For someone like me, with such a long history of anorexia nervosa behind me, exercising is a tricky affair and, unlike people who never experienced that, I can never lower the guard.
2018 is going to be an amazing year. That’s what I thought back in January. I’d not long landed my dream job, I’d moved back to London and I had a list of destinations to which I intended to travel. I also had an official diagnosis of anorexia nervosa to my name
Five years ago, I left my studies at university, gripped by depression and anorexia. I was living a life of darkness, shame, misery, hopelessness, helplessness and grief over a long-term relationship that I couldn’t admit to myself was falling apart.
Dear Ana,
I’m breaking up with you.
We’re done. We’re through.
It is not your choice if you get an eating disorder, which is part of what makes them so cruel and unfair. However, you have the power to decide whether you will fight to recover from your illness to get your life back.
I guess the truth is that I am only at the very beginning of my recovery, and whilst I am doing really well, it almost feels harder than ever.
I remember being around 10 years old and admiring an older (probably by three or four years) girl in my dance class for her thin physique. When I look back at it now, I realise that was one of the first indicators of my eating disorder journey.
Eating disorders come in many different shapes and sizes. Some people have it their entire life, some people limit themselves so much that their bodies starve, some people have binge eating disorder.
We didn’t speak about it at the time, about what it was like for Kate, or what it was like for her, going through this thing that we were both going through: Alex’s eating disorder.
When I was suffering from anorexia, I was striving for what I believed to be the perfect life.
There are hundreds, thousands maybe, of stereotypes surrounding anorexia. And some of them might be true. For some people.
Recovery... Everyone is always told “to choose recovery” but we are never told exactly how to achieve this or what this even really means.