Where I am may be lost

I can't remember the last time I wasn't in pain. 

Not only mental pain but physical too. I get huge discomfort if I eat more than a salad or half a sandwich a day. 

Every day, at one time or another, I'll be in pain from laxative use. This ranges from hours of stabbing pain that can wake me up in the night or stop me from sleeping, to just an hours pain when I first wake up. 

It’s usually when I’m in this pain that I think I simply can’t carry on like this. 

I get a right feeling in my chest and heart palpitations from excessive amounts of diet tablets. I get headaches due to lack of food and drink. 

Yes I’m alive, breathing and I have many, many thing to be grateful for, but what quality of life is it to be ruled by an eating disorder? To plan every day around the needs of the disorder? To put the needs above the disorder above everything else? 

I ask myself over and over why I do this to myself, as if I have any choice or control. 

Mental illnesses take control of people and make us lose touch with who we really are.

So many people who suffer with eating disorders hide it, I hid my problem for years. I pray one day the society we live in will be more open and people will not have to hide the truth. 

'I am not lost for I know where I am. However where I am may be lost' - A.A Milne