all my resistance will never be distance enough

bod·y im·age

noun

1.     the subjective picture or mental image of one's own body.

Two words that put the fear of god into me. I will do anything within my power to avoid any kind of question or discussion of any kind about body image. It fills me with fear, anxiety, and overwhelming sadness.

What has prompted this post, was a small breakdown in a changing room. I stood looking at my body and the fluorescent lighting was illuminating every single flaw of mine, like miniature spotlights drawing attention to what I don't like, presenting my body to me as though I was in some morphed fun house mirror. But no, it was just me. 

I am fat. I am ugly. I am disgusting. I am an embarrassment. I'm hideous. I make myself feel sick.

This is a monologue that goes around my head for pretty much the entire day, when it's quiet in my head, that's when it becomes the loudest. It joins forces with the "drill sergeant" voice of the anorexia in my head that berates me for what I eat and how much weight I have put on. It punishes me for taking medication that caused such weight gain. It tells me that being thin is more important than being emotionally stable. It tells me I'm wrong for fighting. 

There are moments. like earlier, when I was stood staring at this enormous, disgusting image in the mirror, that I want to just listen to that voice and believe it is right. 

Fighting it every single day is so, so exhausting. I honestly don't think people understand just how hard people in recovery are fighting every single day.

Today I'm questioning that fight. 

It would be so easy to just submit to the drill sergeant inside my head. But what would it gain? At my lowest weight, I couldn't see how dangerously underweight I was, I saw myself as the size I was now. I wasn't happy. I wasn't gaining anything from starving myself to death. I wasn't achieving anything substantial. I was damaging my organs and I was killing myself.

I wish I could be thin and happy, but I don't think that I can be both. This is my dilemma. 

I set impossible standards for myself and I am so judgemental of everything that I do. I do not judge other people, and I do not care about the shape or size of others, yet the last ten years of my life have been defined by my size. So why do I do this to myself when it's not something I judge others for? 

I want people to know that anorexia and bulimia doesn't mean that you judge other people, just yourself, constantly. I compare myself to every other woman, it doesn't matter what size you are, I will find ways that I am bigger than you. It used to happen every single time I encountered another woman, causing me to isolate myself constantly. However, now it's fleeting. It still happens every day, it just isn't as overwhelming and consuming. 

After an entire day of making myself sick on Saturday, to the point of vomiting blood and collapsing, I'm trying to keep the end goal in sight; to learn to be happy and to love myself. I am enough, and I have to keep repeating that over and over again; I am enough. You are enough. 

an empty space to fill in

Today has been an incredibly hard day.

Self loathing set in the moment I woke up. My mind was just dark and foggy and  numb. My head was too heavy to lift off the pillows, so I just pulled the covers over my head and lay still. Alternating between eyes open and eyes closed, when they were open I was fixated at a spot on the wall; time was passing and I was just this heavy weight, unable to escape whatever it was that had consumed me.

I wanted to punish myself, I had overwhelming urges to hurt myself for things that were out of my control, things people had said to me. I needed to punish myself. But I was too tired to hurt. Numb was comfortable, numb was manageable. Pain was a place on the spectrum I wasn't willing to expose myself too. So I purged.

I kept going, hours passed and I sat comfortably waiting for a reasonable amount of time to pass between each purge.

Until finally I stopped. I let the pain in, I let myself feel it, I let it wash over me and then I let it leave me. 

I made the distinction that these actions were a result of my illness. This is not me. I have to fight. Bad days will come and go, but I have to try and be safe and look after myself in a way I was unable to before.

A friend called me and talked to me for over three hours, making me talk about anything and everything and it gave me a small escape route of relief. It was temporary but it helped. 

I had a shower and I accidentally cut my thumb on a razor and a rush of adrenaline threw my body at the sensation, remember what it was like to force those blades inside yourself? The self loathing that has been driving my mind all day screamed at me, reminding me that I was worthless and this was a tool for me to punish myself for being so inadequate and worthless.

But I managed to not listen to those feelings and I didn't hurt myself and I feel stronger and I feel proud of myself. It's something so small but I'm proud of myself. 

I'm not worthless. I don't deserve to be punished. That is my depression talking, it's not the truth. But when it's talking to you and driving you from within, it's so hard to make the distinction. 

I'm so tired, my head hurts and my whole body just aches. 

this slope is treacherous.

