I’ll try if you do.

Well I think a lot of my problems can be rooted back to when I was 4 years old (12 years ago now). My dad had just got a new job earning about £75,000 a year, and me, my mum, dad, older brother and sister moved away from our lovely old little house into this really big house that had just been built. We had a massive garden with swings and a slide, and I had my own bedroom, which despite being the smallest room in the house could still fit a king size bed (not that I had one, that space was filled with dolls).
I know now looking back how lucky I was, but then I absolutly hated it, the change scared me a lot, for months after moving in are road was still a massive construction site because it was brand new. I used to spend the days sitting outside our house, with a stick and play with this one puddle on the road for hours.
It was during this time that I developed epilepsy, my first memory is factually the night that I had that first seizure. I was sleeping and dreaming about an ostridge in a bow tie and dinner jaket playing a gand piano, and there was a hippo in a little pink toto dancing ballet. Then in the dream the floor started to shake and I thought it was just the hippo being to heavy footed. But then I woke up and I was sitting in this big dark bedroom with china dolls staring at me. I was shaking like mad, and it would not stop, I thought I was going to die. So I just remember thinking I have to get someone to help me, and I tried to call out for my mum but I could not, I couldn’t breath. It was lucky that my older brother had stayed up that night playing on his games, so he woke my parents.
The last thing I remember was my mum screaming, “Oh my god someone call an ambulance”, then I lost conciousness. Apparently I was not breathing for about 5 minutes while I had the seizure, my face had gone completely purple at one point. Then I remember sitting on my parents bed where the ambulence peopl had carried me with this oxygen mask over my face. It was horrifying, I thought I was dead and I still remember it as clear as as ever.

Over the following months there were various hospital visits having all sorts of tests and checks done, finally after they had spent hour examining me like some lab rat they concluded that I had a rare form of epilepsy, and proceeded to put me on medication. I remember walking down a really long hall way that just seemed to go on forever to collect these pills, then just waiting with a lot of older people, I don’t remember seeing another child there. Little did I know then how much trouble a tiny little bead of chemicals could cause.

The first medication was a nightmare, I basically went from being a healthy 4 year your old, to an obese 5 year old in the space of about a month. This pill had side effects of severe weight gain and insomnia. So my school performance really started to get bad, I went from being top of my class to needing special help. on top of all this I was getting beaten up for being fat. But the doctor refused to believe it was the pills that were causing, according to him my mum had just suddenly decided to start stuffing me full of junk food which was complete and utter rubbish, I was the kind of kid who loved fruit and veg, I hated meat and really sweet stuff.
Then finally after basically accusing my mum of neglect, when I was 6 he finally decided to change my medication. But this one was not much better, it still caused all the other problems, but I also started to halucinate, to this day I could sware there was a pink elephant with purple spots in my kitchen. So the doc took me off them quick.
Then medicine number three, now I cannot be sure if this was down to the pills or the bullying, but when I was on these I get extremely depressed, (I was only 6/7). My mum said I was a completely different child, not the one she knew, I could not laugh, I began to hate myself. I would look in the mirror and cry.
The I stated medicine number four when I was 7, it caused insomnia, but I decided just having that one side effect, I could live with. Untill I was 9, when I simply knew I could not take it any more, I begged my doctor to stop prescribing the pills but when he would not, I just started hiding them, I would pretend that I took them, then berry them in the garden. Until my mum finally found out and the doctor agreed to stop prescibing them.

By this point I was nearly 10, morbidly obese, in a special needs class, had no friends, was being beaten up at school and depressed, those little pills had seriously screwed up a healthy, happy little girl…
Plus during that six years of my life I had also been regularly sexually abused, but I still find it hard to think about that.
Also my brother had been diagnosed with aspergise syndrome, and he was very violent, so he used to beat me and my mum up. I remember siting up in my bedroom curled up on the floor quietly singing to myself, trying to block out the sound of my mum crying while my brother hurt her. Then he would hurt me, I was completely covered in bruises all the time. Once he locked me and my mum in the kitchen, threaterning us with a knife, he was only 10 and I was 5. My dad was always at work.

