Dancing. Laughing. Baking. Travelling. Partying. Family. Friends. Music. Concerts. Loving. Sleeping. Food. Living. The list of things that I have just written are reasons for me to recover from anorexia. This list is used as a constant reminder of a life worth recovering for. To some people the things on this list might be a little mundane. But for me they are all a reason to recover. They are all things I used to take for granted before my eating disorder but am now very grateful for.

The saddest thing for me was that I had to hit rock bottom verge of death before realising that I didn’t want to live the rest of my life crying over food, hating my body. However I am able to look back on my experience and be thankful as it made me a stronger person. I will never be grateful for my eating disorder but I will be thankful because without it I wouldn’t be the person I am today that’s for sure.

My story began at a very young age. I always kinda thought I was that “chubby” friend. So I thought a little diet wouldn’t harm anyone, it was never anything extreme until a few months into my first year at high school. My behaviour towards food slowly started to become more extreme. My entire life from then became this obsession over food and my body image. I planned all of my meals down to every calorie. I cut out so many foods I used to enjoy especially what I classed as “junk food”. At the start it was hard I was constantly hungry, craving for food but eventually the feeling of hunger and pain stopped. I got better at saying no, at lying, at hiding my food. The hard part was once I started I couldn’t stop.

It took me a while to realise how lost in my eating disorder that I had become. I then began to see everything I had lost. My Friends. My Family. My Motivation. My Personality. My smile. My Life. Enough was enough I couldn’t live like this anymore. As hard as it was for me, I agreed to see a doctor and get help. Only then did I realised what a scary world I had entered so close to saying goodbye for good. Recovery was not easy for me at all. Unfortunately I had to get worse before I could get better. I had strived for this “perfect body” for so long and now I was gaining weight again. I was physically getting better but mentally struggling with this change.

However here I am, I made it to the other side. Through this journey I learned a lot about myself, I learned there was forgiveness to give and receive, I learned who my true friends were, I learned there is always hope but most of all I slowly started to learn to accept myself and love myself for who I am.

 

The day I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa I was five and half stone fighting for my life and I will admit it was probably one of the hardest days for me. When that doctor told me that my organs were on the verge of shutting down, that I was putting too much strain on my heart and that I was lucky to be alive as one more week and I wouldn’t have survived. That was probably the hardest thing to come to terms with as a 13 year old that I had been killing myself by trying to survive at the same time.

The next thing I’m about to say will probably make people very angry at me but a part of me knew I had an eating disorder. A lot of you are probably wondering why I didn’t reach out for help sooner but I was 11 years old confused and lost. I didn’t know what I was doing or how to help myself nor did I really want to. I was an 11 year old girl struggling to come to terms with my weight and the way I looked. At that age all I wanted to be was skinny, no matter the consequences. If I was skinny people would like me more and I’d have more friends, If I was skinny I’d be prettier, If I was skinny my life would be complete. People reading this are probably thinking that those statements are so far from the truth but sadly for me at that age and that time in my life those statements were everything I believed and thought.

I lost a good part of my childhood scared of food and calories. Before eating anything I would count every calorie. Most days I would plan what I would eat for the whole day in the morning so I knew my calorie content for that day and usually it wouldn’t go above 500 calories, there was the odd bad days where maybe I ate 700 calories on a very rare day but that would come with so much self hatred and tears for those extra 200 calories. I remember if I thought I had eaten too many calories, I would hashtag foods on instagram like ben and jerrys, pizzahut, mcdonalds etc, so I could see people were eating more calories than me and this was a coping mechanism for me that I did everyday to allow me to be okay with eating 500 – 700 calories. One of the saddest things for me was when I saw the foods I used to really enjoy and physically couldn’t eat it because of how scared of the calories I was. Imagine living a life scared to eat your favourite foods due to a fear of being “fat” at the age of 11 all the way up to 15.

There is so much more to an eating disorder than not eating or making yourself sick. There is the self hatred that allows you to think you deserve your eating disorder because you’re “fat”, “ugly”, “worthless”. It is this feeling where you feel alone in a crowded room, you can have so many friends and family around you but your eating disorder makes you feel so isolated. Eating disorders are not something you just get over by eating, the fear of food is a genuine fear it is just like a fear of flying or a fear of spiders.

