I used to have an eating disorder. In fact, I’ve been blessed with the invaluable, first hand knowledge that comes with experiencing three different disorders in succession. The fact that I had these three disorders and I fought my way through each of them is actually something I’m quite proud of. I’m not proud of developing the illnesses themselves you understand, as I took the development of each of them to be (relatively) out of my control, however I am proud of making it through to the other side. Eating disorders aren’t exactly a piece of cake, as a surprisingly large number of you will know first hand. In fact, of the thousands upon thousands of us who suffered with Anorexia, around 10% died from it.
Now, I want to make it clear that this article is in no way a rant about how misunderstood EDs are, or about the trails and trivialities of mental health problems. Nor is it a futile effort to educate the masses through the use of a few poorly written paragraphs and the force-feeding of pages full of statistics. My reason for writing this is that I simply believe that the mere 40% of us who made a full recovery from Anorexia need to talk about it openly. As do those who have fought their way through Bulimia, Compulsive Overeating and other disorders. We owe it to ones who are circling the drain.
This is by no means to say that I’m about to announce in a game of ‘Liar’ or ‘Never Have I Ever’ that I once licked raw chicken in the hope of contracting salmonella and losing a few pounds, or that on several occasions I ate food from a bin. Making statements like this achieves nothing more than shock value and is very counter productive. However I have always talked freely about these experiences, should the subject arise. I honestly think that if more survivors felt able to hold conversations with others about what they went through it would help people to become more informed and reduce the amount of stigma attached to EDs, which would in turn help those currently suffering to speak openly about it too. Maybe then fewer people would die from it and some may not have to endure it at all.
I find it quite therapeutic to be able to talk frankly about my years of obsession, but its also very clear that there are a lot of people out there who need the help with getting the facts straight. The problem is that most people are happy to derive their opinions about eating disorders from Heat magazine, and those who want to become more informed on the topic can do little more than trawl through some very clinical informational websites, or shell out a lot of cash on a self-help book. If anyone wants to know what it’s like for those of us who starved and binged and purged and fixated, I’m happy to tell them. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed. I don’t consider myself to be a particularly brave person either, but I am able to talk about it because when I look back I can say with full confidence that I’m not that girl anymore. I’d prefer for people to learn about the ups and downs from me, because at the very least I am able to dictate my story with more humanity than a NHS website and I have the added benefit of being able deliver it with a little more colour and even a sense of humour.
That isn’t to say that I can look back and laugh about the whole thing. A lot of what I went through and what I saw was horrible. However in the years since my illness, I’ve grown fond of my curves, I eat carbs everyday without getting the least bit upset and I’m even confident enough to parade around bars or parties in a little dress, safe in the knowledge that any attention I draw from it will be positive. That certainly makes it easier to view my past with a certain lightness, and this puts me in a very good position to educate others. There’s not many of us out there who have made a full recovery but it’s up to us to give the hundreds of thousands of people currently suffering a voice.
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