Recovery

 

"Julie's Story" by Julie (March 2006)

            I was a dancer when I was younger, so I learned the meaning of perfection early on. Ever since I can remember I always felt the pressure to be the best. I learned that average was not an option during my 6 years of ballet training. I danced up until I was 12 years old, then things began to go downhill. At the age of 10, I developed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I was germ-phobic and washed my hands countless number of times each day. My hands became cracked and red, and they also hurt a lot. When I was 12 my OCD switched forms. From 12 until 13 I had obsessive, intrusive thoughts and I would be so frightened by them I would pray for long periods of time for God to take away the “bad” thoughts. I felt like I was a horrible person and I hated myself for the thoughts that I could not control. Of course, I didn’t understand then that it was not my fault and that there was something wrong with my brain, so I did everything in my power to switch the obsessions. When I was 13, I “discovered” anorexia. I had older friends and one of them was anorexic. She seemed happy enough, and I thought, “Maybe I could do that.” My motive behind wanting the anorexia was to get rid of my intrusive thoughts. It worked, but little did I know I would be embarking on a 6 year journey to hell and back. It started out innocently enough; restrict a little, exercise a bit more, lose just 10 pounds. However, 10 pounds turned into 20 then 30 then so on and so on. I have a very obsessive personality by nature and I could not just lose 10 pounds. I decided that if people thought I looked good now, then I would definitely look great if I lost 10 more pounds.

The cycle perpetuated itself and my life became a downward spiral of restriction and exercise. I began to physically feel the effects of starvation a couple of months into my anorexia. I became tired easily, my hair was falling out, and I was dizzy a lot, but I didn’t care. My bad thoughts were slowly leaving and being replaced by thoughts of food and weight. My plan had worked; if only I could have stopped there. By the time I turned 14, people were starting to become worried. I was taken to the doctor and diagnosed with anorexia. I went to see my first counselor, which turned out to be a total waste of time. I remember one time when I was at school; I thought I was going to die. I became hot, dizzy, and sweaty and my chest hurt. I thought I was dying. I just kept losing weight, and eventually ended up in the hospital. After my first hospitalization I was doing pretty well. I had gained back some of the weight and was in an outpatient program seeing a better counselor. However, my remission did not last very long. During April of 2000 (2 months after my first hospitalization) my grandpa died. That left me feeling out of control and helpless. I didn’t immediately turn back to starvation, but I did after a couple of months. I left my outpatient team and began losing weight again. This time I really didn’t care if I died or not; I just wanted to be thin, pretty, and in control. Inevitably, I was hospitalized again, about 1 year later. I cannot describe the amount of pain I was emotionally in. I hated myself and I just wanted to die. I didn’t want to get better, because at the age of 15, I was still paranoid about my obsessive thoughts returning. Something changed in my mind though, and during that second hospitalization I decided I wanted a life. I wanted to be normal.

I told my therapist about my OCD and that was a big relief off my chest. I thought I was all better. I thought just because I wanted to be better that meant I was. I did pretty well throughout my entire junior year of high school (when I was 16), but then when I was 17, I went to college. That is when things started to go downhill again. I couldn’t handle the pressures of working and trying to maintain my GPA in college. I started restricting a bit more and dropped some weight. I also started cutting that year. Another new habit that arose was purging. My anorexia turned from pure restrictive anorexia to purging-variant anorexia. I just couldn’t handle the pressures anymore, and I collapsed under the overwhelming fears I had. Cutting and purging soothed me during times when I felt nothing could soothe me. I still hated myself and wanted just to escape everything; I wanted a way to escape myself. I was chasing something I would never be and frantically running away from the person I was afraid to be. During the end of my freshman year at college, I met my now ex-boyfriend. I thought he was my angel in disguise, looking back I couldn’t have been more blind. We became very serious, very quickly. I thought I was in love, and therefore did things with him that I wouldn’t have normally done. I said no, but he insisted, and I gave in. I remember crying inside sometimes during sex…….I just hated myself so much. All I wanted to do was to please him. I didn’t care about myself or how I was feeling; I was only there to please. I became so disgusted with myself. I perceived myself to be fat and out of control. I was absolutely disgusted at what I had done and therefore starved myself like nobody’s business in a futile attempt to regain control and purity.