Then when I was 10, my parents went through quite a messy divorce and I was always the one stuck in the middle of the fights just begging them to stop but never being heard. I remember the first time I saw my dad, who always seemed so strong break down on the floor in a flood of tears while my mum stormed up stairs, and I just sat down next to him and held him, I never wanted to let go (Oh gosh now I am crying). I was always closest to my dad, he would take my over this massive feild at the back of our house to search for fossils, there were thousands of them over there. We would spend hours just running around, always finding new things.
But my dad got really depressed, lost his high paid job and had to move in with my grandparents while he was selling the big house. He and my brother moved to a small house about half an hours drive away, while me my mum and my sister moved in to a small house that I have never liked. I have always been quite frightened of it.
Plus my mum had to get a job, so she was working really long hours for not very good pay and I basically had to learn how to cook my own dinners, and tuck myself into bed at night.

This is when I started secondary school and I was 11. For the first three years of secondary school I had no friends, although I did nto get beaten up physically anymore, the verbal abuse never stopped, I hated school. I was the fat ugly stupid girl who needed a special helper in class who absolutly stank of a cats littebox. I was the weird lowner kid who sat on her own at lunch time eating her cheese and pickle sandwich (or more like pickly sandwich becuase I hate cheese). I put up with it for the first year, just accepting that I would not make friends just overnight.
Then in the second year I put up with it, but my depression was getting worse, I would walk home from school and just watch the cars pass by on the road, just wanting so desperatly to jump out in front of one. I started to turn to food for compfort, I would eat and eat and eat. So I piled on the pounds after losing quite a few from coming off the medication.
Then in year nine, I was 13, and I started to look in the mirror a lot more often I despised what I saw it was gotesque, completely vial. So I started to place a lot of restictions on when I could eat, I cut out lunch first, then breakfast, basically I would just cram in lots of food in one hour of the day when I was allowed to eat, the rest of the time I would just have water, I could not bare to even touch food. But just for this one hour I would eat, it started off not really being that much, but as time went past, and weeks turned to months I would eat more and more in this short space of time.
But the weirdest thing happened around this time, when I was in year nine at school doing my sats, despite being in special help classes I actually ended up getting some of the highest levels in my year for maths and english, in the english writing section, I was one of only 3 people in my year to get a level 7, and the other two were in top set.

Then when I was 14, I attempted sucicide by overdose, honestly I don’t know if I took enough to ever kill me, but when I had taken them all, I started to go online. The I just completely lost it I freaked out, I could not let my mum have to go through the pain of comign home and finding me dead. So for the very first time, I shoved my fingers down my throat and I thew up, every little bit I could, and I just got this warm feeling inside. Despite the crippling pain in my stomach, the pounding head and the vial tast of those pills in my mouth, I felt good, for the first time in years. So if I could do this with pills, why not other stuff? I started doing it, just once a day after my hour of stuffing my face with food.
This lasted till my 15th birthday by which time I had lost some weight but not much. Me and some friends went shopping, and all my friends are thin. I hated seeing them trying on all these beautiful dresses for my birthday, while I would just stand back and watch.
Then a few days later I went to the doctor because I had not had my period in a while, and without doing any tests she just said straight away that I have policistic ovary syndrome, and that I should lose weight by eating 1200 calories a day, and start jogging for 3 hours a day everyday. So for the first week I did what she said and I lost 6 pounds. But then the weather got really bad and I could not do the exercise anymore, so the weight loss just kind of stopped for then, I went back to purging. Untill a few weeks later when I was walking home from school and these boys who had always picked on me decided to throw their drinks over me while calling me a fat ugly pig and poking me with a stick. So I turned round and chased them with my school bag, I just wanted to bash them over the heads. The literally in just that moment something changed in my head, I literally froze, then I put my school bag back over my shoulder, put my head down and just walked home, ignoring everything on the way. All I could think about was food, and not eating it. So I went home that evening and forthe first time I just did not eat I could not even bare to go near the kitchen. Over the next few day I had to really try and ajust because I knew I had to eat or at least drink some water soon.
So I just started to manage a single low fat rice cake for breakfast in the morning, just taking sips of water every now and again.
I wanted to eat, I really did I simply couldnt do it anymore, when I looked at food all I saw was a massive file of fat, salt and sugar, it was vile. Finally after a couple of weeks I managed to get myself eating an apple after school. I had already lost a lot of weight, I was feeling really weak, tired and always freezing cold. It went on pretty much like this for the next 5 months, slowly trying to reintroduce myself to food again. By april 2009, I had learned the calorie content of practically everything, after spending hours walking eound supermarkets. Plus I had managed to get myself eating 70g of banana for breakfast, 50g of apple for after school, 10g of seeds as a snack and dinner would be no more than 150 calories. I had lost about 70lb’s and was in a healthy weight catagory for the first time since I was 4. The weight loss started out fast but after a few months my metabolism must have been completely messed up so it slowed down. But I was not really that depressed in this time, although I was very cold and weak, I must have seemed quite happy. But my face was pale, my hair was falling out, my periods had stopped again, my skin was dry, plus my hands and feet would turn blue.
At the Beginging of March I decided I was going to become Vegan, since animal products scared me more than anything, so I just completely cut them out. Plus it is usful to explain why I am not eating.

