I want to tell you a story. A story of a heartbreaking and destructive illness. A story of a girl and her battle with anorexia. She doesn’t know how it started or why. But it did happen, and it happened to her. She was in her teens and she had already been suffering a history of self-harm, overdoses and drinking too much. However, she remained the quiet, sensible girl in the corner of the room who no one ever noticed. She never really did like herself.
She had her good moments of course, where everything is perfect and rosy. When her friends and family surrounded her. She smiled, laughed, and enjoyed and embraced life. She let go of all the imperfections in her world. For a few perfect moments she was happy, even if it only lasted for a moment. She was a bright girl and let no one down. So what went wrong?
She felt things were happening too fast. She was soon to be sitting her GCSE’s meaning she was no longer a child. She was now entering the big wide world, and it scared her. She would fail her exams, like she failed everything in life. She wasn’t confident, she had little self-esteem, did anyone truly like her? Did they all think the same as her, was she a failure?
She decided to prove everyone wrong. She was determined to be rid of the title “troubled girl.” The girl who got drunk at school. The girl who took an overdose. She wanted to show people that she was strong; she had total control over her life. She wanted to show them that she was better, she was happy, she was perfect.
So she decided to do the very thing that soon would put her life in danger. She didn’t know how far it would go of course. Just an innocent diet. Lose those few extra pounds. Look radiant, feel radiant, and be radiant. Why should weight loss show the world that she was happy? To show she had self-control? Or maybe she wanted to feel better about herself. She’s still looking for the answer.
But it didn’t start as any other diet. She took it too far. She wanted to lose weight too fast and the only way she could think of doing this was by starving her body. She began to exercise and restricted herself to only one meal a day. She was going to lose weight for going back to school, then stop. Return to normal eating and carry on as normal. Or so she thought. Little did she know that she was letting an unwelcome visitor into her life. A visitor that would turn her life upside down, destroy her inside and out, tearing away every last strip of her being.
As the days went by, the numbers on the scale decreased. Only slightly at first, so she increased her persistence. More exercise, less food. The visitor was now making itself comfortable in her body, taking over her thoughts. She was unaware of this of course. The visitor soon turned into a friend who whispered lies in her ear. It told her that she was fat and if she ate she would get fatter. If only she stays away from food, making sure she becomes thin. By not eating, she was in-control. She was soon to be the most perfect, superior person in the world.
As the weeks passed by, she was losing weight even faster. Unaware, the demon inside her grew stronger. When she did challenge the demon and eat, it would scream at her. It overwhelmed her with the feeling of guilt and told her she was a failure, a bad person and she had no self-control. However in reality, she was becoming weak. The demon was now taking control. It made her do things that she believed would make her a better person. It forced her into the bathroom, where it made her place her fingers at the back of her throat, and bring back the small amount of food she had eaten. It gave her a false realisation that she was strong, and that by restricting and losing weight she was a perfect human being.
Still unaware of her new friend, she carried on with her destructive behaviours in secret. Little did she know that the thing taking over her body and her mind was an eating disorder. It was not only destroying her emotionally, but also destroying her physically. She spent her days in school walking around in a daze. She had no energy and had constant headaches and dizziness. Her mind was constantly on food, calories and exercise. She had no time for her friends or her schoolwork. Her grades were slipping and she detached herself from the people around her. So much for showing the world that she was ‘better.’
