An update

My life has been taken out of my control, out of my hands and this demon of an eating disorder mixed with depression is controlling me. 

Every time I feel as if I have taken a step forwards, this disorder pushes me three steps backwards. 

Recently, I wrote about seeing the doctor and starting treatment. I am still receiving treatment but my condition has worsened since I first went to the GP. The depression, along with feelings of self harm and suicide has mounted up on me and my eating habits are far from in my control.

I have had to take a year interrupt from my university course, to give myself the time to get better before I return to finish my third year. I'm completely gutted that this is what I have to do, although I see the positives of taking a year out.

My motivation, attention span and energy are all so lacking. 

I have a lot more time on my hands now I am having out of university, I find myself spending a lot of time sat in my garden thinking about what life will be when I beat this illness. 

I long to feel control over my life and over my body. I long for the day I can eat what I want, when I want, without feeling compelled to meticulously weigh myself and take tablets. I long for the depression to lessen, for the darkness, that feels so real and literal, to fade away. 

I hope this is the start of the right path. 

You do deserve help

As it is mental health awareness week, I thought I would do a post because I feel there is still so much awareness that needs to be raised. I fear that so many people live in shame or denial about their mental health and it shouldn't be that way, we have to strive for a society that is more understanding and accepting. 

I never wanted to go to the doctor about my eating problems, or the depression the eating problems brought with them. 

I felt that talking therapies weren't my thing and I didn't want medication. I thought I could fight through it alone, find my own coping mechanisms, and just manage somehow. For a long time this just about worked. 

I didn't feel as if I deserved help, I didn't think I was 'sick enough' because I've never been an inpatient, never been tube fed, I just didn't think I deserved any help. I felt like I exaggerated everything, I just did not feel like I deserved any help because I did not feel like I was truly unwell. I came to accept that this was how my life was always going to be.

However recently, after feeling worse and worse over the last few months, I decided maybe it was time to try speaking to my GP.

I didn't hold massively high hopes, I didn't know whether he would understand or how he would react, whether he'd take me seriously when I spoke about how dark and low I felt battling this.

However I was so, so pleasantly surprised. He was lovely and kind about it all, and I asked if I could have some medication to help me just take the edge of the mental pain I felt and he agreed this would be a very good idea. He also referred me onto other specialist eating disorder teams. This was something that lifted a huge weight off my shoulders because I finally felt like someone understood how I felt and after struggling for so long I am now hopeful that help is coming my way. 

I don't know if this medication will help in any way, but I'm hopeful it will ease even a little of how I feel.

I didn't think I really deserved help until recently, I didn't think I was 'ill enough', but now I think actually I was wrong and I was denying myself the help I do deserve.

Never feel you do not deserve help, and if you want help then please look for it. Whatever problems or struggles you face, you deserve help. Encourage your friends/family to seek help if they need it. Everyone deserves help. 

The daily struggle

I am struggling. I think this is something that is often hard for people to admit, something people don't want to say out loud. 

Six months ago I would have said I was making some progress with my eating disorder, but within the last two or three months I feel as if I have taken several steps backwards, and actually things are much worse than they have been for a long time. I feel more depressed, more broken and beaten by this than ever before. 

It is a constant fight. A constant struggle, and it is so hard. 

It is hard to carry on, to wake up each day, get out of bed each day, go to work, and to do the things I have to do. 

In the last few months I have found myself looking more and more for a way to end the pain and torment I feel, or at least numb it for a while. 

I do not feel very strong anymore. 

I do not feel like I will overcome this eating disorder, I feel as if my life is one big battle and I am losing every single day.

Please, if you know someone who struggles with anything like this, reach out and show them some love, I'm sure they'll be grateful. 

'Thin privilege'

Recently I have seen a whole bunch of tweets and social media posts, about 'thin privilege'.
Posts saying things such as 'thin privilege is being able to go to the doctors with back pain and not being told to lose weight', 'thin privilege is being able to speak to a GP about anxiety and them not suggesting losing weight'.
This makes me angry on so many levels.
Firstly, it is doctors duty to raise public health awareness around weight issues. 
What is there to say that if a thin person went to the GP about something physical that the doctor wouldn't suggest they put on weight?
People presume doctors don't do this, but they do.
I have seen my asthma nurse several times in the past for check ups and she has suggested I put on weight.
I don't think people mean to be cruel when they post things like that on social media, but it is cruel. How can anyone say people who are thin are privileged, when nobody knows how awful their life might be. Nobody knows the battle they might be facing every single day, the battle that revolves around their weight and their image.
I know it can be argued that larger people who receive these comments, from doctors and the like, are being discriminated against for their size. I am by no means someone who thinks 'fat discrimination' is okay, it is not on any level. But the way to combat 'fat discrimination' is not to call thin people privileged.
To state that thin people are privileged to be thin, insinuates that larger people are not privileged.
It's ridiculous, there is no such thing as 'thin privilege', just as there is no such thing as 'overweight privilege'. We are all privileged to be on this earth, no matter what we look like. 

