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It's a long story of psychological deterioration and self worthlessness. And anorexia, and how she's ruined my life. How she still controls it. Every day. I'm not right in the head. Come in if you want to take a look. I wouldn't. But feel free to.
In this story I've tried to investigate what triggered my eating disorder. Maybe I had it all along. Who knows. But I hope I can help some of you get better, and overcome the same disease I did.
Sorry. It's extremely long.
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~~~THE BEGINNING~~~
Everything always sounds worse in hindsight. Always. Especially subtle insults. Very, very subtle insults. But the subtle insults are what triggers her. She unearths herself from the part of your brain that holds all your potential psychological problems. and she takes that insult and turns it into something too big for you to handle. An obsession. When she has your attention, she takes over. Ana will always win.
It had never even occured to me. The idea of being fat. Never. I'd never considered it. I didn't see it as a bad thing. I was a complete pear shape. Skinny uper body, hips, then skinny legs. People told me I was skinny. So I just... took their word for it.
Before the beginning I was a normal little girl. I had some psychological and sociological problems, but nothing really drastic had ever happened to me.
In grade eight once, I was sitting around the house with my boyfriend, who I was absolutely besotted with. I think I was so attached and clingy because without him, I would have been faced with being alone, which meant I would have to face myself. I didn't want to do that. I was too scared of what I would see. I was never, ever happy with myself, or who I was. Never good enough. Ever. Cause I'm crazy. There are too many anxious thoughts in my head. All the time. And I can't handle them.
So we were sitting around, and I was in my bikini, and he was in his boardies, 'cause we'd been swimming. All of a sudden he pokes my stomach. I look up, grinning, and joke,
"What? Calling me fat, huh?"
He smiles. "Yeah. I like girls with a little bit of extra fat."
I look at his face and realise he's not joking. No. He's lying. He's looking at my stomach.
"Remember how you used to be really skinny?" he says reminiscently.
I remember not being able to reply. I didn't even have the integrity to defend myself. I just let the words trample me. I looked down at myself - and I was revolted. It was hideous. You know how you watch those videos about anatomy in science, and they show you those E.R videos of open heart surgery? And there's fat and veins and organs and goop and blood and slimy shit everywhere- and you're so disgusted you want to shoot yourself or throw up?
That's how I felt.
I have not worn a bikini or a pair of shorts since that day.
Slowly, my self-esteem deteriorated. I became a lifeless, hideous body with nothing inside. Except fat. Lots of fat. I would look at myself and freak out occasionally, but most of the time I would mope around, thinking about my boyfriend, and avoiding the mirror entirely. I felt so ugly. All the time.
He controlled me. Without even knowing it. I was his pathetic little puppy dog. He didn't find me attractive. He found me boring. Ugly. So did I. I pined after him, and heard about him getting around with other chicks at school, and I cried a lot. I cried when he didn't return my phone calls.
I cried when he dumped me.
I now realise that he saved me by doing that. He saved my dignity. Partially. But the damage was done. The fat comment was niggling at the back of my mind, implementing itself. The cancerous psychological disease had set in. There was nothing stopping it. And nothing ever would.
I always know I'm a wreck when my fashion sense goes down the drain. And I don't mean fashion as in what was in the mags, I mean fashion as in my individuality.
I knew I was depressed after he left me, because I was so desperate for my emotions to come back, for my identity to return to the unattractive, worthless, pathetic, repulsive shell of a person I had become, that I started wearing what I saw other people wearing. In magazines. In shops. At school. I was nobody, and my whole self had been wiped of its persona. I was a blank mannequin, ready for a new skin. So I tried to find myself. To no avail. I thought I looked so awful and fat that EVERYTHING I tried on made me cry. I lost all hope. I ended up having to wear things i felt uncomfortable and ugly in, and putting on a show of confidence to fool my friends. To KEEP my friends. I didn't try and lose weight. I didn't know how. Well... I tried diets sometimes, but they always failed. My family didn't help. They pretty much re-assured me that I was fat.
I weighed about 56kg.
That went on for a whole year. That whole year, I kept trying to get an identity- emo, hippie, crazy person, colourful person, intellectual person, guitar player, amateur writer - and found that I was always trying to be something. I never was something. I was nothing. Lost in my cavernous head. putting on a facade of confidence when inside I was dying. When at home I would cut myself just to feel something other than self-disgust. For a whole year. One, painful year. One 58kg year. I feel like such a wimp. Going so far down the shithole after something a boy said. But the self-loathing just took over me. I have a mental problem. I just... I just started detesting myself, and wanting to get the hell away from myself.
And meanwhile, the fat comment was festering in my brain, spreading through all the crevices of my mind, slowly brewing to take the form of what would one day be my worst enemy.