A part of me was scared to let go of my eating disorder because I didn’t know who I was without it. I’ve always known myself to be the girl who suffers from Anorexia. However 4 years on and I know who exactly I am without my eating disorder. I am beautiful in my own way, I have an amazing hourglass figure and I am happy and you know what I deserve to be. I know my worth now and I will let nobody or anything bring me down the way my eating disorder did ever again!

4 years on and I can tell you with the biggest smile on my face, I’m a survivor from Anorexia Nervosa.

On the 20th of May that will mark 4 years since the day I was hospitalised

So basically I asked if I could do this god spot cause I’m trying to get my confidence up and why not do it through talking about my faith and my belief in God.

Don’t get me wrong my faith for god has not been plane sailing it has been a rocky journey. I wasn’t always a Christian, I didn’t really believe in god when I was younger. But something major happened to me when I was 13. I was hospitalised with anorexia nervosa and was told that I had a week to live before my organs would switch off and no longer work, I didn’t think I was going to make it neither did my mum or my dad. I was at my lowest point in my life and I didn’t know what to do or what was going to happen to me. But god was fighting for me and he gave me the strength to keep going, to fight for my life and with him by my side and holding my hand I was able to make it. That’s when I realised god helped save me for a reason and my faith in god became stronger than ever. Not gonna lie in the last few years my faith for god has been on a rocky journey as not long after my diagnosis of anorexia, I began to recover and gain weight. I then became severely depressed and I hated myself, I hated the way I looked, the way I spoke, what my body looked like, I hated it all and thought I was better off dead. I was diagnosed with low mood aka depression. I didn’t know how I was going to get better. It felt like I was drowning gasping for air but god grabbed my arms and pulled me out and he showed me as long as I have faith he will never let go, he will always love and care for me. I really needed him at that point in my life and he was there ready to save me.

I know that faith can be a hard thing as stuff happens in your life that well upsets you and truly breaks your heart and you begin to wonder if god loved you why did he do that and I understand I’ve been there but all that I can say is that god does everything for a reason and the reason may be hard to see at first but there is always a reason behind everything he does, he has never stopped loving you. For me god has put me through so much tears and heartache but he knew it would make me a stronger person and it has because I know I can do anything if I put my mind to it, I am stronger than I believe and so is my faith for god.

Hey guys so I’ve not wrote a blog in a while and I thought what better way to kick off 2018. So in this blog I’m gonna put stuff in here which may upset people as I’m opening up about everything and some things I’ve never said before so here it goes😘

I never thought I would make it to 2016 at one point in my life never mind 2018. After a really hard few years with more tears and sadness than happy times. It’s no wonder I went through a dark time in my life and allowed not only others to bring me down and destroy me as a person but I allowed myself to do just the same. Which hurts to think that I was tearing down, destroying myself. I couldn’t help it, once I started, I couldn’t stop.

I’m addicted to Anorexia and I know I shouldn’t be and I know the best thing for me is to let it go b b but I just can’t, Anorexia was there for me when no one else was, when I felt like I had nobody and I wasn’t loved, Anorexia stood by me and made me feel a little less lonely, what can I say I bonded with an eating disorder and if I let go what then when people start to leave me, I will tell you I will be alone and have nobody again. I can’t let go of anorexia no matter how much I try to I just can’t do it, no matter how close I was to death at least I wouldn’t be lonely.

When I was hospitalised I lay in the hospital bed with my mum next to me. Both of us with tears in our eyes because I was told I only had a week to live before my organs would start to shut down and I would no longer be kirsty graham I would just be a memory to all of you. That hit hard to my family especially my mum as I was her only child and before me she had a miscarriage. I didn’t think I was gonna make it to Christmas 2015, I thought I was gonna die because of how far I took my anorexia I tried to kill Myself with it and as much as I wanted to stop I couldn’t it wouldn’t let me, anorexia took over my life and wouldn’t let me stop and it took me as far as it could and if I didn’t get the help I needed i may not be here writing this to you, I would have been that girl who starved herself to death because she just wanted to be liked, to be good enough, to feel something more than pain.

