Okay, before I get on with this, I want you to know my chest is pumping a lot. My anxiety is really kicking in. I'm shaking. I'm terrified of what you will think of me, and terrified that I'll be judged. So if this topic randomly disappears in a day or so, it's because of this paranoia I'm having right now. But I've come to terms with this now, and it's time you knew a little something about me.
Admittedly, there are lots of things I hide about myself online, I'm not likely to spill all of them, and some of them I'll probably never spill, but this is one that I think needs to be said, for my sanity. It's probably not going to be a huge shock, as I've told a few people, have given hints in my posts here and there, and have even said it briefly in the mod forums. I'm also probably the one person on this forum that you would have expected this from, since I spend so much time helping Ayray and being positive despite my mental illness. I just want to talk about it and my experience, I could leave the topic at one line but that would be pointless.
I'll try not to ramble on for too long, I'm still a bit nervous as Runouw is not the best place to talk about personal issues, and also in the past when people have talked about feeling down or disturbed we (yes, including me) have complained that it's not necessary to say how you feel. But things changed, and suddenly I didn't want anyone to be silenced from saying what they need anymore. After all, this is called Serious Discussion for a reason, and for the first time ever, I feel that what I'm about to say is serious.
I have an eating disorder.
Yes, that's it. o.o
Well, it's not all, but that is what I've been meaning to say. Surely I must have made it clear a few times, sometimes without even noticing- "No food is best food", "I used to be 130lbs and had a good healthy range" (also how the fack did I know so much about BMI, and why did I advise never to do diets?), "Wow, Ven's problem back then doesn't seem too different than mine right now", "I cried at the part about the eating disorder. You know why, my friend".
So it has, IMO, been fairly obvious for a while now. I'll tell you how this began.
In October 2012, something happened, and it made me crack open like an egg shell. Suddenly my hidden sadness poured out, everyone knew I was depressed, that I was suicidal, I didn't know what to do- keeping it a secret was so much easier. A month later, I just wanted to run away from everything. I won't go into details about what happened, but I started...well, to cut myself a bit. Only it began as scratches. A few months passed, I was happier for various reasons, but the harming never stopped. I tried but I couldn't. Eventually, I did hold myself off, but used other ways of harming to distract me. One of these ways was influenced by something that happened a few mornings before- where I had woken up, had a lot of breakfast in one go, and felt myself about to throw up. I have emetophobia, a vomiting phobia, so I freaked out big time. The next week, I started starving myself, for no particular reason. I just went 3 days without food, it was easy, I didn't want to eat, until I gave in and had lunch that Wednesday, and ate about 2 more lunch equivalents. I didn't realise how hungry I was, but as teachers and lecturers never let you eat in classes, I was already used to hunger pains.
I didn't starve myself again after that. I went back to normal, except I never truly recovered, and was compulsively eating very large amounts every day. I just figured this was normal, and forgot about it. A few months later, I met a guy online (not from Runouw
) who became very abusive, whether or not he knew he was. I couldn't handle it. I felt he controlled me. I had nightmares about it, until I finally cut all ties with him, but the paranoia stayed. I thought every person was stalking me, trying to kill me etc. These lead to me worrying about everything I did, every single breath I took, until finally it made me paranoid about my eating habits. Things have never been the same since. This was around May last year, so as you can see, I've been dealing with these feelings of worthlessness and feeling fat for 9 months, and if you go back to the very beginning, over a year because even when I was younger I remember being satisfied and proud that I had the second lowest BMI of the class.It began with feelings. During the development of my disorder I could barely look in the mirror, I would cover it with my fleece, or look away from a window reflection. When I did, I would complain that I wasn't perfect, that my body stuck out too much. I looked pregnant when I looked down at my stomach. I hated it. I hated it. I still hate it. Ugh ugh ugh. I was so insecure, I could pick a flaw in everything, my lips were too fat, my nose was too nobbly, my tummy was too bloated, my hair was too boring, you name it, I can pick anything that I hate about it. My legs in particular, I hate them so much. Yes I used present tense because I still do hate them, I can't not pull the muscle back and pretend it's not there when I look in the mirror at them now. I thought I liked my arms, but how is that possible, when one of them is covered in hundreds upon hundreds of scars? Part of the development of my eating disorder was overthinking, as I just believed that anything slightly out of the ordinary was a danger sign, so it effectively sped up the process .-.