~~~ THE MIDDLE~~~
There's always a point where it's crunch time: She finally decides to take action. She puts images into your head, and for the first time, you feel like someone else is pulling the strings for you. Your thoughts turn into hers, because you're so stripped of life you have nothing to think about or control. She does it all for you. And you become obsessed with the relief she gives you from having to exist inside your head.
It was a year after the comment. June 2008. I was in year nine. I had a good group of friends. They were all really skinny. Really skinny. It made me so jealous sometimes that I would make up excuses not to go to the movies, their houses, or even school. Just so I didn't have to see them.
I never went to theme parks with them. Especially not Wet and Wild. At the beach with family friends I just sat to the side, smiling fakely, pretending I really just wanted to build sandcastles. It was always:
"What's wrong? You seem really weird today. You sure you don't want to come swimming?"
"No. I'm fine. Hey, look, see that tree over there? Don't you reckon it looks kinda like it's covered in....."
I'd avoid the topic of how much I despised myself.
I got a taste of the thrill she brings that year. In June. I got tonsillitus. My throat was so swollen I couldn't swallow food. I remember being intrigued, obsessed, inspired by this fact. I was so sick. I was sick every night because I have an allergy to penecillan (anti-biotics). Slowly, and I wasn't even aware of it, I started losing weight. Through sickness. I could only down half a bowl of soup a day, without being sick. Then one day I woke up and got changed, as usual. I was home from school, obviously.
Except I accidentally put on an old pair of pants I hadn't worn since grade seven.
And they fit me.
I stood there for about ten minutes, staring at myself in shock. I ran downstairs to try and find the scales. IN my parents' bedroom. I jumped on, for the first time in a very long time. Because I wasn't afraid to this time.
51kg.
My heart soared. That number looked so beautiful. It was all I could think about for days. I visited my relatives, and everyone kept saying how skinny and sick I looked. But I loved it. It was thrilling. I had a sick sort of confidence. But it was still confidence.
I stayed quite thin for the rest of that month. But I do admit, I kept taking penecillan to make myself feel sick, much to the confusion of my mother and doctor.
"Why isn't she better already, for christ's sake!"
That way I would be forced not to eat. My friends didn't say anything about my weightloss. Nothing. I was pretty pissed off. I mean - if a woman loses weight right after she has her baby, you congratulate her, right?
Shouldn't it be the same for making yourself sick to be thin?
Apparently not.
I went overseas with school that July. I dunno how I let myself go so badly. I guess in the excitement of being over there, I ate food, good, French food, and put on a stack of weight. The thing with me is, once I get started, I can't stop. If I stopped eating lots, I would be undistracted and forced to see what I'd become. And that might have killed me. It really would have. My mind will kill me one day, I swear. I was in a good mood over there. The food tasted brilliant, I tried #, I got drunk, I made friends. It was good. I even turned a deaf ear to the fat jokes one of my friends over there had started giving me.
Not for long. They play their part soon enough.
But then it happened. The moment that truly changed my life. The day I met Ana. I was getting changed in my host student's room. I was having a bit of trouble finding what to wear to a party. Gradually I kept finding that everything I tried on looked... really bad. It frustrated me. Every time I tried something on, I would turn to the side and see the thickness of my torso... and gradually get crazier. And crazier. Until I had tried absolutely every single garment of clothing in the whole room on. They all looked bad. Fat. Hideous. Obese. Grotesque. Until I was on the floor, in my underwear, tears streaming down my face. I was so humiliated. I just stared at myself in horror, and really saw my great, thick, fatty thighs, my chunky hips, the blubber clinging to them, the stomach that had always had protruding ribs... looked... average. That killed me. And my big fat bust and arms. I looked a right mess. I couldn't stop sobbing. Everyting got really hot. I got a fever. I just broke down and cried into my friend's shoulder, sobbing,
' I just want to go home, please just take me home.... I can't go to the party. I can't. I want to go back to Australia."
I couldn't, though. My host mother was lovely that night: She made me soup in bed, because I said I had the flu (excuse for my hysteric behaviour). The next day I was home, and seeing my family at the airport didn't even make me happy. Nothing made me happy. I didn't think anything ever would, again. The image of myself was haunting me, every single waking moment of every day. And I'm an insomniac. I do not sleep.
When I got home, I weighed myself instantly. I was 58kg. The heaviest I'd ever been in my life. That was more than I could bear. That's when she decided I had to change.
You know the girl I told you about, the one who started making the fat comments?
They got worse. And worse. Every day at school, the main topic of conversation would be how fat I was. And she would lead it. It was like this big joke they were all in on. It made me feel sick.
"Oh, we're going to movie world, but we don't think you'll fit on any of the rides."
"You can play the fat one, how bout that?"
"You're such a fatty."
"You got a B on your assignment because you're fat."