Then at the begining of April, me, my heavily pregnant 22 year old sister and her bofriend went on holiday to Paris. I had to share a hotel room with my mum, so she knew literally every single little thing I ate and of course by this time she was already starting to see through my lies. So under her prying eyes, I knew I had to eat more than I had been previously, I hated it. Being in a foreign country and eating in restaurant where I could not know how many calories, how many grams of fat, salt and sugar was in the food. Plus being france, barely anythgn was vegan, so i did end up having to eat a lot of carbs. I got really swollen, all in my feet, legs and abdomen esspecially. First my heart rate went really high, but by the end of the holiday it was down to about 45 beats per minute. I was delerious sometimes, and had absolutly no energy. I started to forget everything and get really clumsy. Plus I had horrible headached, pains in my stomach, constant diahorria, and I always felt nausious.
Since then I have tried to find out what happened, and I suspect I may have developed refeeding syndrome, though I do not like to self diagnose. I still have all of those problems now though after over a year. I am still quite swollen, I still have a really low heart rate, I still get the headaches, stomach pains, dioahrea, nausia and confusion. Plus I black out frequently now.

But going on, for about a month after I had that holiday, I would try really hard to restrict like I was, but I found it just physically impossible, and if I did manage to get below 800 calories a day, the next morning I would wake up in agony unable to move at all. It was so scary. Then I started having problems with my epilepsy again which I had not had in years. I sometimes go through these strange episodes where I must look like a zombie but I just cut every sense off from the outside world my only goal is to die.
So within a month after returning home I started binge purging again, only this time more than ever before, I mean I would vomit till I collapsed, 10 somtimes 15 times a day. The I was on the laxatives for a while. Then I tried several diffferent diet pills. But vomiting was my thing. Not long before I could do it without fingers.
I got extremely depressed, attempted suicide again, started having panic attacks more than once a day. Honestly I don’t know how I lived through that and still managed to get through my GCSE’s with some of the best grades in my year.

But since the beginning of 2010, I have felt on the verge of death at every single moment, my heart feels weak, I have lost a lot of muscle, and I have gained quite a bit of weight back becuase I phycially cannot do it anymore. Now i go to bed every night wondering if I will wake up the next morning. I have nightmares every night. I hear the sound of a person vomiting everywhere I go, it is stuck in my head.
So when I went to visit my doctor about another problem, I completely broke down. Now I will get help soon, I just hope it is not to late.

Oh wow… Ok I am really sorry, had no idea that would be so long, it was amazing just actually writing that all down. It is not 2:30am. Time for bed.
Thank you for actually reading this much without dying of boredom already .

I stopped eating and now… every time I eat, no matter how little, I feel guilty. I *have* to make myself sick, even after consuming the tiniest portion. Before, it was always a very private thing – locked in the bathroom, the water running, noone home. Now I live by myself and I don’t have to worry about people hearing. But I’ve even started to make myself sick at work, or in restaurants. Tonight for the first time in 2 weeks I was forced to eat solid food. I think tonight I ate more than I’ve eaten in two weeks. I was at a work meal, which I was terrified to go to, because I knew I’d have to eat, or answer awkward questions. I never had the opportunity to purge in the restaurant but all I could think of was coming home to be sick. It’s become an obsession. As soon as I got home, I was in the bathroom, forcing anything I could out of my stomach – it still doesn’t feel like enough, I feel so guilty for having food in my stomach, but no more will come up, and I’m in pieces. I broke down in tears because I know that this is not right. I don’t want to be like this but I can’t seem to stop anymore. I’m scared of all kinds of food. At first I thought – it’s ok, you can eat soup, drink milk, stick to liquids. But even those I feel the need to sick up.

