At first glance it might seem that I am just a happy, normal girl who loves to bake and walk her dog. However, I have suffered with an eating disorder since I was 13. It was only in May 2014 when I realised that this Voice in my head was slowly but surely trying to kill me. And so began the long, hard, and painful journey which is recovery...

I want My Cocoa Stained Apron to be a special place...a place for reflection, memories, shared stories...and of course a little bit of cocoa-staining ;) Recovery might be the hardest thing you ever choose to do in this life. But it is also the bravest and best decision you will ever make.:)

Wednesday 20 August 2014

A plan of action...

I thought that the world was going to end…everything about my life, that day, seemed completely and utterly futile and useless. I felt as if I was one of the most horrible, cruel, and deceitful human beings on earth. And a failure, to: I was a failure as a daughter, sister, student, and everything else that I could lay claim to as being. My whole identity was worth nothing to me any longer. It was one of those moments when I did think about suicide. I’ll be talking about suicidal thoughts a little later on – it’s not something which I can speak at great lengths about, as  I was far from being in real danger of hurting myself in that kind of way and I have never made any real genuine attempt to take my own life. But the thoughts were still there and they did cross my mind on a few occasions when I still had my eating disorder; and I think it’s important I address them, as I fear that many sufferers, like me, do experience this sort of mindset: that it would be better if I were dead, or not there, then to go on with this atrocious struggle that mankind terms as “life”.
But there is light, always, even in the most darkest and most deepest of abysses. I had let myself fall very deep into this one. And it was going to be one hell of a climb to get out of…
But I wasn’t going to be alone. My mam was amazing, so amazing. There was no anger on her face, just pure concern.
Did she know all along? Perhaps, though I don’t think she fully realised the full extent of what I had been doing…but now she knew the full truth. I wasn’t going to keep anything from her any longer. By that evening everything had come out…my meal skipping, purposely starving myself, not eating when alone, the tiny amounts I gave myself when I actually did choose to eat.
And by that evening, we had talked and devised some sort of plan of action…of how I was going to become healthy and happy again.
I was scared to death, I’m not going to try and pretend that I wasn’t. As Mam told me what she thought I should do, I cried and cried and cried. “No, Mam, please, don’t make me do that. I am going to be fat, I am going to be fat.” Mam patiently listened and then assured me, again and again, that that was not going to happen. Acceptance finally came round and I finally understood just exactly what I needed to do…
I think it was one of the hardest things I ever managed to accomplish; deciding to make that change, to recover. When you have been engrossed in obsessional ED thoughts for so long, the thought of eating more, even just that teeny bit more, is truly daunting. To recover, I was going to have to wade in unfamiliar territory. I knew I was going to feel bloated and full – feelings that I, of course, never really experienced when I was sick; as I suppose I had an overwhelming fear of the sensation of being full. I was going to be eating foods that I had shunned or avoided for years on the basis that they were fattening or “bad for you”; I was going to have to face all the “fear foods” that in reality, I liked, but I had convinced myself that I hated. 
Yep, it was scary alright. There is so much scariness in the unknown. But as a certain sailor guy who apparently discovered America said: “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”…
(I googled inspirational quotes to get hold of that one, by the way. I’m afraid, much as I love such wise and witty phrases, I’m not the sort of person who has a regular stash of them stored in their head, ready for instant recital in the appropriate circumstance.)
Anyway, onto what we decided to do.
The most important thing for me that day was, I suppose, to conquer my terror of gaining weight…and understand fully that, if I was ever going to be healthy, normal, happy, my thinness was something I was just going to have to let go of. I devised a list of motivating reasons which I will talk about in my next post. Writing things is such a great idea, by the way, if you enjoy it. By the time I had written my list and gone through it in my head, I knew very well that I was doing the right thing…
There were other things too which were going to be of help to me in my journey. Perhaps one of the most important of all was my meal plan, and my food diary.
My meal plan gave me a rough idea of what I needed to aim towards eating in a typical day. And of course, my food diary was where I recorded everything. Every evening I was going to write down in my diary what I planned to eat the next day…that way, I had a good record of what I was having and it also meant that I was less likely to dither about what I should have and SHOULD I have it; and that I was less unlikely to be tempted NOT to have something…
And I talked about it, with people. Not everyone, of course. I was afraid that not everyone would understand. I was convinced that I was sort of weird, or mentally wrong, at the time – what normal person, I asked myself, would have engaged in so much deceit and done so many stupid things on purpose?? – though I know now that I am not abnormal. But anyway, I didn’t think everyone I knew would be as understanding as my Mam was. Which is fair enough really, because it’s hard to really, really understand the thoughts and mindset of someone with an eating disorder unless you have actually experienced it yourself…
But I knew that my loved ones would listen to me and that through talking and sharing I would find healing and comfort. And so I sought the support of my closest friends, my family, and a fellow blogger who had gone through what I had – her own condition having been a lot more serious than mine, though, for she had actually suffered from anorexia.
And then there’s the blogging, of course. It’s sort of like the talking to people. I’m freeing all those voices and thoughts in my head and sharing them with the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment