I became eating disordered at fifteen. I neither caught it nor sought it; instead I walked blindly into it, as most of us do. Eating disorders (with the possible exception of compulsive binge disorder) normally begin innocently enough - a few dietary refinements here and there, nothing serious. But the difference between these eating-disorders and regular dieting is that they do become serious. There is no fixed explanation as to why some dieters get eating disorders while others remain at that initial stage. I will not go on at length about the most likely candidates for such a transgression: the control freaks, the abused, the perfectionists, the victims of family conflict... because that won't get any of us anywhere. The question is not so much who are susceptible but why they are. Why are they so much more prevalent in our culture than they were, say, thirty years ago?

I've heard that Kate Moss is the sole reason why so many women spend the majority of their time with their head down the toilet. I've heard that a few more Sophie Dahl's strutting their stuff on the catwalks should put this 'eating disorder nonsense' to rights. I've heard that 'heroin chic' is just the prerequisite to 'anorexic freak'. But, to be honest, that's bullshit. Certainly society's highly idealised body images can trigger a nation full of dieters, but for this alone to the cause one to trancend the world of dieting and enter the realm of eating disorders is impossible. No one would sacrifice their life just for the sake of looking a little more like Kate Moss. They would only sacrifice their life because they couldn't live with being themselves. This self-loathing is embedded much deeper within a person than the superficiality of fashion icons and yet the reasoning behind it varies with each individual. I am still only in the process of discovering my own reasons. One cannot hope to get better without knowing how they got to this sorry state in the first place. Unless the self-loathing is accounted for, it cannot be rectified, and, if it is not rectified you cannot recover - you loathe yourself too much to bestow yourself with such a self-indulgent gift as 'recovery'.

I realise that I have not made much distinction between anorexia and bulimia so far. I suppose that this is because in my mind they are almost one and the same. Like many people, I seamlessly travel between each and yet never quite manage to stop somewhere in the middle - in that grey, uncertain area of 'normality'.

I found anorexia first. There was no one singular event in my life that gave me this particular death wish, but an assortment of contributing factors, many of which I will probably never know. (There is a popular conception that sufferers of eating disorders have, in the past, been abused in some way, leading them to display their feelings of hate and anger toward their aggressor by turning them in on themselves. While this is often the case, it is as often not.)
Spring 1996, boarding school: my diet began. Single-sex boarding schools are often deemed to be breeding grounds for eating disorders, and there are many legitimate reasons why this may be so:

1) The academic pressure can lead to feelings of underachievement and a search for perfection.
2) The lack of autonomy, due to the institution's rigid structure, can lead to a desire to regain some of that lost control over oneself.
3) The single-sex community creates an unnatural environment in which bitchy competetiveness runs riot.
4) The dualistic living: home/school, school/home, makes for a fragile sense of security.
5) The lack of privacy can provoke a need for something that is 'entirely your own'.

Whether boarding school magnified my already firmly ingrained insecurities is debatable, but, nonetheless, by July 1996, the word 'diet' was no longer an apt description for my eating habits.

The voice of obsession begins oh so softly, but, as time goes on, it gains momentum, eventually blotting out everything else in your life. It's this voice that tells you that everything will be just fine once you lose 10lbs and, at first, you really do take it at its word. Yup, once I lose 10lbs everything will be just peachy! However, it's not long before you begin to realise that it is more than thinness per se that you crave. It is the implication of Thin. It's all the emotional longing that you place on Thin. As far as you are concerned, Thinness is the 9th cloud, the final reckoning; it's Nirvana, the very gateway to the stars..

Eating disorders are addictions. You become addicted to their effects. You get a thrill out of that sense of power and the pure adrenalin that kicks in when you are starving. You are full of a frenetic, unstable energy. At first, everything tastes and smells intense. And, the world, once pale and unmemorable is suddenly awash with technicolor when seen through the prism of your starved perception. You believe you are on a higher plane; that you are superhuman.
I began to feel superhuman..
After surviving on meagre portions when everyone else is munching their way through plates filled high, you begin to mock those ignorant enough to believe they need to eat so much. It seems blatantly obvious to you that this is not true. You get up each morning, you work, you exercise, you do not eat, you live.
But you forget what it means to live. You forget that you used to feel alright. You feel like shit now - the novelty wears off - but as far as you are concerned you have always felt this way.

