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I devoted 12 years to starving my body

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It is hard to comprehend that I once devoted 12 long years to self loathing, deeply anchored into my eating disorder addiction.

Absolutely disgusted by the very being of who I was at the time, I was also very sick.

Perfection was what I ordered daily, and nothing else would do. Perfection externally of course, as internally everything was completely out of control. However, today, that changed, for as I write, I am free.

Wonderfully and gorgeously free from all of the pain, I spent years engaging in.

I feel compelled to tell the world of my painful journey, because if I can save just one soul, from venturing into addiction, then my honesty would have been worth exposing.

It matters not what the addiction is, because personally, the struggles are the same, in that your life has become unmanageable and you cannot control what you thought you could!

This struggle involves your inability to articulate your emotions. It is from this frustration that you then decide to “deaden” your soul. For me, it was the food, for others it is the sex, self harm or alcohol. Honestly though, it doesn’t matter what you invest in. What matters is that you choose to hurt yourself.  

Whether you are the Tik junkie or the uncontrollable bulimic, you are suffering from an illness that controls you. Until you recognise its force in your life, you will continue on its path of harsh destruction.

One of the first places to start healing is to recognise that you are being led by your ego. This ego is not the real version of you and a most dangerous ally!

Believing that you are better than the next man, stems only from one place and that is excessive pride, your ego. It tells you that you do not belong in recovery. That the “crazies” here do way more hectic things like gamble all their money away.

I could not see that choosing to starve my body and vomit compulsively also fell into this category of severity. That devoting more than 12 years of my life to this illness was not okay.

 At the time I could not see that I was sick. The primary battle of this illness lies inside your mind. It is an exhausting battle. This illness, if you allow, will take your life. Addiction is voraciously selfish, and asks you for all you are and more. It is deceitful, as it desires ALL of you, whilst it slowly suffocates the joy from your life, until you rely exclusively on it. It will find all of your flaws. You will start to learn to lie for a living. Until you cannot distinguish the truth from your lies.

One of the hardest parts of this journey is accepting that you are suffering, and  that the only way to end this is to choose Recovery. In Recovery, we are the same. This room, we sit in is filled with the the wreckage of what we are doing to our lives, told to complete strangers at the time. Strangers who will carry your life story with them for always, as you will theirs!

In this place we must surrender to the fact that we are no longer in control. In fact, we have unconsciously sat as a spectator, watching this devastation unfold. In this room, you are given a second chance to live.

Whether you choose this chance, is entirely up to you. Whilst in this room, I nearly lost my little family, our son who was barley 11 months old and my husband, Simon. His ultimatum to me, at that time, was to get better or he would be leaving me.

Filled with rage, I went to my first recovery session kicking and screaming. I couldn’t understand why he was making me do this. I couldn’t see that he was helping me to save myself. How God awful sad it was that I just couldn’t see it.

I was not going to let the one person, my Simon who believed in me, to leave my life. And so I angrily went with absolutely no intention to stop my hurtful ways. My 12 year battles with food and bulimia nervosa had become my coping mechanism. One that I would have to leave behind, if I was to get better.

The funny thing with being so sick is that often you refuse to see how ill you actually are. For a long time, I couldn’t even mouth the words “eating disorder”, as I sat in denial at my recovery sessions. Because, at the time, I told myself that I was not sick. In fact, I was fine.

But you cannot be fine when you spend all of your twenties hurting yourself beyond the physicality of your being and despising who you are. Hating and hurting yourself is a cruel habit, an inescapable one because how do you disappear from yourself?

For a time, my solution was to take my own life. I am sure that this was not what I wanted but a build up of frustration resulted in this foolish thinking. I knew that there had to be a better way at living, I just didn’t know how to get to it. I was always sick, raw throats from uncontrollable bulimic sessions, petrified that someone would smell the putrid smell of vomit on me. I hated myself as I prepared for my act because, trust me, there is a vulgar preparation to it.

Each timI finished this horrible ritual I swore I would never do it again. You get tired lying to yourself and to others. Existing only on coffee, my colleagues would ask why I had not taken lunch to which I replied that I was still satisfied from breakfast.

What satisfied me was the emptiness inside me. Full of nothing, just the way I liked it. Because that’s what I deserved, nothing. I was so sick when I met my Simon, lying to him and his family as to why I ate so little. But I felt I deserved my fate.  One I could never speak of to anyone, not even my twin sister. I was immersed in shame.

When I met Simon, he showed me a love I thought existed only in the books I read.  I was waiting for him to be like all the rest of the guys in my life, perhaps just another filthy one night stand and that would be the end of it. But Simon was here to stay.  

I remember the first time he opened the car door for me, I just couldn’t believe it. I had no idea how to process this. Here was a man who cared and loved me from the bottom of his heart. And I simply loved the way he loved me.  At this point, I tried desperately to stop my bulimia and restrict my food instead.

Stupidly proud at my new-found solution, I believed I was “fixed.” Though soon I realized I could not do this on my own. And so it is that I decided to enter recovery and save my life.

I believe that God brought Simon to me, as a catalyst, to start my journey. I now feel magically blessed, firstly because God is my higher power and helped me to restore my life. Secondly, because I am free from my addictive ways. Free to truly live. To start again. 

I am blessed because my Simon still loves me and I am forever thankful that he held my hand each step of the way on this journey. I am blessed daily as I discover more and more of who I am and connect into parts of me that once lay soundly asleep.

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