my story- how it all started

Let’s stop pretending this is a “monster.” I have anorexia. I starve myself, I purge, I lie to the people who love me, and I nearly died doing it. I was 19 when it started. Not 13. Not 15. Nineteen. Old enough to know better. Old enough to Google. Old enough to understand what starvation does to a body.

 

It didn’t begin dramatically. It began with “being healthy.” Cutting out fast food. Tracking calories. Learning what a calorie even was. Then it escalated — quickly. I started skipping lunch, I avoided “high calorie” foods. Then I only ate dinner. Then I bought scales. Within two months, I lost 25 kilograms. At the time, I told myself I was doing something good. That I was being disciplined. That I was in control. But I wasn’t in control. It was already controlling me.

 

When my doctor referred me to eating disorder services, I still didn’t think it was serious. Because anorexia is deceptive. If you’re not fainting in public, you convince yourself you’re fine. My mum saw me and panicked. I lied to her face, and I ate in front of her to prove I was okay.  I manipulated the situation so she would stop worrying. That’s what this illness does. It turns you into someone who protects the disorder more than the people trying to save you.

 

In January, my dad basically became my full-time carer. He drove nearly an hour every day just to make sure I ate. He cooked every meal. He sat with me while I ate. He supervised me afterwards because he was scared of what I might do. Grown adult. Being supervised like a child. Because I couldn’t be trusted alone with food. He was doing everything he could to keep me alive, while I was doing everything I could to stay sick.

 

I improved. Then my family moved away. And I relapsed immediately. That’s another ugly truth: recovery built purely on supervision isn’t recovery. It’s containment. Then I was hospitalised, and I gained weight. Hated it. So I learned how to purge. And purging is almost honestly worse. Because now I can “eat” and still stay sick. Now I can hide it better. Now I can look functional while destroying myself quietly. I’ve purged fruit. I’ve purged water.  There’s nothing glamorous about kneeling on a bathroom floor, dizzy, shaking, throwing up blood and mucus, honestly it’s actually disgusting. Since we are getting into the nitty gritty here, when you have a restrictive eating disorder, your stomach can go into stomach paralysis. Essentially meaning it stops working, so I literally only either have explosive diarrhoea, or I don’t shit for days. Another side effect of stomach paralysis is that I lose control of my bowels. So when you don’t eat enough, and abuse laxatives, your muscles around your intestines and stomach weaken, and you physically can’t stop yourself from essentially shitting yourself. That’s happened to me a few times. I’ve actually shit myself at the grown age of 21 and yet that still doesn’t convince me to recover. But anyway as I was saying, one time I was throwing up, and shitting myself at the same time. Yep. You read that right. There was so much pressure in my body from throwing up that I couldn’t control my asshole and boom I had liquid shit running down my leg. If that doesn’t convince you to never get an eating disorder, idk what will tbh. 

 

In December, I decided I didn’t want to die. I had a ‘epiphany’ or at least that’s what my case manager called it. I ate an entire Domino’s pizza, and nothing catastrophic happened. In fact it was the best pizza I’d ever had. The world didn’t end. My body didn’t explode. I just felt full. And happy. For a while, I lived like a normal person. I ate. I exercised. I felt free. Then one day, about a month ago, I stepped on my flatmate’s scales. The number shattered everything. Within seconds, the panic returned. The denial. The planning. The control. Ed was back.

 

And now, here I am again. Restricting. Purging. Fighting. Losing. Fighting again. This isn’t a tragic love story with a villain named Ed. It’s a mental illness. It’s obsessive. It’s repetitive. It’s destructive. And it will take everything if I let it. So I’m writing this because I’m tired of pretending it’s mysterious or poetic. It’s not. It’s me fighting my own brain every day. 

So I’m writing this because I need to say something out loud that I’ve been too scared to admit. I think this time Ed might kill me. 

Not dramatically. Not suddenly. Just slowly. Quietly. One skipped meal at a time. One purge at a time. One number on a scale at a time. Ed feels stronger than me. Louder than me. More convincing than every doctor, every therapist, every person who loves me.  I don’t feel like I’m fighting him — I feel like I’m working for him.

 

That’s the part people don’t see. From the outside, I’m functioning. I go to work. I talk. I laugh. I look normal. But inside, there’s a voice constantly calculating, restricting, negotiating, punishing. It doesn’t switch off. It doesn’t get tired. I do.

And im scared. 

That I’ll keep relapsing.

That I’ll keep choosing the disorder.

That one day my body just won’t keep up with my brain anymore.

 

That’s why this isn’t a recovery story. It’s not tied up neatly. It’s not inspirational. It’s uncomfortable. Because the truth is, I don’t know how this ends yet.

Not yet.