But I made it to 2018 and as I look back on my journey I am learning to love myself again, learning to be happy, learning to be independent. Because I am so glad I have made it to 2018 because I have met some amazing people on this journey and I am so grateful to have them in my life or even have them for a little part of it. This journey has taught me that I will grab happiness when I see it and I won’t let go. After this experience (which is it not over yet)it has made me strive to be a mental health nurse to help people who are like me, who deserve to be happy.

P.S I cried writing this ❤️x

 

Imagine starving yourself for so long that your brain is telling you how normal it is, that everyone does it. That you refuse to eat because you want to be skinny yet your brain is playing tricks on you, telling you that you are fat and showing you distorted images of yourself to keep you from eating. It is at this point on an anorexic patients journey that the procedure known as ‘force-feeding’ sometimes occurs. This is a highly controversial medical intervention: medical experts claim it is essential to save a human life, but some patients say it is a breach of their human rights. Roughly one in every hundred women aged between ten and twenty stop to eat and begin to starve themselves to the verge of death, bringing the issue of force feeding further under the spotlight.

Most people suffering from anorexia cannot form an independent and rational judgement regarding the consequences. Last month a judge from New Jersey granted guardianship to the parents of a young wonan suffering with the eating disorder arguing that their daughter is incapable of making independent medical decisions. This makes it easier for the parents to be in control of treatment decisions for the young woman, which does include the option of force feeding. Force feeding can save the lives of individuals who are suffering severely with anorexia. It is a legal procedure and the treatment is provided under the mental health legislation. A study carried out by eating disorder hope in 2015 has shown that the brain of a sufferer of the eating disorder anorexia works differently compared with how a healthy brain should work. Schlesinger, a mother whose daughter died of anorexia gives us an insight into how her daughter’s brain worked: “They don’t see themselves as what they really look like, when a person with anorexia who is emaciated looks in the mirror, they see fat, they get anxious, and it’s very real for them”, she said. Malnutrition accompanies eating disorders, and it has been proven that it shrinks the brain and affects the cognitive function, which then interferes with the persons ability to acknowledge the necessity of treatment.

However, on the other hand, force – feeding may only be successful for a short period – of time or may not be successful at all in some cases which is then a waste of time and has put the individual through a traumatic experience for no reason at all. A leading judge who sits in the court of protection has said that a medical student who suffers very severely from anorexia nervosa and is at a life threatening weight, should be force fed against her wishes by doctors. But a member of the British Medical Associations Ethics Committee says, “ The implications of force-feeding are really significant because she would need restraining or sedation and the treatment would last a year…. it might not succeed and itself is life threatening. To impose that on a patient who might be competent in refusing treatment is a major step”. These words show clearly that force – feeding is not a decision to take lightly.

Saving the lives of individuals who suffer from anorexia nervosa is more important than their dignity. There are so many other medical procedures used regularly that could be deemed ‘undignified’; for example stomas, chemotherapy etc. These procedures are considered to compromise patients’ dignity because they have possible side effects such as baldness, yet they save lives everyday just like force – feeding. Everyone’s life has a purpose, their story is important, their dreams count, their voice matters, they were born to make an impact. Imagine if that was your daughter, son, brother, sister, mum, dad, auntie, uncle starving themselves to death, that the only way to save their life was to force – feed them. Imagine you had the option between saving their dignity or their life. Without thinking about it, you would choose to save their life rather than choose their dignity because you would not want to see your loved one dead. Schlesinger tells us what she thinks: “You have to do everything and anything to try to save your child, even if it means getting a conservatorship to make sure that they get the proper treatment”. Her passion highlights that force – feeding should not be dismissed as an option.

