You didn’t care

You didn’t care when you saw me crying that time, crying over the thoughts running through my head that I didn’t understand.

You didn’t care when people noticed those marks on my arms, “you’re fine“, you said. “You’re Jasmine“.

You didn’t care when my weight began to drop, you didn’t even utter a word.

You didn’t care when my mood began to change, I became more and more distant and you just let it happen.

We stopped being friends, the reason for which I’m still unsure.

Not that I blame you, I wouldn’t want me as a friend either.

Excuses were made when it came to weekend plans, I slowly backed further into myself.

Rumours went around about what was wrong, but still you didn’t care.

Triggering comments every where, I would never be as skinny as you.

Lunch times spent all alone, the toilet cubicle became my friend.

Lessons spent panicking about whether people could smell what I’d been doing, I would hear you sniggering behind.

My mood became more and more sour, I didn’t have the energy to waste.

I was wasting away before your eyes, why didn’t you care?

I became enemy number one, I’d somehow offended everyone.

I was told you get help. But somehow that wasn’t enough?

You get help, you’re attention seeking. You’re not ill enough.

I hid behind a constant mask, I was slowly killing myself.

But isn’t it funny, suddenly you’re unwell and want my help.

I’m scrambling to put together the pieces of my life, and you’re out preaching about the importance of helping.

Every day is a living hell, a constant battle.

You didn’t care, you never cared. So why should I?

NEDAW – My eating disorder destroyed more than just my body!

This National Eating Disorder Awareness Week I’d like to focus on the damage my eating disorder has done to my entire life – rather than just the physical affects. 

Although the damage I have done to my body I will have to live with forever, for me that wasn’t the worst thing about this illness. My eating disorder took control of more than just my eating – it controlled my entire life! Every single move I made, or every thing I said, was all a part of my eating disorder. 

I couldn’t go outside without constantly comparing myself to others. I’d watch others enjoying portions of chips or packets of crisps and almost die of jealousy, oh how I longed to be able to do that! It got to a point where I didn’t want to go outside at all – that voice inside my head convinced me that everyone else was judging me just as much as I was judging them. I was scared of the opinions people I’d never met had of me. 

I struggled to leave the house a lot of the time as I believed I wasn’t even worthy of going outside. I was exhausted all of the time and even laying down became a chore. Every little thing would make me an anxious wreck and I’d panick over the silliest of things! 

But this illness didn’t just stop me meeting new people or making new friends, it resulted in me losing all of my friends. (Although I wasn’t the most popular to begin with) the more entrapped in my eating disorder I became, the harder I was to be around. The constant hunger caused me to be rude and dismissive – I didn’t have the energy to focus on anything. I never felt wanted so assumed I wasn’t and would never hang around. I struggled to hold proper conversations with people and became even more argumentative than I was before. Even I hated myself, so why wouldn’t everyone else??? 

It’s these same problems which caused problems between myself and family members also. The people who are supposed to love me unconditionally felt like they were constantly stepping on egg shells around me – how could I expect anybody to want to talk to me when even my own mum felt this way?

The more alone I became, the more entrapped I became within my eating disorder. It became like a vicious cycle of feeling alone, pushing everyone away, and feeling alone again. I pushed absolutely everyone away until I had no one left!! The only person I kept around me was the same person who was making me worse. He was incredibly hurtful in the things he’d say and do and yet I was too entrapped within myself to see that.

These characteristics are still a part of me, and I fear that they will be forever. Despite the fact that I now actually have a few friends, I know that I’m still not the nicest person to be around and have to try extra hard to fight that voice within my head just to leave the house each day. Out of everything that this illness put me through, the scariest part is not knowing whether the thoughts are the eating disorder, or whether it’s actually me.

Eating Disorder Awareness Week – please keep your underweight photos to yourself

Today marks the beginning of Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2016, and this week is very important in raising awareness for each eating disorder and the devastating effects that it has on people’s lives. However, every year, in an attempt to raise awareness, some of those who have recovered (or are in recovery) post photos of themselves at low weights, in comparison to a photograph of them at the weight that they are at now. Although I agree that these people should be unbelievably proud of themselves for the differences that they have made for their lives, I believe that these comparison photographs are not helpful, and can actually be very triggering for other sufferers. Not only that, but they do not help with trying to break the stereotype that everyone with an eating disorder is dangerously underweight.

