best. Every professional has to wait, to get permission, funding, bed space. Its the people at the top who have no other choice but to play games with our lives. To choose who is next. Next to get therapy. Next to be discharged. Next to be admitted. Next to disappear and slip through the system.

It’s left until there is almost none of you left, until there is only the illness. Until, for some, it’s too late.

It’s a waiting game. But it’s not a game, it’s not russian roulette, just waiting, waiting, waiting – seeing if the bullet is for you or the next person. Waiting for the choice that could save your life.

 

Stay Safe,

Abbie xx

I’m Not That Girl

‘To not have your suffering recognised is an almost unbearable form of violence’ – Andrei Lankov

I am not the girl who didn’t get out of bed for weeks.
I am not the girl who screamed and threw food back at my parents faces.
I am not the girl who drowned her sorrows in vodka.
I am not the girl with shattering bones from lack of nutrition.

I am the girl who asked for help and was refused time and time again.
I am the girl who could not concentrate in maths lesson because the only numbers swirling around my head were the calories in my next meal.

I am not the girl with shocking transformation pictures.
I am not the girl who was sent to hospital.
I am not the girl who received get well soon cards.

I am the girl that basically looked the same before, during and probably after the eating disorder, the only difference being the life behind the eyes.
I am the girl who didn’t quite disappear enough for anyone to notice.

I am not the girl with worrying blood tests or failing organs.
I am not the girl who refused to be weighed.
I am not the girl with the NG tube.

The thing is, I no longer want to be that girl.

I am the girl who is trying to learn how not to use her body as a language.

As a society we are often trapped in stereotypes, like if you don’t fit into the exact mould of what people expect then you don’t count. In anorexia, this can often be one of the biggest hurdles to recovery. I hope that by sharing my experience, people can begin to understand that just because they don’t meet all of the ‘anorexic ideals’, it doesn’t mean that they do not have a severe and life threatening mental illness.

Abbie xx

The Art Of Living

Sometimes when your life and mind are taken over by mental illness, you end up living in a bubble, of starving bodies, numbed minds and empty hearts. We trick ourselves into thinking that any other life isn’t worth living. But I have something to tell you. Once you pop that bubble and start to let the light in, there is a whole new world of feeling, and for the most part, its magnificent.

When you are with the people who love you most and you can feel that bubbling of contentment in your heart. When you are walking down the street and you can feel the sun on the back of your neck. When snow begins to fall and you feel like a child, so excited about the magic of snow and the perfection of each snowflake landing on you. The mix of wonder and fear that you feel during thunderstorms, when lightning strikes so close. The feeling when you take your shoes and socks off and run barefoot on the grass.

A sudden feeling of deja vu when you are playing in the garden with your friends and it feels like you are 5 years old again. When you drink a cup of tea and it is the perfect temperature, and you can feel it warming your insides. When you’ve had a cold and then realised, that you can breathe out of two nostrils again. When someone compliments you, and you feel proud of what you have overcome, not angry at the fragile body you have lost.

You feel that, that is the art of living.

Stay Safe

A xx