But then again, many people claim that force – feeding is an unethical procedure. Doctors and Judges walk a fine ethical line when deciding if people with eating disorders should be treated against their own wishes. If you decline life saving treatment for cancer, that is your right to do so. If you have a substance abuse disorder or you are an alcoholic, nobody will force you to go to rehab unless you have been caught breaking the law. So what does it take for an individual to be forced to go through medical treatment against their own wishes and beliefs. There will have to be an expectation that the treatment has a good chance of success; ineffective care given against the wishes of a patient suffering with anorexia cannot be justified ethically.

Yet such treatment may be the only way forward to address the psychological problem. Some psychotherapists insist that there is a necessity for immediate weight gain in order to help a patient who is suffering with anorexia nervosa to open up and be able to be eligible for talking therapy. Some of the patients who were very severely underweight and at a critical stage were then force fed by a doctor. Many of these patients, even the ones who viewed force feeding as an ordeal, ended up being very thankful and acknowledged this as the first step of their recovery. This is what one of the anorexic patients who were force – fed has said about her battle: “Now looking back, I simply couldn’t see the wood for the trees, for I didn’t then want a life. However, now three years further on, I can see tube feeding is the last resort with the person’s best interests. Without the help of the tube I know I wouldn’t be here now”. This suggests that force – feeding is in the long term interests of the patient, even though they may not appreciate this at the time.

Conversely it has also been said that force feeding could lead to other severe mental health issues such as depression and anxiety due to the trauma from force feeding. However this could lead to the individuals having to go through more medical treatment such as counselling, drugs and therapy which then prolongs the trauma. “The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that up to 75 percent of those with an eating disorder also suffer from depression or anxiety.” This shows that force – feeding has a very high chance of leading to other mental health disorders. So is it really worth force – feeding to stop one mental health disorder, to start another?

In conclusion I neither agree or disagree as there has been valid points made for both sides of the argument. Some individuals who suffer with anorexia can’t make rational and independent decisions themselves as malnutrition and anorexia have been shown to shrink the brain, It could be the only way forward to help treat anorexia physically and mentally because eating food becomes a true fear to individuals it’s like a fear of spiders or flying no matter how many graphs and statistics that show flying is safer than driving, that fear will still be there. But on the other hand it may lead to more mental health problems like depression and anxiety which then leads to the patients having to go through more medical treatment like therapy and counselling. So what will it be life or death?

 

 

Before you start reading let’s get some back up music like they do in films, I think I didn’t know my own strength by Whitney Houston or Warrior by Demi lovato or Who you are by Jessie J, will go well with this blog as they describe me and my experiences

I always thought losing my gran at the age of 5 was gonna be the hardest thing in my life ever. I didn’t realise that 6 years later the hardest thing ever would be looking at myself in the mirror without crying. Then 4 years later the hardest thing would be being happy and enjoying life. I didn’t realise how hard life was going to be otherwise I would’ve just wished my parents had an abortion unlucky for me and then I’m here breathing.

I feel so bad for my mum having to put up with my dad who is honestly one of the biggest dicks I have ever met, my mum deserves so much more but not just that she has had to help me through recovery of anorexia and still does and wow she deserves an award that amount of times I’ve cried into her arms cause I didn’t want to eat anymore, the amount of times I told my mum that I wished I was dead and not once did I think about how my mum would feel that her only child wished she was dead, I’ve treated her so bad and that breaks my heart because she has a broken child and bully of a husband and now she suffers with depression and it’s my fault and I can’t help her like she has helped me.

I’ve not had a proper childhood I have suffered with Anorexia and depression since I was 11 and by 13 I developed anxiety and where am I now? Well if my hair isn’t the way I want it, I won’t go out and I start crying because I’m scared everyone will judge me and talk about me behind my back and most days before school I cry because I know I’m ugly and I think everyone is going to be talking about me behind my back saying how ugly I am and I am always scared that everyone will comment on my weight and call me fat and I panic so much before going to school because people are so judgemental. I won’t go into a shop or restaurant first because I don’t want people looking at me.