It is a known fact that eating disorders can be incredibly competitive. It is in their nature to compare with others and that need to be the best anorexic can be dangerous. A wise person once told me how “the best anorexic is a dead one”, and although we know deep down that comparing ourselves with others won’t make anything better, we can’t help ourselves. Others may see these emaciated people and believe that they need to be at a lower weight in order to have an eating disorder. Eating disorder’s are MENTAL ILLNESSES NOT PHYSICAL ONES. Weight shouldn’t even come into it! it It is the mental suffering which is at the heart of this illness, and that is something which needs to be reflected on this week.

Of course this does not just go for people on social media, magazine and television companies also need to incorporate this into any features they do on this subject.

Photographs of people at their lowest weights do not raise awareness for eating disorders; someone can be underweight, overweight, or at a healthy weight and still have an eating disorder. And let’s not forget how not all eating disorders result in weight loss at all. Eating Disorder Awareness Week should be used to raise awareness for the truths about an eating disorder , and to break the myths and stigma that still surround them. So please keep your underweight photos to yourself, and try to raise awareness with your story and how you’ve turned your life around.

Here’s to 2016!!!

I’m a little late to the New Years resolution party (stupid work) but this year I’ve decided not to really make one. 

Last year I decided that 2015 would be the year of recovery. I was no longer going to be a slave to my anorexia and so I made the changes necessary; I may not be completely recovered but I’m so much closer than I’ve ever been before. 2015 was definitely the year of my recovery! 

So this year I’m making a change which isn’t just for me, or just for the year. It is something that I’ve wanted to do for a while but have never been well enough to do. This year, and for the rest of my life, I’m becoming vegan. NOT as a way of ristricting what I’m eating, but because I know that my enjoyment of food is no more important than the life of an animal. I’m looking forward to a happy, healthy, and cruelty-free new year. 

SHUT UP ABOUT DIETS; Learning to love your lumps and bumps

As someone who likes to actively promote body positivity, I find it incredibly tedious, and irritating, how often I am told about diets, whether it be directly or in passing. I cannot watch the television or read a magazine any more without being told about the newest diet and how much weight it can help me to lose. And this dieting culture has found a way to promote itself every month of the year, whether it be for that “bikini body” or to fit into that dress for the office Christmas party.

Before I begin my rant I would like to make it clear that I am NOT against people trying to lose weight (so long as it is done healthily and what not). What I am against is any ounce of fat on someone’s body being demonized, like being fat is the worst thing a person can be.

My favourite quote I’ve ever been told is “having fat does not make you fat. Everybody has fat. You also have toe nails, that does not make you a toenail.” And it is true. We are brought up to believe that having fat is wrong, when in reality you NEED fat to survive. I’m forever reading posts about why you cannot wear leggings if you have love handles which hang over the top, and this is complete bull shit. Any body can wear anything that they want, stop trying to tell people that they can’t. The size of your jeans does not equate to your worth as a person at all, so why do we act like it does?

It seems that although as a society we have moved away from only admiring stick thin models, to also idolising curvy celebrities like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian. So why can we love and be desperate for the figures of people like this, but shame others for theirs? It seems that it is where the fat is stored that makes all the difference. A larger bum is seen as more desirable than a larger stomach. Even though two people may weigh exactly the same, one may be considered attractive whilst the other not, just because of where their weight is distributed.

Where your body stores your fat is simply influenced by factors such as age, genetic inheritance and race, not necessarily how many cakes you’re eating. According to my BMI I am underweight, and yet I have love handles? Does that make me fat? No. No it does not.

My main desire to lose weight, a diet which then turned into my eating disorder, was triggered by my disgust at my muffin top. I have always held my weight around my stomach, and even as I lost weight I didn’t really lose it from there either, I just lost weight from my legs, bum and boobs instead (not that there was much to lose from there). Even at my lowest weight I still had my love handles and as I’ve continued to gain weight, they haven’t gone away. I’m slowly beginning to learn to accept them, and accept myself as well.