Wow, it's been a while since I wrote on here. Everything got very dark and my depression spiralled to a very, very dark place. In November, I felt at such a loss with myself and with this illness that I couldn't see any way out other than to take my own life. Thankfully, I was taken into hospital and have begun a degree of trying to build myself back up. 

I saw this blog as a reflection of how ill I actually was. I had the "fake it until you make it" philosophy ingrained in me, so I felt the more I tried to show that I was okay, or making progress then the more progress I would actually make. But that isn't how life works. 

One lie of "I'm okay" created so many webs of lies about my recovery that all got entangled and meshed together. No I was not okay, no I was not making all of these epiphanies and discoveries, they were just small recognitions in my thoughts. I've felt like a fraud. Writing comes so naturally to me, I figured I could write myself out of my disorder. That in itself is a huge signal of how ill I was. I was sat at my computer, writing away under my middle name Bella, preaching about epiphanies I had had about my disorder, when my mind was still consumed with self loathing and hate. People who love me were reading my blog and not able to connect the words with the girl who wrote them. I was trying so hard to "fake it till I make it" that I was just faking it and making it less and less. 

My situation has changed dramatically since I was last here, I spent months as an inpatient after an overdose and I can, hand on heart, say that I have made some progress at least. At the moment, however, I'm really struggling,.

It's so hard to keep your head above the tide. It's so hard to not let the darkness consume us. It's a huge fight to not succumb to the bad thoughts and feelings, but doing so is an incredible feat. I am proud of myself for the days, even the moments, when I can keep my head above water, and laugh, and smile and feel something. Something that isn't pain. I have felt joy, I have felt joy and I am fighting to keep those moments alive. I want that joy in my life, I want it to stick. 

I am going to continue to keep writing under my middle name Bella, because that way, I can remain anonymous. I started to use that name because I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin at all, I hated every part of myself, down to the name, but now I'm learning to feel comfortable and it's so hard. I have been having bad day after bad day, but I've got a support network who are going through what I'm going through and know exactly what I'm feeling, and just having people there with that ability has made the most enormous change in me. 

I am under no illusions that this is going to be a quick process and that I will be "adjusted" any time soon. I'm just doing the best I can. Taking one day at a time is the only way you can do it really and even then, I feel like each day has so many different moments in that it is hard to class a day as a "good" or "bad" day really.

I guess I'll just have to take it as it comes, but I want to steer clear of writing about my feelings in a public forum, because I still try so hard to keep up this illusion that I'm okay and to commit myself to recovery, I have to be honest and open in every single aspect of my life. I will return to this when I feel I'm in a place where I don't have to hide parts of myself away and give an illusion that I am somebody I am not. 

Thank you all for your continued support and messages, I have seen that over 8,000 of you have been reading my little blog and I am sorry to anybody that I have let down who has believed in me. I just want to believe in myself and not see myself as never being good enough. 

was a prisoner inside, now i'm breathing the air

I'm sat eating a bar of chocolate, and I keep wondering what would "she" say? How would "she" feel? How would "she" react? 

When I talk about she, I'm referring to anorexia. My eating disorder became so embedded in my brain, it became me, I became it, together we were one. Now our connection is tumulus, not quite severed, but it is not quite the symbiotic relationship we once had.

She was my first real love. My first real friend. My first real driving force. I want to say letting go of the anorexic, eating disorder ridden me has been a lot easier than I anticipated, but in actual fact I've spent over a year getting to this place. Bit by bit, our bond got chipped away, it wasn't noticeable. At the time I thought nothing was happening, but seeds were being planted in my brain. Parts of my brain began to break free from her grip over me. 

She stole me away without me realising. She took me prisoner and she wouldn't let me go. She told me over and over again that I was nothing, that I was worthless, than the only value I would hold was to be thin. And I believed her. I hung on her every word. She made me feel special, she made me feel wanted. As long as I was striving to be thin, I thought I had control, when in actual fact, it was her that was in control. She caged me, she chained me in, I was confined to one goal and one goal only.

Every second of everyday her voice was in my head;  "Don't eat, purge what you do eat. Fat is nothing. You are nothing. You wonder why nobody likes you? It's because you're so fat and ugly. At least if you're thin and ugly, you'll at least be thin. That girl is thin, why can't you be that thin? Why are you such a failure? You're nothing. You're lazy. You're disgusting. You make me sick."

