Tag Archives: body

Being a girl is hard!

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Last night I was spending te with two of my closest friends. We have known each other for 8 years, and so we’ve grown up a lot with each other.
I remember the days of tearful phone conversations about each of our insecurities and fears throughout high school, and both of them are relatively comfortable and healthy in regards to their bodies.
For some reason we were talking about periods and boobs etc ( not sure why !) and they were both saying how much they always liked it when they’d gone up a cup size. that is my worst nightmare. I don’t want big boobs b this is where I feel like a child. I don’t want to be a curvy, adult mother. I had never realised that most girls don’t wish for their whole body to be flat….

Things I don’t usually admit.

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I am someone who wants to please people. I like things to happen smoothly, without conflict or disorganisation. I hate admitting when things are wrong, and I am hardly ever able to be one hundred percent honest about my ed issues. 

So, here goes the honesty:

-I am unbelievably grateful for the opportunity I have right now: to train as a dancer and performer. I have dreamt of this since childhood, and now it is a reality. I love that my classes are almost all things I am very passionate about, and I appreciate how lucky I am to have the chance to do a job I actually enjoy. But, this means being in a girl dominated, body focused environment. I HATE how frequently people talk about food, body shapes and ed’s- especially as a lot of what is said is inaccurate! My eating disorder finds it challenging to be in a bubble where people don’t know what goes on in my head… granted, many people at home didn’t know either, but most of them had known me my whole life, and on some level were aware.

-I hate how confused I feel about my own body. I have literally no idea whether what I see is distorted or normal, which makes me enormously paranoid.

-I hate some of the people I live with in my student house.

-I hate that the end of my tether never comes, as in there is always a worse mood, worse anxiety, worse physical feelings..

-I hate how isolated I am at times. I never feel like a normal teenager.

-I hate the stress I am under at the moment. I can’t really talk about it whether ruining my anonymity, but there are too many things for me to get done in 2 days, and I wish it was done already….

Venting over. Never really say these things. I just go with the flow and take it out on myself afterward.

“I’ve shoved a toothbrush down my throat too, I know what it’s like”

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My response to this was silence. How on earth do you reply to such a blatantly untrue statement? While I agree that regularly making yourself throw up is unhealthy, that on its own does not qualify as an eating disorder. If ed’s were a response to one triggering situation in one’s life, then the disorder would stop when the situation was over.

An eating disorder is a way of coping with, suppressing, expressing struggle, or even a cry for help when no words seem to do the job. It is not a phase, and although people recover, that is different to a disorder just stopping. No eating disorder fixes itself. 

Later on in the same conversation, the person who made the bold statement in the title started talking about a friend who was really ill, and said to me “no, like, she was much worse than you.” May I just point out (again) that ed’s are MENTAL illnesses with physical consequences. Just because she may be lighter than me or have medical complications that I don’t have right at this very moment in time, it doesn’t mean I am any less sick. I just wanted to literally cry and scream and try to articulate just how overwhelming it is to be completely consumed by thoughts about my body, food, exercise and self criticism 24 hours a day.

I know I have said what I’m about to say before, but I want to say it again:

Society has bred itself to be exceptionally poised to idealise the thin and judge the fat. Many people do not know where a lean body becomes a medically underweight body. 

At 19 years old, I have grown up a lot in the last few years. I have also spent that time being eating disordered and the more time passes, the more I realise that the last time I had a half decent attitude to food (can’t remember feeling good about my body) was around age 14/15. Even then, I had some hints of being over cautious about how much I ate and did go through many phases of calorie counting. As a result of all that I don’t know what my adult mindset is like without an eating disorder. I’ve never been in that place, and I’m scared of what it’d be like.

I remember reading somewhere that anorexics wanted to stay physically and mentally children, and part of me does want that. It is simpler like that; yet at the same time I love being independent and following my own ambitions…. conflicted, as always.

Today feels ok.

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When I get to the end of the day and come to blogging, or reading, or lying in bed thinking, I always kinda summarise the day… you know, has it been good or sad or terrible etc.

Today was ok. This has been determined by how organised and controlled food stuff was and how negtaively I felt about my body. These days, other worries are solely expressed through my ed feelings or behaviours, which is why that is all my summary entailed. I suppose it is sad that my whole life gets whittled down to how I felt about eating and whether or not I felt fat. 😦

I don’t feel sorry for myself as such, but I don’t feel like things are going too great for me either. I’m trying to remind myself that having this illness isn’t my fault, but that’s quite difficult when it feels like it most definitely is! It’s ME that pushes people away, it’s ME that snaps and feels awkward with my family, it’s ME that persists in being obsessive and it’s ME who is up right now in order to exercise.

So yeh..trying to be positive, but “ok” was the best I could do.

Nobody ever gets the full story.

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I feel so alone- partly because I actually am right now! But seriously, nobody ever hears me say the WHOLE truth. My housemates know I have an eating disorder, but they don’t understand what that entails. and sitting in my room crying because  was unable to make myself sick isn’t exactly something I want to explain. 

I just hate that my whole life is a limited bubble of activities, dictated by how I’m feeling about food and my body at a particular moment in time. I am exhausted, stressed and still have to make myself exercise. I don’t care about myself right now and I would be a burden to someone if I were to call someone to talk. Why do I do this to myself?