Stood knocking at death’s door, decided to choose life
They say that it’s not how old you are that determines how much you know, but where you’ve been.. What I know about life is what I've learned on the road to death, and back to life..
So who am I? I’m 20. I am living in Western Europe. There are a lot of things I could say about myself, but this isn’t a personal homepage, about who I am on the outside, this is a page about how I am on the inside and how I’ve become who I am today. Where I’ve been and where I am now.. Here I will introduce my story in a short version. I will not focus on how I ended up with an ed, how I watered it so it became stronger, because this is not a page about how to become sick, it’s about how to become better, how to become real. But I do see the need for talking a bit about the years together with the ed, for they are the reason for why I decided to let it go!
I was 13 when the ed really entered my life, what started out as low self-esteem, turned into a little diet, ended up as a deadly obsession.. I didn’t realize back then how dangerous this game is, the one I was playing. I didn’t realize that it was more than a diet. I didn’t realize what this game would cost me. I just wanted to lose some weight… But after a while this game turned into a lifestyle, or more a way of dealing with life. When things got bad and life got hard, I turned to the ed, I numbed my feelings by starvation and exercising. I turned of the colors, because I couldn’t like the color of pain, of tears, of loneliness, of anger, of worry, of being scared.. I didn’t see back then that when you turn of your feelings other things disappear also.. My smile, the light in my eyes, the color in my face, my laughter, my hope..
I played my little game and became better and better at it. I thought I fooled everyone, but the only one I really fooled, was myself.. At the age of 15 my life contained lies, exercise, starvation, frustration, loneliness, insomnia, headache and more lies. Not a very glamours life to be living.. Somewhere between feeding the ed, I studied, studied and studied some more. I strived to be perfect. I wanted the perfect body, perfect grades, perfect life, the perfect everything. The only thing I got was a perfect miserable life.. That year was also the year when my parents realized what road I had started walking on. The took me to see a doctor, that gave me a diagnosis, which I didn’t believe, because in my head I couldn't have anorexia.. Anorexia was for thin people, not people like me. But I realize now that at that time I had lost sense of who the person me was.. I didn’t know me.. I only knew the voices of the ed.. The voices of “never good enough” “never thin enough”.. The doctor soon became my worst enemy. I tried to fool him, but I only fooled myself. He sent me to see a therapist, but I “didn’t” have a problem, but I couldn’t be a “rude” patient either, I had to be the perfect patient, so I played by their rules, I smiled, I cried some crocodile-tears, I promised to eat more and tell them if I found it hard to eat what they told me too, I nodded, I wept some more, but I never let anyone in to see how I felt, to see what I dreamed of, to see what goals I had planned to reach.. And I felt so alone, so unloved, so unworthy. I guees it was because I never let anyone into my world, I never let them see me, I never let them love me..
The year from 15 to 18 is filled with a lot of sad memories, of hours spent in the bathroom, so many thoughts about food, fantasies about food, the scale, frustration, studies.. When I look back I have a lot of memories connected to the eating disorder, but there are happy hours also… But they were never as happy as those I’ve had after I let go of the ed… Somewhere between these years I came to a realization that what I was doing was not “normal” and it was a very dangerous way of living… But I felt very lost at that time, I had no sense of who I was. My identity had somewhere along the road become my ed. I didn’t feel like a unique person anymore, my uniqueness was in the ed.. At least I was something, I was an eating disordered person, and without the ed who was I then? I had no clue and I didn’t dare to find out. It was safer to cling on to the ed, it was my lover, my friend, my everything. At that time I thought I was nothing without the ed.. I thought I couldn’t live without the ed.
