I Spent Years in Denial About My Eating Disorders... But THIS Was the Moment Everything Changed.
I spent years in denial about my eating disorders.
Every time I binged and purged was the first and last time.
Later I pretended that these were one off episodes. My way of managing my shame and desperation.
Early on I loved my secret eating disorder world.
I felt untouchable.
But home for the holidays’ from college, my Mum caught me being sick in the bathroom after a family meal. She was shocked. And angry. Shock does that to some people. But not as angry as me.
My secret was out. I’d lost a lot of weight and was taken to a doctor who diagnosed me with late middle stages of anorexia. My family expressed their shame, apart from my Mum, with their silence.
Shame is one of our family themes. Even now it can make an appearance posing as disappointment. I wanted to be in the late stages of anorexia. I’d read about someone who refused oxygen on her death bed because she couldn’t bear her lungs full of air. Made her stomach look big.
I thought, I want to be like that.
I’d like to say my eating disorders developed for art...
During my first year at college I was cast in a student production of Dusa, Stas, Fish and Vi by Pam Gems. The director was writing her thesis on Stanislavsky (the Don of method acting) and she encouraged us to “live” our characters.
I played Vi, an angry vegetarian. I drew on my rage (simple) and recent conversion to vegetarianism. My friend Janie had told me about the horse carcasses she’d seen dumped in a field by an abattoir when she was on holiday in France. I ate my final slice of salami on New Year’s eve, 1984.
The play went well, but as far as art influencing my eating disorders... that would be a stretch. The simple truth is that I didn’t know how to live in my skin without destroying myself.
One day I fell apart enough to accept I needed help.
I found a therapist who specialised in eating disorders and hypnotherapy. She was great but I struggled to open up.
I wish I could remember more, but those early recovery years are blurred. A mix of food diaries, Prozac, early CBT and hypnosis. I remember rediscovering my palette although my foods remained limited. I held onto the belief that if I could eat regularly, without throwing up or bingeing, then I would be A - OKAY.
But if that was the case, then we’d all be home free.
Wouldn’t we?!
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