When it comes to me and food well I won’t eat food unless I know the calories and I won’t eat more than 500 calories for each meal and sometimes/most of the  time I will skip atleast one or two meals because I’m scared I’m gonna get fat and my biggest phobia is gaining weight but nobody realises how much this impacts me like I’m 15 and I cry so much over food because I’m so scared of being fat and I know other people are like that but I will stop eating for weeks on end and skip so many meals just to be skinny. Nobody realises how I feel and how much this impact me before I eat anything I check the calories and say it’s like pretzels are 90kcal but a small bag of popcorn is 123kcal and if I prefer popcorn I will eat the pretzels cause there lower in calories and that’s how my brain works. I would rather starve myself and become skinny and if I die I die than gain weight and that’s the honest truth the only reason I’m eating now is because of my mum

When it comes to me and depression, there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t wish I wasn’t here, it would make my mum a lot happier and her life so much easier. I just wish every time I looked in the mirror I didn’t hate what I saw. I guess that’s life. But the question is would anyone cared if I killed myself, I doubt it. But the sad part is I know this is how my mum feels and it breaks my heart because it’s my fault I’ve ruined her life and that’s will forever be on my conscious.

 

 

I don’t really know where to start so much has happened since sharing my last blog so I will start with some really big news

I got discharged from my therapy and yet that is really good news but I can’t help but worry because what if I am not better and I get even worse then I’m back to square one and I’m on my own again but on the other hand I am discharged I’m clearly moving in the right direction even if it’s only one footstep and I couldn’t be prouder of myself. But I am scared because my family and friends are so proud I got discharged but what if I muck up and I disappoint them what then, I can’t keep disappointing everyone around me.

in more news I don’t think my Anorexia is ever going away, I guess I already knew this but I kinda was hoping that it wasn’t true and it would eventually go but I guess I was wrong. I don’t really remember my life without my Anorexia which makes me so sad. All I ever think about is how many calories every piece of food is and if I eat a bit of junk food then I can’t eat dinner and if I do have dinner it has to be under 200 calories. I’m 15 and food scares me I thought I was so in control but I’m not Anorexia still takes over my life and it will always take over my life but it’s okay, I’m used to it

I’ve honestly kinda given up a little not gonna lie, I thought I was okay, I thought I could beat my Anorexia and depression but I was so naive how could I beat it when I hate myself and everyone around me hates me, I am alone and I just want someone to love me and care about me but nobody does, nobody stays for long I’ve worked that out. I am not okay and I guess that’s okay because I haven’t been okay for quite a while but nobody really noticed becase nobody cares about  me and that’s okay there is better things to worry about. I know I’m not good enough, I know I’m not pretty enough, I know this all.

Whenever I think I’m getting my life back on track and I feel better about myself, something always brings me back down to the bottomless pit of my self love and I wonder to myself why it happens to me why do I deserve not to be happy, why do I always have that gimpse of hope taken away from me, I clearly deserve to have depression and anorexia as I am such a horrible person. I always wondered If I cry long enough for someone to notice or hear maybe someone might try and save me but nobody ever does. I’ve now given up.

And if you are reading this I promise you I’m fine and I will only say im fine because I am

I guess everything happens for a reason, but when your life starts to crumble and implode you begin to wonder why me? I will let you in to a little secret, my life was boring. There was nothing to write about. Nothing exciting had happened in my life. Until……..

Until one day my life changed completely. I tell people that I’m not sure when it all changed, but that’s a lie. I know exactly when it all changed, and how, but I don’t see what telling doctors and therapists is going to do. It all changed because of a so called friend introducing me to calories. She began to obsess about them, always analysing about how many calories food had in it. Yet she still ate foods that were high in calories. She didn’t care. But she planted a seed in my head. I would go home and, before I ate anything, I would check how many calories it had in it. I counted every single calorie I ate and then burned them off. At first it wasn’t bad. I just cut down a little on the junk food, nothing major, but that phase didn’t last. I was so fixated over calories, especially how much I ate that day. All my brain thought about was calories and when I was going to next eat: breakfast – cereal with a little drop of milk = 250 calories; lunch – small ham baguette = 200 calories; dinner –  a Marks and Spencer’s low-calorie ready meal = 200 calories, exercise = 200 calories. Total = 450 calories. Sometimes I would eat pudding, but pudding for me is different from you. My pudding would be a ten-calorie jelly that would last me over an hour as I savoured it. My plan would be that, the longer I took to eat it, the less chance of me being hungry later and wanting more food to add to my calorie count. I made sure I ate under 700 calories a day and starved myself of the nutrients that I needed. I was hungry at first, but then I got used to the feeling of always being hungry. I won’t lie to you the feeling of hunger never left but you get used to it and learn to live with it.