"Because you're fat."
"You're fat."
"Fat."
Too fat.
But it gave me motivation. It gave me an excuse to cry my eyes out every night. I would have cried anyway. Because ana - she talks to me. The things she says are both inspiring... and destroying. She tells me I'm too big. When I looked in the mirror, she would point out all my flaws. When I saw food, she would say,
'Are you really going to eat that? Pig?'
She replayed their comments over and over again in my head. She taught me how to resist food. I would cop my friends' shit every day, when inside, they were destroying me. I told them to stop. And they laughed.
That's right, Ana would say. Everyone laughs at the fat girl.
When the 20th of August rocked around, it got really bad. All I could think about was my reflection. I was disgusted at my vanity. Wherever I went, I was paranoid about whether the clothes I was wearing made me look fat. They always did. I would scream and throw things and hurt myself at home. I don't know why. It made me feel better. I was going to a concert with a friend and the friend, the one who makes the fat jokes.
Guess what the first thing she said to me was:
Hey, fatty.
Waiting for the train, slowly but surely, our conversation turned to weight. I got all nervous. We were talking about weight loss and stuff, and at one point I talked about when I had tonsilitus and lost all that weight.
My friend blinked at me
"You lost weight? Oh. I didn't notice at the time. Oh well."
THE friend smirks and says.
"Huh? You did? Oh. Ha! I thought you got fatter, but... obviously not."
They both cracked up laughing.
I didn't sleep that night. Their words kept replaying over and over in my head. If five or six kilos wasn'e enough for them, I would just have to lose more. I had to. I saw myself in the mirror and started pulling away at my flesh. It all had to go. It was disgusting. That night, Ana taught me how to count calories. She taught me how to set goals. And find inspiration. Thinspiration.
I had a plan. And I put it into action. I wouldn't let anyone stop me. Ana and I were a team. We were invincible. We were going to be thin. Full stop. Bony, skinny, light, tiny, fine. We'd get there.
~~~ HER ~~~
Here is a good time to use the phrase 'Wake me up when September ends.'
Good one, Billie Joe. You read my mind. Ana and I went through September, October, November and December so withdrawn and determined I didn't even realise where the time was going. It's like I blanked out. All I remember is scales and numbers and clothes and bones and...
food.
I was dead set in a routine, which started in the September holidays. I would wake up, and we'd look at me in the mirror. and judge whether I had become thinner. Analyse every part of me. Then I would sift through my wardrobe to find something to wear.
This part always lasted the longest, and always ended in tears.
Then I would sit at my computer and - well, I can't even remember what I did. I was so absorbed in my music, and getting pictures of skinny people and sticking them in the back of my wardrobe, then trying on more clothes and crying again. At about midday I would go downstairs just as my mum was leaving for work and start making a sandwich. Just as she would leaving I'd bin the sandwich and go burn as many calories as possible on my treadmill. Then I'd go back to my computer and disappear into my little world of being lost. My little september world. The world that flew by so quickly I don't even remember it.
October did the same thing. Me and Ana stuck to our routine. My friends kept calling me fat. I didn't eat at lunch times.
They didn't notice.
I was so starving, all the time. I was afraid of food. I'd look at it and feel a mixture of disgust, hatred, fear and smugness: smugness that I could resist it.
I starved so much it hurt. But it felt good. SO good.
Until I looked in the mirror, and just saw that fat girl I saw in the mirror overseas. She wouldn't stop plaguing my thoughts.
I'm not going to be dramatic and attention seeking and describe to you how horrible I felt. No-one likes a whiner. But suicide was the foremost of my thoughts. Every single day. I hadn't been outside since July, except for school. I just let myself rit away in my bedroom, not seeing the point of life, and wanting to end the unrelenting pain I had to live with. I'd come up with creative ways to die and write them down in poems. I couldn't find a reason to live. Except for ana. I knew I couldn't let her down. We were a team.
It was like suffocating. I had nobody. Nobody but her.
A couple of times I caved and stuffed my face, at parties and stuff.
Ana made me feel so sick, so guilty, I had to take laxatives. I won't say where I got them. She'd make me starve for days and days after I binged. But it was all in my best interests. Right?
I saw no change, except on the scales. bit by bit the little line made its way closer to zero. Every day.
I always found myself wondering what it would be like to disappear.
One day in November, it was a miracle. Nobody called me fat. For the whole of morning tea. It was weird. When I walked to our eating area, everything went silent. They just sort of looked at me, with my bottle of water, as I sat down in the far corner with my hair in my eyes, waiting for the jokes to start.
They never did.
They started asking me why I wasn't eating. They told me I needed to eat more, and I'd just leave, or change the subject. I began to hate them. For doing this to me, and then lecturing me about my eating habits. How dare they. They distanced themselves from me, and me them. I didn't care. I had Ana. I didn't need them.