One year later I saw that I couldn’t live WITH the ed… The ed was slowly killing me.. Spring 2000 I became aware of how miserable I looked. When I saw in the mirror my bones was no longer beautiful. I saw death in them. I felt awful too.. Always cold, never sleeping, always feeling guilty, sad, dizzy, afraid, weak etc.. I decided to play with new cards. In small ways I tried to be more honest with my doctor, I tried to eat more. I thought I was doing better, because I eating more and throwing up less… What I didn’t see back then was that I was standing at the edge.. Managing to balancing it so I didn’t fall over… Until one day…
It was july 2000, I ate, I tried not to purge, I didn’t exericize, I tried to get some sleep. What I forgot was that it was summer, it was hot, I was working like crazy, I was eating more than I had done the last five years, but that was not enough. Yes I was doing better, but my body was so tired of following me on the road I was walking on.. You couldn’t see the sickness written on me anymore, I didn’t feel so bad, my parents thought I was doing better, so did my doctor, and so did I, my body knew better..
I had come home from work and was just going to check my email, before I planned to go and get a goodnight’s sleep. I remember seeing stars and then next thing I remember is laying in the ambulance with needles in both of my arms with a cold fluid entering my veins… Then everything goes black again.. The next scene in my memories is the ER.. “Girl, eighteen, had a seizure with cramps. Didn’t breath for xx seconds. Facecolor when she was found blue. Blood from her mouth.. History of anorexia with purging”.. It was no joke anymore.. That girl was me, I was laying there in the hospital.. What I thought couldn’t happen to me, did happen to me.. Not when I was at my lowest weight, not when I felt worse.. Death came knocking at my door when life was going better, my weight was going up, I was eating… Luckily I didn’t answer that call..
That night in the hospital, feeling afraid and little, laying there under the white sheets listening to the sound of nurses walking outside my door, bloodtests every hour.. That night I realized how suddenly everything can be over, how rare and fragile life is.. That night I realized nothing lasts forever, except love.. That night I took the best, the bravest, the hardest decition ever. I decided to live, to give life a chance..
The following days were filled with many tests, awful and hard questions, many tears, many tough truths to be heard.. I lost the ability to drive for a year and somehow that was the hardest thing for me to face. They didn’t find anything wrong with me medically, and had to blame the ed for the seizure. I had to prove that I was doing better and was in no danger of having another seizure to be allowed to drive again, and I guees that was something that pushed me forward a little bit.. But most of all I was scared.. Scared of dying, but most scared of never really living at all. I felt humiliated, naked, lost, but also a little curious of what was out there.. I still couldn’t believe that it was possible to live without the ed, but I had seen that it was not possible to live with it either. So I just had to dare to give it a try...
I don’t have the answers to how I recovered, I don’t even know if I am recovered. I still say I am in recovery, walking on the road to real life.. I guees somewhere between that night in the hospitalbed and where I am today, at a totally healthy weight and with a happy real smile on my face there has been good days and bad days, day with ed behaviours, days with healthy eating, tears and laughter.. I guees one of the major steps I took was accepting that this is my life, life is now, not when I reach a certain weight. A number on a scale will never make me happy, happiness is something I create. I can never make people love me, but I can love myself and allow others to love me, by showing them who I am, not put on a mask or hiding behind the eating disordered behaviours.. I realized that the perfect body or the perfect weight doesn’t exist, and the perfect anoretic is a dead anoretic. My goal should be becoming perfect imperfect and the only ed that I should have room for is the one in recoverED
That was 6 years ago, when I last had any contact with the eating disorder. Now I'm living my life in a healthy way. I'm healthy and happy! A happy girl at age 23 with a bright future a head.
I've found my path, what I want to do with my life. I am a nurse, and I love it.... I've found peace with my body. I've got female curves, so what? I was a female last time I checked,so then it's okay with curves!
I havn't been stepping on a scale for years, and I feel no need to and have no plans to ever do that again. Why should I? It's just a number and I won't let that number determine my worth. I'm more than a number, actually I'm not that number at all.. That number is just saying something about what there is in me of muscles, organs,veins and so much more... And I won't starve that away anymore... I won't starve me and my life away.. I've been there, done that and I didn't like it...
©Shinyflower
Back to index
Email: lillebie@europe.com