I guess when I was in recovery, I had people in my life, who kept telling me, I was beautiful just as I am. I didn’t need to change. This last year my on/off relationship with a guy has made me feel so inadequate. He constantly made hurtful comments – not even intentionally. It just seemed like things would come out of his mouth without him thinking about it. Always about how I’d look better thinner, every time I saw him… something was said. And now my confidence which I spent so long trying to build up has crashed and burned. It’s amazing how fragile I really am and I hate myself for that. I want to be able to stand up and say “this is me, and has been since you met me – if you didn’t like it you shouldn’t have started this”. But I can’t, because i look in the mirror and now it’s become less about his perception of me, and more about my own self-perception. And it’s horrific. I hate what I see in the mirror and I can’t even walk down the street without comparing myself to other girls and feeling somehow less. I think… do they do this to themselves? Do they count every single calorie? Do they feel such huge guilt after consuming the tiniest amount of food? Or are they just one of the lucky “naturally skinny” girls. I guess maybe it started when I was a child – as an abuse victim, my self-esteem was shot to hell anyway. But I took after my father and my mother was the perfect bodied prom-queen type. I always felt less. She could eat the entire contents of the Nestle chocolate factory and never put on a single pound. I just needed to look at the stuff to gain weight. People keep telling me – I need food on a regular basis to live. And the sad thing is, I don’t even care anymore. I try to keep my fluid intake up. Water and juice is about the only thing I can consume without making myself sick at all. I try to eat a piece of fruit before I leave the house, or before bed, and force myself not to be sick, just so I have *something* inside of me to digest that my stomach will process before I find a bathroom.

It’s only been a few weeks since I started doing this again, after years. But it’s like I’ve slid right to the bottom of the slippery slope and I don’t even *want* to stop anymore.

Here in the midwest it’s taboo, and something to be greatly ashamed of.

If any of you are like me, you see your binges/purges fluctuate in cycles. You can go a week or two eating properly and exercising, everything seems balanced. I just completed a triple crown of foot races during which I felt relatively normal. Back to reality. Back to the ED. It’s so difficult to shake. My medications stabilize my mood greatly, but it has no effect on my body image.

It seems as though being thin comes so easily to my peers! I don’t understand how I can put on weight so easily, under normal portion standards. There’s always someone who looks better than you, someone you want to look like, some look you’re going for. Vanity is inescapable in our culture.

I love that Spain is banning diet pill advertisements and putting strict limitations on unrealistic body images in television commercials. I think the States ought to adopt similar strategies to demonstrate a new standard of health. Look at the beauty standards of the 1900s. All this “waif” culture started in the 1920s, thin was a form of rebellion from traditional female stereotypes. The flappers drank during prohibition, danced promiscuously and flaunted the androgonous physique.

The suffrage movement defined the decade, recent generations have taken it to a new unrealistic expectation. Anorexia and bulimia are relatively new disorders. We are caught up in the rip tide of modern aesthetics and all we can do is hold out head up above water and swim parallel to the shore, whatever weight that might be.

That being said, it’s still hard. I’ve been getting help for about a year now, and I still have times where I feel as entirely out-of-control as it sounds like you do. So you are not the only one. You are most definitely not at all the only one who feels any of the things that you are feeling right now. And I know that it sucks on a level beyond what words can convey – so I definitely feel for you. But I also believe that it’s beatable – so hang in there.

I’m a runner but it’s hard to stick to it when my knees ache and my flesh (over my back, stomach, arms, shoulders) is tender. I have a 5K the day after tomorrow and I haven’t trained all week because of fear–both for the challenge of the run and the fear of harming my body. I’m terrified that I’ll drop like Terri Schiavo. The ED is driving the car on a narrow canyon road and I’m in the back seat looking over the edge.

My boyfriend knows about it, its nearly impossible to hide when you live together. When he comes home from work or class he asks “did you have a rough night?” Of course I did, I can rarely be trusted to be alone. My ED exacerbates his bad drinking habits. A vice for a vice.

When we eat out with his parents he knows we have to get home right away so I can “take care of it.” Sometimes I cry when they even ask because I know I won’t be able to resist a free meal.

Right now I’m weak and my glands are swollen from a binge/purge session.

I don’t know what normal is anymore. I’m totally out of touch and feel uncomfortable with “keeping” most everything save lean meat and vegetables.

Am I the only one who feels this unbalanced? Am I the only one who is socially anxious because of weight issues? Am I the only one who can’t keep female companions? There’s no way.

Someone say something. Anything.