This one day in November I went to see a play with my mum and my auntie, and my auntie looked at me real funny and said,
"You're looking... thin."
She wasn't sure how to say what she was trying to say, by the sounds of it. I later found out what she'd thought, in the car with mum. She told me I looked disgustingly thin.
DIsgustingly thin?
That was impossible. I was fat. It was my most desperate dream to be thin. I think I'd know if I was. She said my aunty had been grossed out by how skinny I was.
Bullcrap. She then asked me how much I weighed.
With a burst of revelation, it suddenly hit me. My weight.
'47 kilograms,' I replied.
Holy shit. I'd lost 11 kilograms. In two months. But... that was impossible. I still looked fat.
Then one day me and my friends went into the city, and I was wearing these clothes I'd had when I was eleven because mine had all grown in the wash. Or something. My friends were acting really weirdly as we had lunch. As usual, I ate nothing. They were all staring at me.
"Eat something," One of them said to me. I was startled out of my thoughts, and i looked at her. She was deadly serious. Everyone else was looking.
"Oh, nah, I'm not hungry," I smiled. They all exchanged glances except for THE friend. She was ignorant of the whole situation. In fact, she then started boasting really loudly about how skinny her arms were.
Then my other friend says,
"You've lost so much weight, dude. It's scary. Eat something."
"I have not," I say, pulling hair in front of my face.
"HA! No she hasn't," says THE friend, raising an eyebrow. "She's as fat as she always was."
"How much do YOU weigh, then?" my friend asks her.
"55 kilos," she answers smugly.
They ask me, and in a small voice I say,
"46 kilos."
Because I'd knocked off one more. They all go silent. One gasps.
I sound sick: But that gave me a feeling so good I could have died right then and been happy.
But when I got home and saw the mirror, I cried again. I still looked fat. Still.
Or so I thought. Or so Ana kept telling me.
~~~ THE END ~~~
It takes someone very special to heal you. Sometimes you don't even know who they are until they save your life.
I got very sick. I developed anaemia, because I wasn't getting enough iron, and I had all these vitamin deficiencies. I didn't know it, but I looked like a ghost. A lanky ghost who never ate and never spoke. A pale, sickly 14 year old weakling who was trapped inside her own head, too weak to even lift a bird cage. My mum kept making all these empty threats to take me to a psychologist. Hah. She never did. She was too worried it would make her look like a bad mother. With an anorexic daughter.
It carried on until December. Mum threw out my scales because I was getting 'too obsessive', so I went crazy, not knowing my weight. Ana was furious. We had no way of knowing, now. We were done for. It ruled my life. Food. Weight. Looks. Without scales, what were we? We were sailors without a boat to sail. My eating disorder ruled my whole family. I had all these psychotic attacks, where I would go crazy and throw things and kick things in my room, and twitch and get fevers. I was sick. Sick body sick mind. I stopped getting my you-know-what. It just stopped. I had resigned myself to the idea that I was never having children. I really had. I lost most of my friends. They were sickened by my self-starvation. My family treated me like a mental patient. I had nothing. Nothing but ana. It's the same story today.
I'm not going to end this story on a happy note and say some knight in shining armour came and saved me from anorexia. Because that's not true. I did recover, and get back to 52 kilos (much to my horror). But the doctors say it's healthy, so hmmm.
Ana is still with me. To this very day. I relapse sometimes and go crazy, and starve myself. SHe still whispers things in my ear, makes me obsessed.
Heck, I haven't eaten in the last ten hours. I'm crying at the moment, after looking at my reflection.
My friends are completely useless. They've made it worse, if not done nothing at all.
But it was a girl. who saved my life. Ana's in her head, too. She never went to hospital, either, but she lost a tremendous amount of weight at the same time I did. We never spoke, but every time I passed her at school, I saw the look in her eyes, and it felt like we'd known each other for a thousand years. We have the same mind. The same disease. As she got better, I got better. I like to think we helped each other, in an unspoken bond. Words were not needed. Our illness is marked by hollow eyes and a sullen face, staring past the physical realm of the world into nothingness, where we believe we belong.
We were connected. In a weird way. And if she's reading this, I thank you so much, G. Thank you for saving my life. I'll never forget you.
I'll have this forever. It will never leave. But it can be subdued.
All of you, with the same problem as me, find someone you can relate to, and help each other. it's the best way to recover. You may not want to recover. Sometimes I wish I could go back to when I was sick. Sometimes I TRY to be anorexic, I try to make it happen again. But you have to be strong. Remember, ana isn't real. She's a part of you that's gone wrong, and you need to ignore her.
Because you are beautiful. Don't let her tell you otherwise.
XX
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Your Stories 
so mch. She used to control my life completley, but not as much now 