She made me doubt people's love for me. "How could anybody ever love you?"she taught me that compliments were people's way of laughing at me. "They're really insulting you, whatever they're saying, they really mean the opposite" she taught me to smile and politely thank them and then go home and cry and listen whilst she told me how grotesque and what a failure I was. 

But she was there for me when nobody else was. Nobody ever stayed around, but she did. She was there when I needed someone, she was there to spur me on, to make me want to achieve my goal of being thin. I was reliant on her, as long as she was there, I was safe. I was in my comfort zone. My comfort zone was starve, purge, hate. An endless cycle of soul destroying, torturous thoughts, where I felt nothing but shame and disgust.

She brainwashed me. For years, she manipulated and controlled every aspect of my being. She convinced me that thin would equal happiness. She used my body dysmorphia against me, she used my other mental illnesses against me, she twisted them to what she wanted and what she needed them to be; failures. Failures on my account, they were there because I simply wasn't good enough or thin enough. For years, I was burdened with the notion that I had brought about my own mental illness, and that was yet another failure to add to my increasingly long list. 

She had me under lock and key; I can't look at any other female without instantly racking up which parts of their bodies were smaller than the parts of my body. No matter what their shape or size, and due to my body dysmorphia, I can't understand that a UK size 20 has bigger thighs than me, or a bigger stomach. I can't see it. It's a blind spot for me. There is an inherent lack of comprehension that remains within me in regards to body size. All I see is people smaller than me.  

She was happily living alongside me, inside me, and I was happy for her to stay, we would have probably been set for life. But then I found love in small places, friends, extended family, and then they set to war. One voice told me I was worthless. Others told me I was worthy. One praised me for being thin. The others cried over my weight. One told me I was ugly. The others old me I was beautiful. 

Slowly, I found myself listening more to positive. The people who saw something in me that I clearly couldn't. I trusted them so implicitly, I knew they would not lie to me, I knew what they were saying had to be truth. Maybe not "truth truth" but a truth how they saw it. And that floored me. Never had I ever been made to feel anything more than what my mind had told me I was. Their love started to drive the other "her"'s love away. I wanted to trust what I could see, what I could really feel. 

It's a very strange adjustment to make, but the impact it has had on the rest of me has been remarkable. I still have some deep rooted issues with other mental illnesses that I suffer with, but finally, in terms of eating, I feel like I can breathe a little bit again. 

I find myself somewhat hypocritical writing this, because only today I had thoughts back of being too fat and restricting what I ate. I am in no way recovered. My eating disorders are still a huge factor in my life, they are just manageable now. Despite those thoughts going round my mind, I still "allowed" myself to eat a chocolate bar, I still "allowed" myself to indulge. Two months ago, I couldn't do that. Allowance of indulgence required a sacrifice; eat a meal, throw it up, don't eat anything the next day. Eat something with too many calories in, throw it up, exercise, don't even think about eating anything else for at least a day. But now, I allow myself these luxuries, they aren't luxuries, they're non disordered ways of thinking. 

Sure I do slip, but I'm only human. I'm just working on making sure those slips don't turn into falls.

One day at a time. One day at a time. 

everything that happens is from now on.

I've finally done it, I've started to put this blog "out there" so to say. Up until today, only four or five  people in my life knew it existed. The only people who knew the real me, what was going on with me. But today I decided it was time to start sharing it amongst people, and the truth be told, I'm terrified.

These are people who call me "constantly happy" "so bubbly" "a ball of energy" these are people who I have spent weeks, months, years fooling. People who think they know me are now going to find out they don't know me at all. I'm not the person they think I am. Are they going to think I'm weak? I'm a bad person for not letting them in? Are they suddenly going to pity me and not have fun with me any more? 

So, to all of you who are reading this and thinking "what?!?!" I'm sorry that I wasn't strong enough to tell you who I really am and share this with you. It doesn't mean I respect you or like you any less. It's just very hard for me to let my walls down, and take this "mask" off. 

I just want to make absolutely clear that I am not doing this for me, I'm doing it for other people out there who go through what I go through every day. I've already had messages from people who have thanked me for starting this because they can relate to it and it has caused them to take action and get help. And that is all I want. I'm not doing this for attention, I don't want people to feel like they are walking on eggshells around me now that you know. Just please understand that I have my good and my bad days, I'm not a complete and utter mess trying to pretend to be okay all the time. 

life is a beautiful mess.