I am now 28, almost 29, happily separated, finished another degree, not taking over the farm ( huge disappoinmet there for my parents) still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I ALWAYS have hope though. I struggle EVERYDAY day with this. It comes down to the minute for me. On the outside I come across as laid back and happy. What is really going? A lot of anxiety (which I didn’t know I had) and complusive tendencies that seem to come out in every aspect of my life. I cannot stick to one thing for very long. I am beginning to accept myself but I am very up and down. I am struggling to stay off of the laxatives because they are so detrimental to my system and am trying not to throw up anymore. SO HARD. I am torn all the time.
My body image is the same, I still do not love myself for me and It seems its my life goal to be happy with me. Stop trying to make everybody else happy. I feel lost a quite a bit of the time and lucky to be alive the next. This is my own Journey to figure out and I beleive that I will get better someday. I now for me it is really beneficial to talk about this disease and have the tools to deal with it everyday.
I am writing this on a good day today because I don’t know what it will be like tommorow. It goes day by day almost minute by minute. I am REALLY tired of this.

I am no longer open with my family about my problems. I feel like my pain is an insult to all the hard work and love and money they’ve invested in me. My mother gets frustrated. She says as intelligent as I am I should just get a grip and stop it. She won’t let me come home until I’m able to successfully function in college. My step mom tells me to stay away and not talk to my dad about it. My dad cries. I’ve learned it’s just easier to tell people I’m fine if anybody asks. That they’ll like me more.

I was in the process of attempting suicide 2 years ago. My phone fell out of my pocket with a picture of my dog as a screen saver. I started crying because I felt selfish for not considering what would happen to her if I died. My mother was not physically capable of caring for her at the time and didn’t want to. Mom would say how much she hated my dog and would put her up for adoption in a heart beat. Thinking of my dog, I climbed down from the bridge and walked a couple of blocks to a hospital where I was enrolled in an eating disorder and depression program.

I’m just short of 6 feet tall and my weight has gone between 135 to 170 pounds since I’ve had an eating disorder, I’m currently 160. Next week I’m going to have a psychiatric analysis done by a doctor that only deals with eating disorders, hopefully she’ll be able to put me on a more effective medication and help me recover quicker.

Many people don’t know I have a problem. I lie a lot and avoid getting close to people. I spend most of my free time working out anyway, though you can’t tell by looking at me. I’ve ran as much as 32 miles in one day and usually exercise between 3-6 hours after a binge and take 3-8 ducolax tablets. I’ve still gained weight recently though. My mood swings are fairly extreme. Many people on campus consider me “up beat” when I’m not in work mode. I guess that deception is just a part of the disorder. Mom has told me that it is terrifying how well and quickly I can come up with lies, that I’d be a great politician.

I would like to feel “normal”. I don’t think being 160 pounds would bother me as much as it does now if I felt like I was in control of my diet instead of the way I eat now. I know plenty of beautiful women larger than me. But I have a difficult time relaxing. I actually get nervous when given free time. I dwell on what I should be doing. My therapist says this is because of the way I’ve been raised. Everyone in my family has multiple jobs or one intensive career. My dad has 3 jobs and Mom has 2 and is a part time college student. I feel most at ease when I do work around the house with my dad or am getting something accomplished. I’ve come to base my self worth on what I can do instead of who I am. I feel like I need to justify my existence by doing all that I am capable of. That when I’m not living up to my potential I am wasting what life I have been given and thus don’t deserve it.

I sometimes think of suicide again, especially when I think about how there are days beyond the one I’m living now. When thinking that this is what my life could possibly be like for another 60 years. Dad says he’s not happy either, but he just gets up and tries to reset his mind everyday. I don’t want to live like that, especially at 18. It’s also hard to keep “getting up” when I know I’m probably going to get “knocked down” again. The hardest part for me though is knowing that it’s me that is causing myself to feel like this. It would be easier if my enemy was one that was external.

I’m sorry for the lengthy, choppy, and unorganized nature of this story, but I just sat down and typed whatever came to mind on the topic. I can’t say what it is I expect to gain from this forum and what it is I actually want from telling my story. Maybe talking to some other girls and women with bulimia would help me feel more connected to other people, I’m not sure. Thank you for reading this though.

Just donnot give up, and remember what is improstant in life! And we could be happier than any other person who did not have this lesson. Appreciate it n go over it! I hope I could do it again, coz It is worth it! I know!
Love you girls! Be strong!