Это цитата сообщения Frollo Оригинальное сообщение

Last week, Orb asked a few questions about anorexics and I decided that I should try my hand at answering them here since they are really good questions that got me thinking. I can only answer these questions from a personal standpoint though, because I believe that every individual probably has rather unique experiences no matter how similar they may be. Some may agree with what I say, others may not. Hence my decision to speak about anorexia from my own understanding of it. =)

“Do they (anorexics) feel success when they see their bones in the mirror? Do they really see themselves as still fat? Or do they know they shouldn’t lose anymore but can’t help but continue to diet?”

[показать]

When I was anorexic, it was not exactly success that I felt whenever I looked into the mirror. I cannot say that I ever really saw myself as fat, even when I was of healthy weight. So even with anorexia, I never looked at myself in the mirror and thought myself fat. However, neither did I see myself as thin either, let alone too thin. I guess for me, it was largely a matter of control. Control of what? I cannot say because I do not know. But I knew that I wanted to feel some sense of control and the only way I knew how to at that time, was to control my food intake. That self-discipline at being able to limit my calories, the satisfaction from being able to eat less than the day before, the twisted innate joy from watching the numbers on the weighing scale drop as my clothes began falling off of me as well, made me feel that control. There were all these objective measures that signalled to me that I had lost too much, but each time I looked at myself, I saw myself as the same old Nat of months before. Even when I knew that I had an eating problem, I could not see that I was getting far too thin. I could feel my bones jutting out in awkward angles, but that felt more like a tangible form of attainment, a kind of sick reward from the sheer exercise of what I believed to be will power.

Being thin was not what made me feel a sense of success. What made me feel better, more superior than every other girl that walked the street, was the notion that I had self-restraint, that I could abstain from temptation. While the initial phase of losing weight was more for wanting to look that little bit better, spiralling into the ED became more a matter of wanting to feel in control and in this sense, it was no longer about losing weight anymore. Yes, weight became an indicator of how ‘well-behaved’ I was being and as the numbers began to get too low, I knew I had to stop and start eating again. But I could not. I just could not. I was scared to eat because I was afraid of having to give up that control and that would render me unworthy of anything more in life. You see, anorexia tends to tie in with depression and as an anorexic, I began to live with my head shrouded in a cloud of darkness and hopelessness. I started to become skeptical about the meaning of life, I wondered what the point was in living, I lost sight of my dreams and I saw myself as nothing more than a nobody.

One day, I realised that my anorexic behaviour had to stop. I picked up a fork and began to eat. And eat. And eat some more. I couldn’t stop. A meal became a binge and a binge led to purging and as a result of guilt, I would restrict myself again. Which leads me to:

Myth #1: Anorexics do not like food

[показать]

SO wrong! At least for me it was. I obsessed about food. I would spend hours on end online looking at ‘food porn’, looking at local food blogs in order to determine where to eat all the best foods once I could bring myself to eat again, compiling recipes of sorts (I had a two inch high stack of printed recipes that I have since thrown away), staring at pictures of food in magazines, in the newspapers and watching Discovery Travel & Living only if the content was based on food. I wanted so badly to eat but having restricted for so long, I learned to switch off the hunger signals that usually comes automatically for people without eating disorders. My stomach learned to stop growling and starvation became the norm for me.

The day I picked up that fork to eat, was the day I remembered how good food could taste and how wonderful it felt to have it inside of me. The thing is, my brain switched off out of sheer delight that I could not tell myself to stop at a regular portion. And I began to gorge myself silly with the food that my body craved for so badly. Chocolates, sweets, cakes – mainly sugary foods. I stuffed so much down into my shrunken stomach that I could barely walk. I crawled all the way to the toilet and as if on auto pilot, my body regurgitated most of it because it was too much to keep down.

Today, I have managed to stop bingeing and purging because I have stopped restricting. Binge and purge cycles tend to come with restriction because of the body’s intense need for sustenance. When it is so deprived, eating often results in bingeing because the brain starts to scream for food. Hence, purging then follows because of guilty feelings which then takes it all back to square 1 – restriction. Honestly, I still harbour thoughts of bingeing sometimes, especially when I have eaten something so good that I want more of it. ED thoughts then try to play up and tell me to eat as much as I want of it since I have already eaten one or two, but usually, after sitting it out for about 10 minutes, the feeling dies down. As for purging, I entertain that thought a little more often than bingeing, especially after meals but I have been able to kick that thought out the window at least 98% of the time.