Mind you there were times where I was back to normal. Middle to end of August for example, and I'd love to say Christmas time, but I think I was overeating to be honest. Recently I guess I've been alright, but I've been waiting for the perfect time to relapse, which was last week. The way I word this makes it seem like the stereotypes of eating disorders are true- "they are a choice", "they are a lifestyle", "they are fake", "they're not even diseases", "that's how models become thin", "anorexia is the most popular disorder". Erm, first things first, whatever happened to bulimia? And, scratch that, whatever happened to the other eating disorders that aren't anorexia? :/ Secondly, they are far from a choice or lifestyle. If you're a model and you want to lose weight and make yourself become anorexic, it's not going to work, that would be disordered eating, not a true eating disorder. A true eating disorder is a life-threatening disease, that you think you can control, but actually it controls you. You might blame yourself sometimes, "oh it's my fault", but that's the illness speaking. Because deep down, it's nobody's fault that you got an eating disorder, except maybe society's.
Now I hate to compare disorders, especially that my disorder is a mixture of all of them (EDNOS, eating disorder not otherwise specified), but the health issues I have from my bulimia cycles have affected me more than the ones I have from my anorexia cycles. Firstly, I terrify myself daily making myself sick, when I have emetophobia for god's sake, secondly I don't even have to force myself to throw up anymore, it just happens as my body rejects nearly every food and drink I intake. All I have to do is tighten my stomach muscles, which believe me is not a good thing. Thirdly, I get dehydrated really easily, which feels like I've failed my infant years because I used to suffer from constant dehydration and soon fixed it myself.
When you mix all that with the cycles I get, when I never want to eat and go through days of starvation and hunger and weighing and wasting days thinking about how low my weight could be if I did crunches all day and night, it makes me a very irritable and a very introverted person, which is unnatural for me. People don't understand that I just can't talk about how I feel any time I like. I am genuinely struggling to regulate my feelings as well as choking on them with every bite of food I take. >_>
Now that I've done my rant, this is the most important bit for me-
I plead you not to judge me. Understand that I'm still me, I'm still ol' Cait from England, that crazy global mod, the one who was first promoted like only 3 FRIGGIN MONTHS after she joined I mean what the ♥♥♥♥, and the one who's level designing style still can't be understood by anyone.
Yes okay, my whole attitudes have changed towards myself and everything around me, but my personality hasn't. I can still be optimistic, I can still be weird and wacky and totally aspie. Sometimes I think about just returning to my old missperfect23 self and be as noobish as ever. But the other thing you have to understand, is that this is really hard for me. I mean, dealing with it is hard of course, but telling you guys about it is another level of hard.
Of course I don't want you to leave this topic and go "omg why did I ever mention the word food in front of Amp" or "I'm never talking to her about Cadbury's chocolate ever again" (yes, I mean you MK). You don't need to be sensitive in that sense. I mean, I can still understand why people like food, I can understand that food is an important part of every day living for you guys. And it's not like I never think about it- my eating disorder means I am constantly preoccupied with it in some way. But please don't mention this in any other topic. Please keep any thoughts you have about it strictly in this one. The rest of Runouw is for me to not think about any of my troubles. c:
If you've got any questions about eating disorders I'd actually be happy to answer them. I still question things myself, but I've learnt a lot about it in the time I've had it. And well, I want to break any stereotypes that people have against them, as whether or not you like them to be, they have the highest mortality rate for any mental illnesses. Anorexia has a mortality rate of 4%, bulimia has 3% and even more shockingly, EDNOS has 5%, which is sad as 50% of all people with eating disorders suffer with EDNOS. :/
Wow this was longer than I expected. But there is no tl;dr so if you're looking for one, get a grip and read the post. (Is hoping I'm not judged... ;_;)
~MP3/Amp
Is logging off lol
