For so long all that was important to me was to be skinny. I would have died for it. I wanted to die for it.
Three years ago a doctor told me that if I didn't change my ways, I would be dead within the year. I didn't care, I wanted to fade away so quickly, all I could wonder was how fast that year would be up. I'm still here... Thankfully.
The importance wasn't truly to be skinny, as much as it was to be good enough. To be loved. To not fail. I wanted to make people proud. I wanted my Uncles, and Aunts and Cousins to be happy to call me a part of their family. I wanted my Mom to come home, to be healthy, to love me. I wanted someone to hold me and never let me go. Anyone. I wanted friends. I wanted to feel a part of life, a significant part of life. I never wanted to be seen as just another useless person. I've never wanted to be known as the girl with the eating disorder. I wanted to accomplish something great, something people would remember. Something that if I were to die today, I wouldn't have just been a waste. I wanted to touch lives, change maybe one, love everyone I came into contact with. I wanted to be thought of as a good person, with a good heart and a good soul. The importance to me was to be happy doing all of this. What it essentially came down to was that I hated myself so much, that I could never be any of this. I've never thought I could be anything great, that anyone could truly love me, but I could be skinny. So I would kill myself to get there.
Four years ago I admitted to being effected by an eating disorder. Four years ago I started recovery. I've fallen and stood back up and then fallen fifteen or sixteen more times. I've never stopped standing back up though. It's been a long long four years, and a ton has happened. This last year though, this last year has been quite possibly the most significant. I spun in some serious circles for the first three years of attempting to "fix" myself. I was in and out of treatment and dealing with a lot of things that were completely out of my control. Eventually in the midst of my recovery, I was at my worst. The only thing at the time I could control was my eating disorder, or so I thought. When I think back on this last year, okay well maybe year and a half ish... I did the one thing I thought I could never do. I chose to live. I've said it before, but I'll say it again... I'll never forget the night... I was either ending it all in that very moment, or I was choosing life. After 11 years of wanting to die, I chose then that I wanted to live. That's what I've been trying to do ever since. Live.
It's quite ironic to me now that I'm terrified this may actually kill me. After fifteen years of starving myself, bingeing, purging, over exercising, abusing laxatives, diuretics and diet pills; the human body isn't so forgiving. It's almost impossible to make doctors listen to you when you tell them you have an Eating Disorder. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a walk-in clinic or the ER and doctors hand me an antacid and send me on my way. I went into the ER with chest pains and throwing up blood, with an IV in my arm I was told not to come back unless I was throwing up buckets of blood, that this is an emergency room and was handed another heart burn medication. Another time I was given an antacid, an adavan and a percocet and sent on my way to walk home. (I was alone, high, sedated and dizzy... stupid thing to do to a 90lbs girl and not ask if she was with anyone or how she was getting home) My family doctor takes months to send out referrals for me that take months to hear back from. She's been told I need my heart checked once a month and tells me its a waste of my time and I can do it every six months. I think she thinks eating disorders aren't a real issue... I think she's not my doctor anymore. My problem now is that I'm so passive with doctors because I've been conditioned to believe they wont take me seriously. So now when I go in, I smile and nod and walk away. But shit's wrong with me. And I'm scared. My iron is the lowest it's ever been, I feel like an 80 yr old woman, I think I have the bones of one anyway. I'm in the most pain when I eat, my kidneys hurt and it's just no good. So I don't eat. Which means I'm starving myself, which brings disordered thoughts into my head, which means my eating disorder is full blown and I don't know what to do. It's not important to me anymore. My eating disorder hasn't served me well in quite sometime, I don't want it back like this. But it's here and I fear that it is killing me. Again, the irony is uncanny. I want to live but feel like I'm fading. I want to be healthy but can't stop losing. I want to toss my scale but find myself standing on it every morning. I want to learn how to eat like a normal person but have come back to full blown panic attacks in the grocery store. I want to sleep but it's 4am. I want to break up with ED but I can't do that on 500cals a day. I want to love, I want to laugh, I want to see beauty and reason everywhere I look. I want to LIVE.