This leaves me at 18 years old and starving myself to no end; I would not give up until I reached my goal of perfection and purity. However, my body had already been through 6 years of on and off starvation, so it didn’t take long for me to physically feel the effects of starvation. I began passing out frequently (twice while I was driving), and I thought I had a heart attack on numerous occasions. I was scared, yes, but I didn’t really care. I decided that I wanted to help people though. I wanted to help those like myself who could not help themselves. If I did not have this goal, I would not have initiated treatment. I was hospitalized again at the age of 19 for a few weeks. The only reason I voluntarily went into treatment was because of my goal to help people someday. After I spent a few weeks inpatient, I went into an Intensive Outpatient program for 4 months. Those 4 months were the hardest months of my life. I cried nearly every single day because I felt so fat, worthless, and disgusting. I hated myself with a fiery passion, and I honestly wanted to die. Cutting became very serious during these 4 months. I have many scars now because of all the inner turmoil I was in. I nearly attempted suicide on many occasions. This pain was too much to handle; I could not bare it any longer……I just wanted a way out. I really did not want to die, I just wanted to God-awful pain to finally stop. This was a few months ago.

Now I sit here, still 19, and am just as scared as ever. I have begun praying more and am still with my outpatient team. I know I want life. I am just so scared…..so afraid to actually reach out and grab on. I wish I could end my story with a happy ending, but the truth is I still struggle each and every day. This journey of anorexia is one I wish I never would have embarked upon. It has left me absolutely stripped of any sense of self-worth. I know I want life though; I do not want to die from anorexia. It is ultimately my choice, and I know what I have to do; fight like hell and never give up.

 

"Zombie Half-Life" by Echo (March 2006)

I never thought that an eating disorder would never be something that I would have to deal with. I thought that they were just for rich preppy blonde girls who were just incredibly vain. I didn’t realize how much more there is to the disorder, and I fell in without even realizing it.

I joined the swim team when I was six, and by the time I was 10 I was very good. I practiced with kids who were years older than me and went to big competitions. At 12 I was 5'6" (the height I am to this day) and was at a normal weight. My coach gave me lists of “forbidden foods”- which included ice-cream, candy bars, and fast food of any kind. Over a few years of having eating restrictions imposed on me, I increased my “forbidden foods” list, including pizza and any type of dessert. I still ate a large amount of food; however, by the time I was 15 my weight was stable. I quit swimming and took up water polo. Now, instead of having a coach demanding that I stay “slim," I had a coach who demanded that I “bulk up." So, my “forbidden foods” list disappeared. I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. However, I only gained five pounds. My body just had a fast metabolism.

At 17, the summer before my senior year, I was in a car crash. The car flipped five times, and because my window was down, my arm got pinned outside the car causing lacerations and nerve damage in my hand. I had surgery and was put on morphine and percocet. I became addicted to the painkillers. Within two months I gained ten pounds, pushing my weight to the highest it has ever been. After I stopped taking the painkillers I realized what had happened,  my clothes didn’t fit and my high weight scared me. I decided that I needed to lose those ten pounds.

It started off innocently enough. I stopped eating desserts and pizza and went to the gym every day. I wanted to get “back in shape” for water polo season.  Somehow I had lost 15 lbs with relative ease, when I had only intended to lose 10. I couldn’t even tell that I had lost weight, to my eyes I looked the same....fat. Some of my friends were also trying to lose weight, but not being very successful. Weight loss came so easily for me. I had finally found something that I was good at. So I decided that I needed to lose more. 

I cut out more foods, pretty much anything with fat in it. I would fast for up to three days at a time- running purely on water, red bull, and coffee. Within three months I had lost 30lbs, same as Kate Moss. But to me, this was still relatively easy. I wanted a challenge. How far could I go? So, I decided that I needed to lose more. By now my weight loss was attracting attention. I began to get called into the school counseling office to be told that many students and teachers had been “expressing their concern” about my weight. I would just smile, and deny deny deny! “I don’t know why I’ve lost weight,” I would reply, “I guess I’ve just not been as hungry because I’m not exercising as much as I used to…” They didn’t really believe it, and the nurse insisted on weekly weigh-ins so that she could monitor my weight. I would “borrow” ankle weights from the athletic trainer’s office, making sure that my weight never went below 110lbs on her scale. This didn’t bother me because my dad believed my excuses, and his opinion was the only one that really mattered. My mother was very thin when she was young (she had an eating disorder, but my dad doesn’t know that), so my family just thought it was genetic. 