So if I can go from being so physically disgusted with myself, to learning to love myself, why can’t others too? Why must I be told about how I should tone up my middle to make myself more desirable, or so that I can fit into that skimpy dress, every time I watch shows like This Morning or Lorraine? As a society we need to rise up and admit out love for our lumps and bumps and tell this diet culture to shove it up our lumpy bums.

Birthday inspiration

Tomorrow is my 19th birthday and I keep being disappointed with myself because I’m going to be 19 years old and yet I still let this disorder dictate my life. 19 years old and yet I still have to be checked on to make sure I’ve eaten. 19 years old and still not a whole lot better than I was last year. But when I stopped thinking about all that’s still wrong with me, I began to realise all that I have achieved this last year.

My 18th birthday, and many birthday’s before then, were spent crying over food. For days afterwards I would hate myself and punish myself for the “extra calories” I’d eaten, but not this year. This year I can ENJOY MY DAY. I can go out for a meal (hopefully) with my boyfriend and not have an anxiety attack afterwards. My day will not be dictated by how much or how little I’ve eaten, and it most certainly will not be ruined by that stupid voice inside my head.

So when I think about turning 19 from this perspective, I realise just how ready I am. I’m ready to spend another year , or longer, fighting this illness and I will win this time!!!

Feeling unwanted sucks.

One of the biggest problems I face in my life is feeling unwanted. I feel unwanted so often that it’s gotten to a point where I don’t actually bother talking to anybody any more because I just assume that they hate me and don’t want to talk to me. It has ruined so many friendships for me, and will probably ruin my current relationship at some point – it is already something which causes arguments.

There is no real reason for why I feel so unwanted, and it is very rarely somebody else’s fault either. I don’t know why I feel this way, but I do. I suppose you could say that it is a consequence of my mental health problems, and that may be right, or it could be because of my need to impress everybody. But whatever the reason, it is something which ruins so many good things in my life. Just imagine feeling like everybody hates you, every single day of your life. It never stops; it’s such an overwhelming feeling.

I recently attended the Doctor Who Festival, which I had been looking forward to for MONTHS. But this excitement was also met with anxiety, because here I would not only be meeting some of the cast of Doctor Who, I would also be meeting people I have spent years talking to on Twitter. But these last few years I’ve found myself drifting away from the fandom because of my mental illness preventing me from interacting with anybody. So as the festival drew nearer I found myself dreading it even more; I was already feeling unwanted. The weeks leading up to the festival were filled with tears, smiles and panic attacks. And once I got there, yes I did enjoy it so much and I am so happy that I met the amazing people that I did, but I still felt unwanted the entire day. This, mixed with the anxiety of food, meant that I had to leave, what was one of the best days of my life, early. And me feeling this way was not the fault of anybody else, and there probably wasn’t anything that could have been done to help me feel better at the time, it was just my head ruining things for me.

But this doesn’t just occur when I meet new people, I got this feeling all the way through school, at college now, and even with the people I attend group therapy with. I guess I just have such low opinions of myself that I assume everybody hates me. 

Although this is predominantly a problem of my own creation, and one which only I can fix, it is something which is made better by just the help of somebody else. Telling someone that they’re wanted won’t cure them, but it helps to show them that maybe the intrusive thoughts aren’t correct.

Why are periods so scary?

Periods. Menstruation. The curse. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the same pain in the backside (or front side I suppose?) that the female gender complain about each month. Learning about it in sex education in junior school, and hearing the complaints of other girls, I thought that the worst thing about it would be the dreaded cramps or that I’d literally be bleeding out of my vagina but when I got it I was actually excited? As sad as that is, I was genuinely happy that I’d finally got my period. I was one of the last of my friends to get it so the excitement of being a woman at long last was definitely real. So what changed? How could I go from being excited about having my period, to being genuinely petrified?

I suppose the only explanation I really have spans from this demon that lives inside my head; anorexia. It was because of anorexia that I lost my period in the first place. When your body becomes underweight and struggles of function, it “shuts down” what are considered to be less vital systems such as the reproductive system, so when my weight plummeted my period inevitably stopped. To begin with, my lack of period didn’t really occur to me – of course I noticed, but it wasn’t as though it made me proud or anything, it was just another consequence of the illness. But after a few months without it, and after talking to other sufferers who’d also lost theirs, I began to feel powerful. It was just like how my eating disorder was my thing; I didn’t have a period when all other girls my age did. Something inside me felt special. I felt powerful that I had so much “control” over my body that it had literally shut down an entire system when, in reality, all I was doing was decreasing my chances of having children when I was older.