The absolute truism of eating disorders is that you never believe that you are thin enough. I was very thin when I first received treatment, but I certainly did not realise it at the time. Whereas most people set out to lose, say five pounds and then stop, an anorexic sets out to lose five pounds and then says, well, maybe ten pounds. She loses ten pounds and says twenty, loses twenty and says thirty, loses thirty and says forty, loses forty and says fifty, loses fifty and then dies. Oops. She hadn't meant to die. She just wanted to see how far she could go.
She went too far.

My school interrupted my own descent and, before I had a chance to test my limits any further, I was bundled off to some shrinks for assessment.
In the therapy room I am told to talk about my childhood. I ask them if they want to know that I was abused as a child. They ask if I was and I tell them no. They look disappointed. On the scales, I balk at the number, two lbs heavier then my scales at home. I am obliged to correct the error, on principle, and for my pains I find that I am to be weighed, analysed and stuffed daily, "until further notice".

Back at boarding school, I had supervised meals with the school nurse. At first I was deeply mortified by this. My stomach had shrunk so I was genuinely not hungry; besides, I was quite simply afraid of food. Food was more than just food to me. It was ammunition and medication, it was promise and language. But, as richly symbolic food was to me, and as unjust the idea of being forced to eat was, it was also welcome.
I fantasised about food - I tuned in for every cook show, salivated over every cook book - I just did not eat it. However, once the control was taken from me and I had to eat, part of me sighed in relief. I was being made to eat, against my will, so needn't blame myself.

When my body began to come alive again, my appetite followed suit. In fact, it did more than that; in early 1997 I discovered bulimia. I thought that this was the perfect answer: this way I could have my cake and eat it. What is more, I, like most people was not aware that bulimia is much of a problem. I mean we all know the dangers of starving, but bulimia?

Eating disorders, may be caused by a number of external factors but, with time, you internalise them until the eating disorder becomes part of you. This is what makes the disorder so hard to get over, because, to do it successfully, you have to change completely who you are and how you look at the world.
I know that I binge (and then throw up) when I have emotions with which I can not cope. I know that I often use food as a means for distraction and comfort. I know that, conversely, I also use food as a means by which I can effectively say: "Fuck the rules! Let's go wild!" And, when that need to eat comes crashing down over you, you do not think, "Hey, I must be really upset about something. Now let's sit down and think about that." The first thing that springs to mind is FEED ME! and NOW!. It is then that the nauseating realisation hits you: that you are just as uncontrollable as you always secretly suspected you were. And it's armed with this knowledge, that you head back down that well-trodden path, to the bathroom; and redeem yourself.

Bulimia may have been my new-found 'friend', but my anorexic tendencies had not left me either. While bingeing generally occurs behind closed doors, starving is all too public an event, and my school was its audience. After a year of concerned phonecalls home and tedious sessions with a (rather confused) school counsellor, it was decided that ot would probably be bset for me to return home, back to the nest, where I belonged.

As of September 1997, I have been attending an all-girls' day school in London. I settled in quickly and have made many close friends but my eating disorder had still not been supressed. My weight, while admittedly low, had a nasty habit of Yo-Yoing on an almost daily basis. It still does. I swing between bingeing and starving, one as a result of another, trapped in a vicious circle.

I often entertain the idea that if I could just be both happy and thin - or, hell, I could even compromise, how about happy and thin-ish? - maybe then my eating disorder simply would not be an issue anymore. Maybe then I could just 'diet normally' like everyone else. But, deep down, I know that this will not work, in the same way that an junkie deciding to just get high on the weekends will not work. It is an all-or-nothing situation, and I have to let it go. I also know that it will be the hardest thing I shall ever do.

As I write this, I am receiving treatment at one of the country's top eating disorder clinics. Dramatic as it seemed to me when first admitted, I am now beginning to appreciate this chance to finally move on. I am in the process of learning to embrace life rather than avoid it.