"These words on a page, carry the pain, they don't free it."

Sometimes I wonder, is writing really a blessing? Or is it a curse? I've had people tell me that my writing is beautiful (I hate repeating compliments I receive, because 9/10 times I never believe them and hate repeating them because it makes me sound pretentious) but my writing isn't beautiful. I write my thoughts, I write my mind, and my mind isn't "beautiful" my mind is a mess. My mind is a maze of twisted complexity, I suffer from black and white thinking, I constantly question everything and search for hidden meanings, I overreact to everything, I can't process any of my emotions at a "normal" (god, I hate that word) rate, and I have negative thought after negative thought. 

So when I write, I'm really only writing my mind. A thought. A question. A moment. All of them are fleeting, in the grand scheme of my life, each and every piece that I write is a fleeting moment in time. Do I really want my thoughts, my messed up mind immortalised? 

Sometimes I think that when you write about something, it loses it's meaning. The original moment or thought you were writing about diminishes and it becomes quite literally words on a piece of paper, or through a blog, or through a screen. The thought is gone, the inner workings of my mind have changed, that no longer exists in the present now, it's gone. So is writing it down where it can never be forgotten something that is productive? 

I haven't suddenly decided to give up on my blog or my journalling or any of that. I'm just thinking through my writing, I guess. I think it's nice to chronicle your state of mind when you're going through recovery, or even anything really, to look back and see how things have progressed, how your mind has moved forward, how you have grown and flourished. 

But in reality, do you really need to be reminded of thoughts you had? Do you really need it there to see? Can't it just be lost along with the hundreds of thousand other memories that we create and forget? 

black and white begins to colour in.

"Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life." 

My mind is a maze. To me, if I'm not the perfect person, perfect at everything I do, then in my mind, I'm a bad person, I'm a failure and deserve to be punished. There's no in between for me. One mistake, no matter how trivial, means that I'm a terrible person and can't live with myself.

There is no in between with how I react to things. It's either a complete overreaction; sobbing, hysteria, shouting, screaming. Or nothing. There's no middle ground. I can't just take something on board, I have to run through every single "bad" scenario possible and then freak out over all of these imaginary scenarios. It's so unhealthy and it's something that I wasn't really aware of until today. I knew I overreacted a lot, but I never really looked at how or why. 

The last few days have hurt my heart a lot. But I think I'm better for it. I'm trying to tell myself that pretending that I'm okay brings a whole new series of problems, it affects every state of my being, it penetrates through to my relationships. It puts too much pressure on those who love me and it leaves them at a loss. Pretending I'm okay brings a whole new cycle of behaviours that have been brought to light to me that I didn't even know existed. When you're so busy putting up a mask, you don't think of the domino effect that it has on your behaviours and emotions. As long as you're pretending that you're okay, it doesn't matter. But it does.

I  have been told of the behaviours that I've been displaying, I know need to stop pretending that I'm okay and look at all of the issues that pretending that I'm okay causes for me and the people closest to me.

My behaviour has caused resentment and dislike towards me by people that I adore and who love me and all it makes me want to do is drop my "mask" and just focus on everything that comes about because I have that mask up. It's been so ingrained in me for so long because I've spent so long pretending I'm okay that I've never noticed or been shown the ramifications of what that does.

Mood altering medications do exactly what they say; they alter your moods, they can make you more low, they can bring you up, they can cause suicidal thoughts, they can do a lot of stuff. But I don't solely blame those, I blame the fact I've spent so long trying to keep this mask on - even to those closest to me who I tell virtually everything to, I keep some stuff hidden from them to not cause them worry or pain - that I've failed to see what that has done to me, my behaviour, my thinking and what it's done to those around me. And this isn't something new, this has been ongoing for years.

But how do you just stop pretending and and actually really face up to what you're going through 100% without breaking down and letting it win? I don't know. 

when you know, you know.

"We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More Compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide."

one golden glance of what should be.

After a prolonged period of time last night, I found myself holding a pair of scissors with the intention of old habits. However, for the first time ever, I found a part of my brain was overpowering the desire to cut. It was telling me that I was better than this. I was worth more than cuts along my flesh. That inflicting pain upon myself, when my mind causes me so much pain and suffering anyway, wouldn't get me anywhere or help me achieve anything. 