So my point is, the belief that anorexics do not like food is totally false, at least for me. The inability to eat is more out of fear – the fear of having to bear ED’s wrath, the fear of losing that sense of self-mastery, the fear of becoming like the girls I used to look at with disdain for daring to eat proper meals.

Myth #2: Anorexia is due to vanity

[показать]

As I had mentioned above, the beginning of my desire to lose that little bit of weight was indeed out of wanting to improve my looks, or at least, the belief that losing a few kilos would make me look prettier. However, when I was anorexic, did I really think I looked beautiful? Honestly? No. But I did not feel I looked that ugly though until I looked back at the pictures of me at that time. One thing is for sure though, I got more male attention when I was healthy, fit and happy than when I was anorexic. I could not see how painfully sharp my face was, how little fat there was on my face that it would wrinkle up whenever I smiled, how the tendons and veins popped up on my arms and legs. I was blind to how my body looked.

I went for sports camp and I could not even run 100m without feeling like my legs were going to give way. I could not even play “duck duck goose” because I lacked the energy to even run around the circle without falling. I came home looked all battered and awfully bruised, and I can only imagine what Mum and Dad were thinking when they picked me up looking even thinner than a week before, with shades of blue and black covering just about every exposed part of my body. I must have looked exactly like a prisoner-of-war – starved and tortured.

I would go to sleep each night and wake up intermittently as the hours ticked up, aching so badly because my bones were knocking against each other. Even my hair hadn’t the energy to cling on to my scalp. Two showers would leave my drain clogged with hair and then there would be more on my bathroom floor and yet more on my hair brush. One of my close friends commented upon seeing me after being away for 2 months that when I smiled, it took up my entire face because my face had become so small.

But it was not vanity that kept me sticking by ED’s side. It was that need to punish myself. That feeling of unworthiness that I felt I could only account for if I could keep myself from eating.

Myth #3: Anorexia is an act of rebellion

Grandma and Grandpa came down a few months ago when I was going through my last bad bout with ED. I look back and I hate myself for having been so self-absorbed and uncaring towards my family. Grandma and Grandpa visited last year as well, only to leave when I had just gone into hospital. They came back this time eager to see me doing better, but ended up seeing me floundering against the tides of ED. I know how much it broke their heart, and yet, I did not care.

Grandma sat down one day as I was lying on my bed, unable to gather the energy to lift myself off. She did does not understand what ED is about exactly and she thought that I was doing it as an act of rebellion, just be be difficult. I agree that there has been times when I feel so angry with Mum and Dad over food, so frustrated and torn between what I want and what ED wants, that I try to rebel using food as my weapon. I threaten not to eat, I threaten to throw my food away, I tell Mum and Dad that they cannot force me to eat. But there is more to anorexia than just rebellion.

I tend to use anorexia as a coping mechanism. When I am stressed up, when I am feeling down, when I am anxious, when I am feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities, I turn to anorexia so that I can retreat into a cold, dark, place of isolation and be with myself – alone. Obsessing about food takes my mind off having to think about every other issue that may be scaring me. It is my form of escapism. No. It was my form of escapism.

Rounding up

[показать]

I know that I have spoken a lot more about anorexia than simply answering the questions brought on by Orb. The myths section are the ones that popped into my head when I realised that there appears to be some generalisations made about EDs. I believe that every person inflicted with anorexia wants to get well, but the degree to which he or she wants to let go of it determines the overall outcome – a life without ED, or a life with ED. ED leaves no space for anything else. It is not generous enough to give so much as a millimetre of space for our parents, our friends, our life. There is a choice ultimately, but the choice is an either/or situation. You either choose ED or you choose life. I choose life.

From time to time, I still find myself afraid of returning back to normality, but I know that I am committed to getting well and that to me, insures me a life without ED. In fact, I believe that while ED pops up once in a while, I am no longer anorexic. Just as I said to happycao, I am in ‘remission’. I no longer have anorexia because I refuse to have anorexia. I am no longer anorexic because I refuse to be anorexic. My medication comes in the form of food and as long as I keep taking my medication regularly, and as long as I keep an eye out for any ED symptoms that threaten to arise so that I can nip it in the bud, I will be ED-free.

[показать]

http://nattietan.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/