By now my weight was the only thing that mattered. To distract myself from eating, I threw myself into my schoolwork, and I got the best grades of my life. However, my relationships with others deteriorated. I isolated myself effectively. I didn’t want to be around people because people were always eating, and I was much too tired to interact with anyone anyway. The only one I talked to was my boyfriend, Miro. He would take care of me when I was too weak to do much, and that just fueled me on more because I wanted that attention. I wanted to be taken care of. I would use him. He always had Ritalin or cocain that we could snort, which is what I wanted, the perfect appetite suppressant, metabolism boost, and energy enhancement. Of course, this was not a very smart thing to be doing, especially on an empty stomach. 

I lived a miserable half-life; I was a zombie. I floated from class to class, never able to concentrate on any one thing for more than a minute. Stairs were impossible; I took the elevator. Breaks between classes were spent in bathroom stalls snorting lines, desperate for some energy that would help me stay awake in class. Lunch time was spent sleeping. My friends finally started asking me if I was okay. At first I was angry that it took them so long to ask. Then I realized that they had been worried all along, but just didn’t know what to say. Only now do I realize how much time and how many opportunities I wasted with these friends, all of whom left for the mainland for college while I stayed in Hawaii. I wish that I could go back and do more with them during our last year together,but I wasted it. At the time I couldn’t see anyone or anything other than my horrendously high weight and fat thighs.

By the time I got to my lowest weight I was completely insane. I was certifiably clinically emaciated, with a bmi of 15. I was eating virtually nothing but water and stimulants. I was so weak I couldn’t open a door. One night when Miro was trying to talk to me I freaked out. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying… it sounded like alien gibberish. I had no idea what was happening and so started crying hysterically. Miro picked me up over his shoulder, drove to a local diner two minutes away, and made me eat a hash brown and a biscuit. It took me a while to eat the food. I was not used to chewing. Chewing hurt. It felt so awkward to have food in my mouth. Afterwards, I felt so sick and I desperately wanted to purge, but Miro basically sat on me for a couple hours and wouldn’t let me. I became hysterical again for a little while, crying and spazzing about on the floor, but eventually I fell asleep.

I didn’t realize how bad things had become. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. I looked about as small as I felt and completely worthless. There were massive dark circles under my blood-shot eyes, my bones stuck out everywhere, my hair and nails were brittle and breaking off. A trail of bruises from the top of my spine to my tail bone colored my back an ugly purple (plastic chairs at school are cruel). I realized that something had to change. I couldn’t go on like this.

It has been 15 months since being at my lowest weight. It has been very difficult, and my weight has fluctuated. I would be able to get my weight up to 110, but the frustration of having to eat so much to keep it up, along with my intense fear that I was fat, would cause me to start losing again. 

Five weeks ago I finally began to take my recovery seriously. Part of what has led to my commitment is the realization that through my poor nutrition, occasional purging, and stimulant abuse, I have given myself bradycardia whics is a heart condition that means that my heart beats too slowly, and that if I don’t eat more soon I’ll probably have a heart attack. I also now have to get dental work done because stomach acid from purging has eroded the enamel on a few of my teeth. I have therapy every day for 90 minutes with a wonderful woman who truly cares about me and is incredibly supportive. I also have a psychiatrist who is helping me find a medicine combination that will help ease my anxiety and depression and stabilize my moods. It is very hard- there is nothing I can eat without protesting screams going off in my head. I know that this is going to take a lot of time and effort to overcome. But I finally believe that I can overcome it, and that it is worth the suffering to get through. I must tough out the discomfort now in order to live peacefully with food in the future. 

I strongly urge anyone with an eating disorder to get help. Therapy is really working for me. It’s a very scary, but very exciting process. This will probably be the hardest thing I ever go through. It is incredibly painful, both mentally, as well as physically. My body has to get used to processing food again. It is a very uncomfortable process to have one’s organs come back to function properly again. But it is impossible to recover, without this pain. I am so excited for the day that I can eat without guilt or anxiety. I’m eager for the day when my self-worth is not contingent upon the size of my jeans or the number on the scale. And I am confident that I will get there. This day will come. I’ve taken that determination that I used to get my weight down to it's lowest and I’ve flipped it around; now towards the goal of getting healthy because I’m not worthless. I deserve to be healthy and happy. 

 

 

Would you like to share your story? If you want you can include a photo. It’s not required. You can also choose to include your real name, or remain anonymous. These choices are entirely up to you.

 

My main concern is getting these recovery stories out there so people can read them and be inspired by them. Let me know if you would like to participate. Please email me at h_recovery@yahoo.com

 

Thank you,

EmeraldRose