Fight

Last night I was tortured. I tried, with much effort, to escape. I kicked, I screamed, and I fought, but I lost to my thoughts that had me bound in chains. They told me horrible things. They told me I was ugly, fat, and worthless. They told me that no one would ever want me.

And last night, I believed them.

Afterall, who has kept me around? Most people in my life have left, died, or moved on to bigger and better things while I remain standing in the rubble of the memories. I hold on to dear life, grasping onto every chance or possiblility that maybe, one day, I'll be good enough for them to come back to me. I run, I chase, and I seek their approval, desperately needing some kind of love to keep my heart beating. Because on my own I don't feel good enough.

When will this massacre of my self-esteem and dignity end? Will it ever? Will I forever be bound to these thoughts that rule my world?

Maybe.
It's very possible that I may always creep around these thoughts that lurk in the shadows of my mind. But every single day is a new opportunity to fight these words that cut deep into my soul. Every moment I am given the choice to either lay down and take the abuse, or to fight for my life.

And so are you.

Fight.

Why So Serious?

You know those moments where you do something that you know you will regret the very next moment, or hour, or day? But you can't help it. It's impulsive and you have absolutely no control over the situation whatsoever. It's bad. You hate it, you dread it, but at the same time you long for it, and you want it. This is called, "The Anorexic craving ice cream."

This is what happened late last night, while hanging out with my awesome new college friends. As we were talking about fried chicken, I got this overwhelming desire for ice cream. Not "no sugar added" ice cream, not low fat yogurt, but a sugary, sweet, fattening Sonic Blast. So like word vomit, I exclaimed "I really want some ice cream." These particular friends happen to be very sweet gentlemen, who hopped up instantly, grabbing their keys, saying "let's go!"

Great.

So we head to Sonic, and I order myself an Oreo Sonic Blast. I knew I was going to regret this. I would spend the whole night feeling guilty and hating myself. But I ate it and enjoyed every single moment of its creaminess. I wasn't thinking about how guilty I would feel. I didn't care at that particular moment.

That's when a very unexpected thing happened. I finished the last bite of it, and I waited for the guilt to set in. I knew it was coming. However, as I waited for the voices in my head to start abusing me, I realized that hours had gone by and I still didn't feel guilty. I was awestruck by this realization. This had never happened before. For as long as I can remember, I've felt guilty over eating certain foods. But not this time. This time I ordered it, I indulged in it, I finished it, and when I was done I didn't have an overwhelming desire to purge, and I didn't instantly start beating myself up.

I made an awesome step in recovery by doing and realizing this. This made me think that if I could just stop focusing on the negative for a minute, and focus on the positive, I  may be capable of a lot more than I give myself credit for. Old me, would have seen absolutely no postitive in this situation. However, recovering me saw that there were awesome people that I was spending my evening with and I was truly enjoying myself (and the Sonic Blast).

Life's too short to be so serious all the time.

So go order a Sonic Blast with you friends. Laugh, and celebrate the world and all the fun that we are able to have.

Force Fed.

Oh yes. You did, in fact, read the title correctly. I, at 19 years old, was force fed.

 As I head to dinner, ED (eating disorder) is really talking to me, and he whispers tempting thoughts in my ear. He tells me that I can definitely get away with eating a bowl of cereal tonight. So I warily enter the cafeteria, instantly dreading the vast buffet-style food selections. I scan it quickly allowing my eyes to stop only on the cereal section that awaited me on the other side of the room. I hurriedly walk over to grab a bowl, fill it will Lucky Charms and milk, push through the crowd to grab a spoon, and weave in and out of all the waiting people until I reach my seat at the table. I sit down with my bowl of cereal discreetly eyeing my friends responses to my dinner selection and begin to eat with ED shouting in my head.

So here I am eating my cereal with two sets of skeptical  eyes on me. When I finally finish my cereal, I couldn't take it anymore. "What?!" I ask my two friends who were looking at me disapprovingly. "You have to eat more than cereal." Oh no, no, no, I think to myself. But as we sat there my belongings were taken hostage by my friends and I was told they would not be returned to me until I ate a proper dinner.
This got me thinking about recovery. Sometimes we often feel helpless and hoplessly lost. This is a common feeling in everybody at times, not just those who are recovering. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our thoughts that we need someone or something to help pull us back into reality.
I needed this for eighteen weeks while in treatment from Anorexia. I needed help. I coudn't do it alone.
This made me come to the awesome realization that there is little in this world that we can, in fact, do alone. We need to be individuals, but we also need support.
I hope that you have support.
Because we all need to be force fed sometimes.

Beautiful Disaster

"She prays on day, she'll find someone to need her. She swears that there's no difference between the lies and compliments...It's all the same if everybody leaves her."

Why do we base our self worth on others? It seems as if we always seek approval from others before we seek our own. In fact, a lot of times, our own approval is based upon that of those around us. We set our standards based on what we think they think they should be. Where did our ability to think for ourselves go?

I was wondering this today as I was observing the people around me. I noticed that as I looked at them, they too, looked back at me. Many of them looked at me and then scanned the room, looking at everyone else. So many of us watch and compare constantly. If we aren't the skinniest person in the room, it means we are fat and need to lose five pounds. If the girl next to us is dressed in Juicy Couture and carrying a Gucci bag, we need to go out and spend our whole paycheck on a new wardrobe.

Why can't we just be who we are? I know this sounds like such a cliche question, but really. Whose approval are we seeking and why? Why can't we set our own standards for ourselves based upon who WE are as INDIVIDUALS.