I ran a list through my head of all of the amazing things that have happened to me since I last hurt myself. Of what I didn't gain the last time I did it, and the time before that and the time before that... The release is only temporary. No matter how disgusted and ashamed of myself I was last night, I fought back. I fought my mind for myself. And this time, I won. 

Does this mean that I am learning to respect my body more? Am I starting to like myself on even a subconscious level? Is the love that I am receiving from certain people penetrating that deep that it has brought me to here? There are so many thoughts spinning around my mind, but for once, they aren't negative, they're positive. 

I achieved a lot last night and I am so proud of myself, as silly as that may sound, the pride I feel has caused me to break down in tears. Even if it doesn't last forever, this feeling of achievement is more than I can even begin to describe. 

the inevitability of prolonged discomfort.

There comes a time when you are faced with a social situation that you have to attend. You are obliged to go to, and there is no excuse to get out of it, no matter how many scenarios you plan out in your head.

Ordinarily, I like getting dressed up, going out and having fun. Even if it's just for a few hours, it gives me a perfect distraction from the 96,000 thoughts going round my mind, and just allows me to pretend that I'm okay without having to maintain that "absolutely fine, positively happy" mask that I have to put on when I'm at work. Throughout my late teens and up until I was 21, I loved going out. My job meant that after work we'd go for drinks, off to clubs, and most nights for nearly three years straight ended in the early hours of the morning, arriving home in a taxi, often crossing my Mother on the doorstep on her way to work. I wasn't one of those girls who went out to get drunk, many nights I'd only have one or two drinks, it was simply the company and nightlife that I thrived off. It was the ideal scenario for my depression and my eating disorders; drinks at night, sleep all day - no time for eating or to stop and take note of where your mind was. In my little head, it was perfect. 

Anybody who has or currently works in theatre will know that it's a very antisocial job, you end up spending a lot of your time with the people you work with, often planning nights out after performances, simply being on the same work schedule and sleeping pattern made it very easy to be extremely social despite the antisocial hours. Despite having lots of people around me, I was still incredibly lonely. I brushed any negative feelings aside and simply lived for the moment. But I was struggling. 

Fast forward to a few years later. I look back at my old self and I almost envy her, being able to ignore the overwhelming feelings that consume my mind 24/7 is a luxury that I lost a long time ago. I get fleeting feelings of happiness, which I am so thankful for because without those, I don't know where I would be, but at some point, "it" always creeps back up on me. 

Social situations are something I now dread. The thought of being somewhere that I am not 100% sure that I want to be, or in the company of people that I trust implicitly absolutely terrifies me. When I am overwhelmed with thoughts of self loathing, or my mood drops, or I am triggered by something, it does not matter where I am or who I am with, it will simply become too much and I will completely flip; there are tears, followed by panic attacks, followed by what I call "Zombie mode" where I go into what can only be described as an almost catatonic state. The thought of that happening when I'm out, or with people who don't know what to do or say to me terrifies me. Maybe that's letting it win, maybe that's me being defeatist, because I have given in, I have let it control what I do and where I go. But I know my mind, and I know that these happen too regularly to risk it, for now, that is the best course of action for me. 

So on Saturday I was faced with an occasion that required my presence; an entire day in the company of my family and extended family, in all around 25-30 people. My family as a whole tend to only get together around 4/5 times a year, so it wasn't something I could skip out on, especially as it was one of the very younger members' (whom I adore) third birthday party. 

It was hard. I struggled. I suffered. I didn't show once how I was feeling, or if I did, it just wasn't mentioned. But I did it, I got through the day, and I am so proud of myself for doing so. 

What I am also proud of is the fact that straight after I got off the train home, I went to a work friends' hen party, where I was yet again in a crowd of about 14 people. I was terrified at the prospect of having to put on a facade for two situations, one after the other with no real pause for clarity, for almost 17 hours. One I can just about handle at a time, but two at once? I didn't think it was possible, but I did it. 

Small victories. It is those I am proudest of. 

I am paying for it now. I woke up just mentally and emotionally exhausted, with crippling anxiety and the inability to feel or think coherently. But that's okay, because I achieved a huge step yesterday, today I am simply "suffering the consequences"

Every action has a reaction. Every action we take has a consequence. If the action is something positive, hold onto that. My consequence is simply my mind coping with the strength that it had garnered for a prolonged period of time yesterday. I am not seeing today as a defeat, I am seeing yesterday as a step forward.