The thought of having children one day is one thing which my therapist has used to try to motivate me to increase my intake. If I wanted to have children then I had to gain weight. And I became so motivated to gain this weight to get my period back, yet when I did finally get it back, it just made me never want to eat again. It came so unexpected and completely took me by surprise. I knew that I still wasn’t a healthy weight, that had been reiterated to me on a weekly basis, and yet there was blood in my knickers. Of course, the voice inside my head straight away told me how fat I was. They’re all lying to you. You’re beyond a healthy weight now. Why did you let yourself get fat like that. I then began restricting again because that’s all I know how to do. If I lost weight then maybe my period would go away.

But why did I want it to go away? I had spent so long waiting for it to come back so that I could live the normal life I dreamed of. I didn’t want to damage my body any more. And yet as soon as it returned, I wanted to be right back to where I was.

I’m now in a position where I’m due to come on again soon for my second period since recovery, and a part of me is wishing that I’ve done enough to stop it returning. Why do I let a bodily function determine my recovery? How could I go from being excited about having my period, to being genuinely petrified? 

My anorexia ruined my life at school, and yet my teachers didn’t help me

(I’m placing a potential trigger warning on this post due to some of the subjects that are mentioned)

Whilst doing a presentation during my tutorial at college about why mental illnesses aren’t adjectives (it was similar to a previous blog post of mine) I got into a debate with a teaching assistant who was present about the lack of support for mental illness at school, and it got me thinking about how little support I actually received. Now I’m not talking about during secondary school (years 7-11) as when I was there I didn’t ask for any help (though I did need it), I’m focussing more on my experiences whilst attending sixth form.

My mental health was the reason my school work began to suffer. Before my anorexia I had been a fairly average student, I didn’t fail anything (other than Spanish) but I wasn’t straight A’s across the board either. It was during year 10, the first year of my GCSE’s, that I first remember my eating disorder beginning to rear its head, and although my GCSE’s don’t seem to have been affected by this, it wasn’t until I began year 12 that my head became the awful place to be in that it is today. It was during year 12 that I began to self harm, I would binge and purge many times a week, as well as restricting for days on end. And it was during year 12 that I began to contemplate suicide – I just wanted it to all be over. As a result of this, my school work took a back seat. How could I be expected to concentrate on the poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson when all I could think about was how much I hated myself? I was so unhappy, so so unhappy, and yet my school did nothing.

It was during sixth form that I was suffering the most, and for the most part I was suffering in complete silence. Despite the weight dropping off of me, and despite me becoming more and more withdrawn, no word of worry was even uttered. The “pastoral care” lady in our sixth form as she called herself, who would often reiterate how she was a part of the student support team, didn’t even ask how I was. She was too busy telling me off for not staying in school during my frees – even though I felt like a complete outsider and the thought of being there made my anxiety worse – to actually ask me why I was so unhappy. But even when I was finally honest with my teachers and my peers about what I was going through, the support still was not there.

I missed a fair few lessons for appointments and what not, and even though I’d explain to my teachers where I was going and why I needed to be there (I even brought the letter with me to prove that I actually needed to be there) in all but one case this was met with annoyed glances and sarcastic comments. Only one of my teachers actually sympathised with what I was going through, but eventually his patience ran out. Even a teacher who I had looked up to for a while, simply dismissed my reasoning as (and I quote) “a waste of time”. He literally told me that me going to get help for my eating disorder was a waste of time.  Even during a parents evening with my mum, when he voiced how I’d become withdrawn from the subject (the only time a teacher seemed to have picked up on it), and my mum tried to explain how I had things going on behind the scenes, he still dismissed it. Obviously my mental health doesn’t even begin to compete with my education in terms of importance.