Just something to think about.

My Battle With Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia Nervosa is the deadliest mental illness there is. Only thirty to forty percent of sufferers will fully recover. I am beating these odds every single day.

            I remember looking down in Kindergarten and thinking, “I’m fat.” I looked up to my big sister for the first time and wished I was her. She was tall and slender, and I was short and chubby. I hated my body already. And of course, this was the start of a very long journey. It was an on and off thought until middle school when it became a constant voice in my head. This was when I started to put on the weight most girls do when they go through puberty. I got a little thick. But I was by no means “fat.” However, in my eyes, I was huge. Then, in my freshman year of high school I had my first boyfriend. I constantly felt the need to go overboard to impress him, and I felt as though I was constantly compared to his ex and it killed my self-esteem. I had become depressed. I felt inadequate. The way he treated me didn’t help either. I was never pretty enough, skinny enough, or good enough. Even HE compared me to his ex-girlfriend that I felt inferior to already. I know all this sounds petty and high school, but that’s exactly what it was. High school. I went days without eating because I wanted to make myself worth something and this, unfortunately, was the way I went about it. I felt that looks were something I could control. If I had the right clothes, the right haircut, enough make up, and a perfect body, I would finally be happy. Didn’t happen. I became utterly depressed. "When you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them..." (Taylor Swift) This song proved itself to be true in my life at that time. I loved this boy with all my heart, or so I thought. I clung to him. I made him my best friend. And then he dumped me. I felt as though my whole world had collapsed. I threw tantrums, I cried, I didnt eat, and I fell into an even deeper stage of depression.

I went through stages on and off throughout the next couple of years where I would lose a little weight, and then put it back on. Be a little up, and then get a little down. Be in a meaningful relationship with my heavenly Father, and then be totally and completely wrapped up in the world around me. And when I entered in my junior year of high school was when it all went downhill for me. In August of 2009, my mother’s best friend died unexpectedly of heart complications. She was like a second mother to me for nine years and her death hit me harder than I expected. I started having anxiety attacks and became depressed yet again. I entered into, what began, a very dark phase of my life. I still looked up to my big sister and wished I had as many accomplishments as she did. She was extraordinarily talented and beautiful. I also refused to get close to people in fear that they would leave or die, and felt like my looks were the only thing I had going for me. While my sister always got “You’re so talented and smart,” I got, “You’re so pretty!” And while that’s wonderful to hear, it also gets old when no one really tells you that you’re talented, smart, and worthy. I started modeling my junior year and started playing around with the starvation game. On days of my shoots I would not eat a morsel. I would exercise compulsively and HATE my reflection in the mirror.  In late August of 2011 I was accepted into a huge state pageant, and that’s when I experimented with self-induced vomiting, and my starvation game became deadly. I tracked every calorie that I consumed and every single one I burned throughout the day. And I wasn’t consuming much. By November I had lost 17. I began exercising even more, weighing multiple times a day, and obsessing over food. I had lost even more by December, and it wasn’t good enough. My thighs were still too fat, and my stomach was still not flat enough.

 My values went straight out the window. I didn’t care what I did anymore and had no emotion. I was stone cold and by February, at a dangerously low weight. This was when I couldn’t stand up without blacking out. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without weighing myself afterwards (and restricting depending on the number). I couldn’t look in the mirror without finding something wrong. I couldn’t eat without feeling guilty and I was living on about 500 calories a week. My parents finally sat me down and told me that what I was doing was deadly. I didn’t care. All I could think about was food. How was I going to get out meals now? They took me to the doctor, and within a week I was scheduled to go into a program for eating disorders in Birmingham. I had been diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. The week before my entrance into the program was when my values were truly tested. And I failed the test. I hid food, purged, pretended, lied, and cried my way to an even lower weight by the time I entered into the eating disorder program. This, to me, was my biggest accomplishment. Congratulations to me. However, it was STILL not good enough. I wanted to lose just five more pounds.

            I started the partial hospitalization program and was threatened with a residential program within my first week. I was severely underweight for my height and they didn’t think that I could continue in a partial program. That was when I started kicking it into gear. I did what I was asked to do and started gaining the weight they wanted me to gain. I stayed out of residential, miraculously, and nine weeks later I graduated from the program and returned home. To relapse. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to lose weight again. And that’s exactly what I did. I lost seven pounds within two weeks. The things I did with food were deadly. I experimented with bingeing and purging for the first time. But I also got to the point where I would purge anything and everything because I had an unwanted appetite. I was then admitted into the program once again. However, I cheated and manipulated the system. I hid food, poured out my Ensures, purged, did laxatives, exercised, and broke just about every rule in the book just to lose weight. I was terribly depressed on top of that. I wanted to die. I wanted lightning to strike me, a bus to hit me, or someone to shoot me. I didn’t care how, I just wanted to die. I wanted to evaporate. When I was almost admitted into the psychiatric ward by my therapist was when something changed in me and I did a 180. I started working the program and gaining the weight I needed to gain to be healthy and happy. And I did, in fact, start getting happier. I realized that this disease that consumed me wasn’t just about food and body image. It was my escape. I restricted and purged my feelings, not just food. I learned that I starved so I wouldn’t feel anything. It was something I could control when I couldn’t control anything else. I couldn’t control who left me, who died, who liked me, or who hated me. But I could control how I looked and how much I weighed. I thought that would help. I thought being thin would make me more desirable, more talented, and more beautiful.

Today, I’m not recovered…but I’m recovering. That’s enough for now.