Progress Update

It’s been a struggle to keep down 3 meals plus snacks. Or to even force myself to eat on a regular basis. I’ll admit to skipping a few meals and still having the odd urge to bring it all back up, but I’m obviously doing something right because I have so much energy and for the first time in over a year I have had a period. I know it seems disgusting to be happy about something like that. But when you think about it, it means that my body is finally nourished and doesn’t need to be in ‘starvation’ mode where it cuts off the production of certain hormones in attempt to save itself from losing vital nutrients. I’ve stopped worrying about that little number that pops up on the scales that used to dominate what I would eat and how much I would exercise. Instead I’m focusing on healthy eating and regular exercise. I’ve grown so tired of Ana and Mia controlling my every move that I hardly hear their voices urging me on back down the rabbit hole and back to starvation. I’ve learnt that I am the one to save myself, no matter what my family, friends, dietitians or psychiatrists tell me, I am the only one who can make the change.

-Love Alice xx

The War Between Logic and Obsession.

With my two best friends by my side the quest for perfection continued. I started restricting and vomiting anything else. I ended up losing 6kgs in a week, something I would have once been proud of, but instead I ended up feeling worse than ever. Along with this I started to develop anxiety and had my first of a series of panics attacks. First you lose your breath and no matter how much you breathe it’s still not enough, then the room feels as though it has collapsed onto you and there’s no escape, with your heart racing one hundred miles an hour and your body in an uncontrolled state of shaking, it seems like an ordeal that will never end, or one that will result in your death. Needless to say, the first time I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.
The anxiety got so bad I couldn’t leave the house and spent most of my days in bed watching tv. For me this was a huge turning point, I had just started studying for my degree and was missing so many classes that I was on the path to failure. This motivated me to seek help from a psychiatrist. At first I rebelled against the idea of telling some stranger my embarrassing history with food. I was ashamed at the types of food I had been shoveling into my mouth and more at what had been coming out.
Today was my first appointment with a local dietitian, about a month after I started my weekly appointments with the psychiatrist and to be honest it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been slipping back into my old habits, back to Mia and Ana. I know it’s all in my mind, but they always appear to love me unconditionally, they’re always there with open arms just begging me to come back to them. It makes recovery hard to stick to. It’s a constant war in my mind between logic and obsession, one where the enemy has the unfair advantage.

I’ve added a photo of myself as I am to date; 60kgs, reasonably healthy, but still stuck in the clutches of Ana and Mia. Hopefully after a week of what the dietitian calls ‘mechanical eating’ (3 small meals and 2 snacks a day) I will be able to start winning this war.

-Love Alice xx

Meeting Ana

Naturally things ended, and obviously on a sour note. I thought I would feel relieved, free even. But I felt more trapped within the hell that was my mind. I cried and slept for what felt like an eternity. The truth is, at that point I wanted to live less than ever.
No one really knew what was going on, except that I never smiled and my weight had plummeted to 49kgs, as someone who is 5’6 it was well under the recommended BMI.
I had made a friend named Ana, and boy was she the best friend I had ever had.
Ana was there, 24/7 telling me I was doing well, that the pain I was feeling was the feeling of control, that for the first time in 3 years I controlled my own life.
The downward spiral continued until my mother finally got me to reluctantly agree to see a counselor, thinking that I was depressed and that my weight loss was due to the stress of the breakup.

The road to recovery was short lived. I had lost most of my friends and had no one to turn to. And soon food became my best friend. I started eating anything and everything I could get my hands on. Indelibly I made myself sick in doing so. Soon the weight began to pile on and I hit rock bottom the day the scales read 66kgs. My heart was broken; I had lost my beautiful Ana and replaced her with some sickening fat person I could no longer recognize.
I freaked out over the weight gain, but I had become obsessed with food, it was my comfort, my only friend. I wasn’t eating to live, I was living to eat.
This was the day that I met Mia. She was as much as a friend as she was an enemy. The never-ending circle of binging and feeling guilty lead me to stick my fingers down my throat so often that it soon became an instinctive reaction to vomit after I had eaten, binge or no binge.
My desperate hopes to eat and not put on weight also meant that I wasn’t losing the weight I had previously put on. So I took an alternative root and started going to a personal trainer. However my lack of strict healthy dieting and continuous binging created another never-ending circle that took me nowhere but back to where I had started. Back to Ana.

This was me at my heaviest of 66kgs after battling with binging and befriending Mia

This was me at my worst of 49kgs (Photo was taken for my art folio which was a reflection of my depression)

Alice and the Rabbit

I didn’t realize what it was. I didn’t realize what he truly was. He was the villain and I was the damsel in distress. What people don’t see is the malicious, cruel joker behind the beautiful blue eyed, exotic exterior. No one ever wins because he controls the game. A web of lies that draws you in. The beauty, the feeling of security and loyalty, of feeling you are wanted. That’s when the game begins. First comes the lies, then the cheating, followed by more lies until you are left on the ground crying, trapped, because there is no escape, there is no leaving. Not until the master tires of his game and you are tossed aside, like a broken toy. I didn’t realize that what I had was not love, it was not lust, it was abusive. I slowly fell into the rabbit hole, but unlike Alice it was no Wonderland. It was a destructive chaotic mess. The emotional torment took its toll and soon became so unbearable that I looked for other options, other ways to escape my tormentor.

Regrettably I stole my mother’s codeine to get high and feel numb. I then took to drinking because it lifted my spirits until I didn’t care about anything. When the rush stopped being enough I took to more, harmful escapes. Some people see self harm as a pathetic cry for help. But what they don’t know is that the physical pain overrides the emotional, even if it is just for a moment. It’s still a moment of pure peace and perfection where nothing exists. There’s just emptiness, free of pain, guilt and the heartache that is your life. It wasn’t just cutting that I subjected my body to. As the cheating and lies continued, my self-esteem went on a downward spiral and so was the birth of hatred towards my body and what I saw in the mirror. I soon became unsatisfied with cutting, as the scars were a constant reminder of the torture I was enduring, both mentally and physically and eventually lead me see my body to be even uglier than it already was. What else would explain his reason for cheating other than ‘I was not good enough’ that I was the one who had to change. And so I ran until my body couldn’t remember how to move, until I basically fainted from exhaustion and all of my bones ached from the stress I was putting my body through. I had found peace. But it was short lived. There was always another girl, another fight, and another reason for me to hate my very existence.

Things soon took a turn for the worse, and what I am to discuss next is still my darkest and deepest kept secret. The one thing that still hurts the most. One night while he was wasted he decided to disgrace my body along with my integrity. I blamed myself for letting it happen, for not being strong enough to push him off and walk out for good. But the truth is, I was powerless, I had nowhere to go; I thought I loved him and that he was entitled to do as he pleased. Someone I was supposed to trust, someone who was supposed to love me, decided to rape me. I tried my best to burry it into the deepest corners of my mind, but it always managed to resurface, and so my quest of self-destruction continued.