The lack of support I received simply, in my opinion, made me worse. I felt even more alone. I had nobody at school I could talk to about what was going on inside my head and this just made me dread school days even more. The longer it went on for, the more sour my mood became towards it and the people there. I remember having countless arguments with the other students, and even my teachers, which lead to the so-called “pastoral care” lady calling me a bitch – yes she genuinely called me a BITCH – to one of my friends. The more disassociated I became with everything and everyone, the more worthless I felt. Eventually I became so brow beaten that I didn’t even feel like I could sit my exams.

All I needed during this time was a chat. All I needed was an ear to listen to my dilemmas. I wasn’t asking for the world, I wasn’t asking for them to go out of their way to make my life easier. I just needed help!

Why weight is a symptom, NOT an illness and why BMI is a load of rubbish

After the recent fashion shows still consisting of some severely underweight looking girls on the catwalk, it has recently been a hot topic in the news about whether a minimum BMI should be introduced for cat walk shows. This raises another issue; is BMI really that important? Is BMI really the ultimate measurement to determine how ill somebody is?

For my GCSE biology coursework we had to pick a health measurement and find out whether it affected someone’s heart rate by doing different experiments with our class mates. I picked BMI for mine as I had often been told how it really did not mean very much (so I figured it would be easy). I’d gone into my coursework knowing what the outcome would be and of course, my experiments proved that BMI really meant nothing. I had used myself in my experiment (I didn’t have many friends willing to take part) and I was the example of an ‘underweight’ BMI and yet I had the highest heart rate of them all when exercise was introduced. My results showed that BMI was not a good indication at all of whether someone was healthy or not, so why could a 15-year-old figure that out but the health system in this country not?

When being diagnosed for an eating disorder, during the initial assessment you are weighed and measured and your BMi is worked out. It is this number which you are then labelled with and essentially told whether you are ill enough for treatment. YOU ARE LITERALLY LABELLED WITH A NUMBER WHICH DETERMINES WHETHER YOU ARE ILL ENOUGH. When I first entered adult mental health services, my BMI was higher when I was first assessed than when I was first offered actual treatment, and do you know why? Because I lost weight whilst I was waiting for the help I so desperately wanted. It wasn’t like I’d been forced to go to the doctors by my mum or my friends, I’d asked to go. I wanted help. When I was first assessed it was pointed out to me how I wasn’t quite in the BMI level she called “dangerously underweight”, I was simply “underweight”. Telling someone with anorexia that is basically like telling your mum she’s your mum but she’s not quite your step-mum. It’s horrible. You’re basically telling someone that they’re not ill enough for treatment because they weigh too much.

One of the major problems with mental illnesses like anorexia and bulimia is that you try to convince yourself that you’re fine and that nothing is wrong. You tell yourself you don’t need help, don’t deserve help, so when this is supported by your psychologists or doctors, what else is there for you to do?

Every six weeks I would have to return to have a “15 minute chat” with a psychologist who would ask me how I was, probably not really listen, weigh me and then tell me which number I was on the waiting list. And let’s not forget the times I would be told how people had gone above me because they were “more severe”. And of course, my anorexia only got worse because that little voice in my head would tell me I wasn’t good enough – but it had evidence now. This went on for nearly 6 months until one day, I finally received a letter offering me the help I needed. But by now I’d become so brow beaten that I didn’t actually want it any more. I simply didn’t feel like I deserved it.

When recovering from an eating disorder you are told not to worry about your weight. Your weight does not matter. Your weight does not equate to your worth as a person. And yet my hope for help to get better was dependant upon my weight?

And don’t get me wrong, this is not a vendetta against the NHS because the treatment I have finally been given has been amazing and my therapist has been my life saver (and I am aware that they are stretched beyond belief). I am not blaming them for my experience, but if the focus for diagnosis and treatment wasn’t so weight-orientated then this would not have occurred. Despite the increase in the number of people seeking help for eating disorders, they are still being told that they need to lose weight so that their BMI is low enough.

EATING DISORDERS ARE MENTAL ILLNESSES, NOT PHYSICAL ONES!!!!!!!!! In the same way that you do not have to look ill to be thin, nor do you have to be thin to be ill. Just like physical illnesses, if treatment was given to those with eating disorders early on, then the possibility of recovery would be greatly increased. Waiting for treatment because “more severe” people were above me meant that I was sucked more and more into my anorexia. Who knows, if it had not happened maybe I would be closer to complete recovery than I am now.