My life wasn’t as simple as counting calories though. It came with a lot more difficulties. This experience came with thoughts, thoughts that weren’t welcome but decided to stay. I began to look at myself in a different way and decided I didn’t like what I could see. I could see this ugly, spotty, fat girl standing in front of me and, every time I looked in the mirror, I saw that girl and I just couldn’t bear to look in the mirror or even at myself without being so disgusted at the girl looking back at me. I would grab my fat and push it in and pull it about and think about how skinny I could be. I was only eleven and I hated myself so much. I wanted to change the way I looked; I wanted to be skinnier and prettier. Maybe if I was, people wouldn’t hate me so much. Maybe people would accept me then. Maybe my friends might actually like me. I felt so alone, as if I had nobody to talk to. So I controlled the one thing I could. My eating.

As you may have guessed, I suffer from an eating disorder, Anorexia Nervosa to be specific. I am now fifteen and I was diagnosed with Anorexia at the age of thirteen. Anorexia is one of those conditions you may see a TV character suffering with, and you feel so bad and you can’t imagine how that character may be feeling and you feel so sorry for the character. But you think that will never happen to you. That’s what I used to think until I was diagnosed with it. It came as a shock to me and my family. However everyone around me could see it was happening. They could see I was slowly killing myself. I became so skinny you could see my ribcage very clearly without me breathing in; I had no fat around my bones and I was still losing weight at this point, still starving myself because I still saw fat around me. But nobody else saw this fat. Just me. I was so cold every day. Even on sunny days I would be wrapped up because I was freezing. At nights, after school, I was so cold that I would wear my cozy, fluffy pyjamas including fluffy socks, with a onesie over that, with a jumper over that and I was still cold so I would sit next to my radiator to get warm. But as soon as I moved away from the radiator, I would be freezing again. My hair would come out in clumps and I would cry my eyes out because I thought I was going bald and I didn’t realise why this was happening. I would cook really high-calorie foods for friends and family but never ate it myself because it felt good to see others eating calories and I wasn’t. It was empowering that I could be next to food and not have to eat it.

I was hospitalised on the 20th of May 2015, my ‘half birthday’. The journey to the hospital was nerve-wracking. I didn’t understand what was going on. There was nothing wrong with me, so why was I going to hospital? I was so confused. When I arrived, the nurses slipped a patient identifier on my emancipated arm. I was officially ill. Soon after, I was approached by the head of the department and she confirmed my worst fear. I was dying, I was killing myself. It was a form of suicide. I just kept thinking that I was going to be with my gran up in heaven sooner than expected. About seventy years sooner than expected. I looked over at my mum with tears in her eyes and I promised myself that I wouldn’t die this way and not this young. I was discharged a few days later to recover in my own home with the support of an eating disorder nurse and my mum and yeah, recovery was so scary. Eating more calories, getting my blood taken twice, sometimes three times a week-but most of all, I didn’t get to see anyone. Life grew really difficult for me. I became severely depressed, wanting to end my life, wishing that everything would just stop, all the thoughts and feelings. But most of all I wanted to stop gaining weight. I had strived to lose weight for so long and now my worse nightmare was happening-I was putting weight on. I would cry myself to sleep as I just wanted it all to end.

Fortunatley, with the support of my eating disorder nurse and my mum, I eventually emerged from that long tunnel of despair. Looking back now at all the challenges I have faced in the past two-and-a-half years, I sometimes feel overwhelmed, but then I remind myself how far I’ve come. The way I do this is to look at the wristband, bearing my name, that I wore in hospital: it is the symbol of the part of my life that I am eager to put behind me. I cannot claim that my battle against the demon of anorexia is over, but what I have come to terms with through this journey is that anorexia is my disease it doesn’t define me as a person, it is not who I am. I will always have anorexia in my life but its about learning to control it and not let it take over.