The big 2 5

I turn twenty five tomorrow. It's a scary thought. I know I'm still young, but there are a lot of things I expected to be different by the time I turned twenty five.
There are things that I didn't expect that are actually positive things; when I was eighteen and thought about being twenty five, I would have expected to have my career path sorted. Although I am on the path to my career, I didn't expect to be a student again studying for a second degree. But this is a positive thing and in this aspect I am pleased that my life didn't pan out quite as I thought.
One thing I didn't expect was to still be battling an eating disorder.
When I was eighteen I thought I would have it under control by the time I was twenty one. When I was twenty one, I thought it would be sorted by the time I turned twenty five.
Now here I am.

People underestimate the power of eating disorders

I can vividly remember when I was plummeting downwards into some of the worst times with my eating disorder, I was in my bed room at university and my stomach rumbled. I had the usual fight in my mind about whether to eat or not, and then I remember hearing a voice in my mind telling me I couldn't eat. I don't believe I ever really heard voices in the way some people do, but I imagined this voice and for months and months it popped up, from my imagination, every time I felt hungry. It grew and became more regular, and then I would be congratulated when the numbers on the scales went down. Maybe my imagination was too vivid. Maybe it was my subconscious. It never really bothered me what it was that I heard and felt, it just became the norm.
Eventually I told myself it was all my imagination and proved myself right as I stopped imagining hearing anything.

I think people brush eating disorders under the carpet, especially if someone isn't very, very thin, like me. But this isn't fair. Eating disorders destroy lives, control lives, manipulate lives. My whole life, my every move, revolves around eating. The torment is constant.
People should not underestimate or ignore the realness of eating disorders, whether the signs are visible or not.

'A certain darkness is needed to see the stars' - Osho, The Book of Secrets.

Can 1000 nice comments ever erase 1 cruel comment?

It's happened to me, to all of us I'm sure at some point. People say things, flippant comments like 'oh you're eating again?' and try to make a joke of it. Or 'why don't you eat? Scared you're fat?'

What makes people think things like that are okay to say? 

It happens too often to me and to someone very close to my heart and I hate the pain I see it causes.

I wish people would think, just think before they speak.

Everyone has their own battles that we don't know about, so everyone should just be kind. 

Just be kind. 

Something to loosen the grip

I want more than anything to find a way, a 'cure', a solution to feeling like this. I know without a doubt there must be thousands upon thousands of people in the world who feel something along the lines of what I feel.
I want to find a solution but I can't, maybe because eating disorders are so, so personal, no two peoples issues are the same. So you could ask, how do you get better unless you happen to find what works for you, what helps you?

I am a Christian, and I talk to God most days when I'm driving to university or work, I chat to him about life, ask him to look after the people I love.
I ask him to loosen the grip that food and weight have over me. I ask for a break, just a single day where I do not have to base my life around the numbers on a weighing scale.
This day is yet to come, and I guess that's the way it's meant to be for now.

'A wound is the place where the light enters you' - Rumi

The journey so far

For so long I thought there was nothing wrong with me, I didn't qualify to be classed as having an eating disorder, as I wasn't anorexic or bulimic.
I went through a phase of bulimia but for me, it was never going to last. It never satisfied me and it didn't really help me.
I guess I started off 'not too bad', but then plummeted when I reached about twenty one/twenty two, became hooked on illegal diet pills with speed in them, taking four or five times the daily recommended dose, starved myself continuously and ended up having to leave my job.
I always found starving myself to be the thing I needed the most, it was what I enjoyed, what made me feel better. I would starve myself for several days a week, but I was never skin and bones, I never went below seven stone (to my disappointment), so I never received any physical health help. Maybe I could have got help, but I didn't want it. Until now, I never felt like I could talk about any of it.
Although some of my closest friends knew, I became a master of disguise. Mainly to save my friends and family from the pain I was going through.
I couldn't bear people knowing how I felt, and as I didn't live in the same city as my family, or indeed most of my friends, it was easy to disguise what was happening.

In the last year or two, I have improved but I am not recovered. I am far from it.
Can anyone recover from something like this?
I dragged myself out of the vicious circle of tablets and starvation.
Although I can now live without illegal tablets, I still rely on my trusty laxatives.
I now can allow myself to eat meals, I can't let myself eat what I want, I can't eat carbs, I religiously calorie count and weigh myself around seven/eight times a day. Still now if I have a 'bad' day and eat carbs or something high in fat, then a starvation day will be needed.
I can't eat what my friends/family want to eat and I can't go anywhere over night without weighing scales.
My life still revolves around my weight.

I am now training to work in mental health, and naturally during training we hear a lot of inspirational stories and statements, but there's one that really sticks in my mind;
'It can snow as late as May, but summer will always come eventually'

An introduction

My name is Catharine. I am about to turn twenty five years old and for the last seven years I have battled with an eating disorder. EDNOS to be more specific.
I decided to make this blog because it is time to be more open and talk about the battles that people go through with eating disorders. 
This blog may be brutal at times, because eating disorders are brutal.
Eating disorders are isolating, they control every aspect of your life, and maybe this blog will be just another blog, lost in the internet, or maybe it can help people. 
Maybe it can help even one person feel slightly less alone.