So this is my life. 24 years old, 9 years of battling with an eating disorder. It started off so innocently - as a diet, or even as eating "more healthy", losing some weight and receiving many comments about how tiny I had become, or how healthy I was. Always getting salads and soup on sports trips when the rest of the team ate hamburgers and fries. My perfectionism came into play and exercise and diet became an outlet.... I had the discipline to go to the gym every single day for hours upon hours. Had the discipline to stop eating anything that remotely resembled "junk food"... and eventually anything that I perceived as "junk food"... cheese, regular yogurt, salad dressing, margarine/spreads, milk, later bread, pasta etc. etc. and then later pretty much anything except diet jello, coffee, tea, diet pop, the odd carrot stick, the odd apple. How incredibly ironic that I started out trying to eat "more healthy".
So where did it all get me? Well you see, you can only do all of this for so long before you become so sick and you've got to live in a hospital just so you can stay alive. In and out of hospitals, in and out of eating disorder treatment programs, in and out of hell.
Maybe I used to think that eating disorders were glamourous and that it was wonderful to be skinny. But coming from someone who's been there, it NEVER makes you happy. Your mind gets so fucked up because you aren't feeding your body any sort of nutrients. So you keep going and going... you can't stop. I got depressed, suicidal. I'm not trying to brag here, compare or compete with anyone, make myself seem like the "sickest anorexic", because I know I'm not (the sickest ones aren't alive to write a blog). But I guess I want to honestly paint a true picture of the hell that a person goes through and bring some more understanding to the experience.
I spent the summer in the hospital. Not by choice. The entire summer spent in a psych ward, bored to death and freezing because of the air conditioning. When i first got there, I was confined to my bed. I couldn't have visitors or talk on the phone. When I had to go to the bathroom, someone would come and push me in a wheelchair to the bathroom, stand in the bathroom with me, then push me back to my bed. Couldn't shower without someone in the bathroom with me (did I mention I'm already incredibly uncomfortable with my body?). Couldn't have a garbage can in my room. I had a tube shoved in my nose, down my throat and a liquid constantly pouring into my stomach. The tube eventually feels like you have constant strep throat, and everytime you swallow it feels like you have swallowed a bunch of razor blades. It also smells disgusting because the sticky bandage that holds it in your nose gets all sticky and gooey.
Eventually, I was promised that if I tried to drink Boost and eventually ate a meal, the tube could be removed. I cried every single time I swallowed because it was so painful. After I ate, I was pushed in my wheelchair to the nurses station, and had to sit in my wheelchair for an hour and a half after my meal... on display. No one talked to me. 9 hours of my day were spent doing this (once I was also having snacks).
Digestive system? It starts to shut down. I seriously resembled an 85 year old woman - constipated, I would go about 2 weeks until they would finally give me an enema to flush me out. (too much info, I know, but I said this would be uncensored). It gets incredibly uncomfortable when you haven't used the bathroom in 14 or more days. My hair was falling out, no period for years (? this possibly means no children in the future ?), drinking Ensure and Boost, being wheeled around. I have a new appreciation for nursing home residents. Bed sores - sore tailbone, sore back, sore head (the back of my head where it rests on the pillow). Someone even records how much you pee and what color it is everytime you go. And this is only the beginning.... that's the physical side of things.
Then there's the boredom. It sets in... you literally feel like if you weren't crazy before you came into the hospital, you would surely leave crazy because of how bored you get. You can honestly only do so much before you burn yourself out on trying to entertain yourself. I couldn't read books due to lack of concentration, couldn't watch movies for the same reason. Eventually, I became withdrawn and lay with my eyes closed but not sleeping all day long. Thinking. How did I get here? How will I get out of this? Is it easier to just give up and die? Am I going to have to go through this over and over and over again?
I'm sure there's still hope. There has to be. I can't give up yet, so I'll give treatment another try. But this hell never seems to end. Glamourous? I don't fucking think so.
Chatboard (0)