 

 

 

Dear Anorexia

You have been with me for 4 years now. I wonder everyday why you chose to live inside me. You came into my life four years ago and now you don’t seem to want to go. There is nothing else I can give you, I already gave you my life, I fed your thoughts with not feeding myself, I did everything you told me to do. So why, why can’t you go away now? You destroyed every single part of me, you destroyed me so much that I was no longer myself, I was a monster created by anorexia. I was 11 years old but you didn’t care and you still don’t. All I thought about was food and calories and how fat I was every second of the day. I was ELEVEN, ELEVEN I should have been worrying about boys not food and how many calories I ate that day, I should have been hanging out with my friends not worrying just in case we went out because I didn’t know if I was going to eat and if so how many calories were in each meal. You have damaged me so much, because of you I find it hard to trust everyone, because of you I’m afraid to let people in, they see what I let them see. I show everyone this strong, confident, brave, tough girl but I’m not I am not of that, I am lonely, sad, weak, damaged but I don’t blame you Anorexia, I blame myself for letting you in, for helping you destroy me. I was just a body to you, I was just a body you lived in nothing more, nothing less, you controlled everything I did, you used me for my body. You nearly killed me, I was on the verge of death. What then if you killed me, what would happen to you? You would kill yourself not just me but that’s okay because you don’t care about me, you only care about my body. As an eleven year old I thought you were my friend, what a naive eleven year old I was, little did I know you were going to be my worse enemy. I’m done with you, I’m done with feeding your thoughts, I will no longer let you control me. I am writing to you to tell you I forgive you anorexia, it’s time I move on from what you have done to me. You are in my past that doesn’t mean you have to be in my future. So I choose to forgive you. So I can move on with my life. You are no longer in control.

Goodbye Anorexia x

So here I am writing another blog and yet again I am not sure how to start it. This blog is about my journey to the person I am today and the person I will be in the future. So here I go as most of you reading this you know my life could have been better a lot better. I have struggled a lot with mental health and I’m fed up with dealing with the shitty thoughts in my head which try and stop me from being happy, I want to live my life again not wish that I didn’t have a life.

The first journey took place on may 20th 2015 and is still an ongoing journey in my life. This is the day I got hospitalised with anorexia nervous oh how much I hate hearing the name anorexia. That was one tough year with so many ups and downs. My journey with anorexia was a rollercoaster, there are day where I want to give up on recovering I feel like what’s the point and there are others days where I’m like I’m going to kick anorexia in the butt and show it who is boss. I guess I struggle a lot with my body image, I have so many insecurities due to this stupid disease. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. What this journey has taught me is that there is so much more to life than just caring about what everyone thinks about me, if they don’t like me then that’s there own problem that’s not mine. This is more to life than anorexia.

My second journey is with depression which is also an ongoing journey. Depression is a harder subject for me to talk about especially when I am just at the start of this journey. Everyday for me is hard with depression because in my mind it’s like I am in a swimming pool and I’m right at the deep end drowning, trying to get air but I can’t cause all the shitty bad thoughts are drowning me, they keep pulling me down and I am trying to keep my head above the water but it’s hard. I am now getting help for my depression because I want to get my life back, I want to go somewhere in my life and right now I can’t see my future because I’m so down that I just want to die but I won’t let that happen to me I am stronger than that. This journey I am on has taught me that life can get better, if you choose to get better and you choose help and you choose to let even one person in, I promise you it is worth it, it is worth being happy, please choose recovery.

As I write these blogs to help other people in a way they help me, they help me get my thoughts out.

I’m on top of the world and I won’t look back, the only way is forward there is no point looking behind me wondering what if I wasn’t like this, what if this didn’t happen because it did and I can’t change anything and I don’t know if I would cause I wouldn’t be the person I am today and I wouldn’t have met the important people in my life