What is Ana doing to you?

I was with my psychology specialist yesterday and she really made me think. What is it that I am trying to achieve? What is it my eating disorder wants me to achieve?
      I did not need to think for long. Of course it is to be thinner, better and more beautiful. That is all I have ever wanted to achieve. Do I want to be perfect? Eh YES. Of course do I want to be perfect, who doesn't?
     But when will I achieve perfectness? I’ll be perfect when I am thin, beautiful and good enough.
     When will I achieve being “beautiful enough”? I answered: when people will notice me.
     When will I be “thin enough”? I answered: when I can see that it is enough.

That is a dangerous thought don’t you think? Measuring myself by my distorted thoughts. Will I ever achieve those goals? There is a quite simple answer to that: Nope. The thinner I’ll get, the higher the standards get. Achieving “perfectness” is undoable. It is impossible. Just like when I made myself a goal weight and said: “when I will be x kg, I’ll be satisfied”. But what happened when I got to that weight? “Just five more kg and I’ll be happy” that’s what happened. And that is how it continued, and would have continued till I disappeared, if I had not been stopped. The standards got higher as the weight got lower. 

While Ana (Anorexia Nervosa) is making you want to achieve perfectness (which is not achievable), she is actually dragging you as far away from it as possible. It is different from person to person what ‘perfect’ is, but it most often goes on appearances (hair, eyes, smile, face, body and such things). As well as wanting you to achieve her standards of ‘beauty’ and ‘perfect’, she is dragging you down with her, not letting you eat, making you restrict, making you feel guilty and making you completely paranoid. By doing like she says, you won’t reach her standards. Not only because they are unreachable, but also because you destroy your body. 
Your smile disappears and her empty look comes instead. The glimpse in your eyes that once exampled your joy and happiness will be long gone and replaced by a sad glimpse of tears. Your beautiful hair that used to flax in the wind will fall out in clumps and your skin gets dry like a desert. The life as you know it collapses. You won’t be yourself anymore, you will be her. But what is she? Who is Ana?  

We all have different opinion on her and we all experience her differently. She is not the same for anyone. No two Ana’s can be compared to each other. 

For me she is bossy. She’s a bully. Her voice is the voices of my bullies that are constantly on repeat in my head. She is every bad word in the dictionary. She never lets me catch a break and take a deep breath. But she is also a friend. She is a friend that has been there for me for a long time. When I felt alone and forgotten, she was there telling me that everything will be OK, as long as I lost a few pounds. She assured me that everything would be OK, if only I would drop lunch. She assured me that starving myself would make me feel a lot better and people would start liking me. But as the time went by she got stronger. She told me to disappear. To be so small that no one could see me anymore, because no one noticed me either way. I was a wallflower, and she told me I could as well be dead. That it would not make a difference for the world if I wasn’t present. She is a mean ‘little’ devil sitting on my shoulder, criticizing my every move. 
 Even though my heart was beating (and still is), I wasn't alive. She took my life away and replaced me with herself. I might have been called M, but in my head M’s thoughts didn’t matter. I was lost. I am first now finding myself again, even though I get lost once in awhile, I fight to find me again. And that is what matters. 

What is common with every Ana out there is that nothing she says is true, she’s a liar. Even though she tells you that what she says is the truth and nothing but the truth, she is lying. She couldn’t be more wrong. She is a murderer that comes uninvited into your life and does everything to see you suffer. She manipulates you with her sneaky ways to think that she is your friend, when everything she is, is your worst enemy that doesn’t want you anything good. And if you don’t fight, she will eventually kill you. Take your life away and put it nicely on her shelf as an award among so many other awards. Too many other awards. She keeps an ever going list of records over life she has succeeded with snapping away from innocent human beings with her sneaky ways. All you can do is fight. Fight till she disappears into the corner, scared and afraid of the strong, fantastic soldier you have become. You got to keep going and be a hell of a soldier that does not let a criminal like Ana boss him around! Fight like you have never fought before, that is the only thing that works!

Day 14

How do your friends and family feel about your eating disorder?

 They are really supportive and understanding. My family is really put down by it and worry about me, especially my grandma, but it only shows how much I mean to them and that again motivates me to get better because they deserve so much more. 

Day 13

Do you believe you can ever fully recover from an eating disorder? Explain.

 I want to believe that I can. At the moment, it feels like it will always be a part of me, like an arm or a leg, something that I won’t be able to get rid of. But I like being positive and thinking that the road ahead will eventually be completely ED-free. The thought of being in this hell for the rest of my life terrifies me. And if it will be that way, then so be it. I don't have to think about that now, when all I can do is be positive.

So much more

An eating disorder isn’t only about wanting to be thinner and weigh as little as possible, it is so much more than that. It is about control, about getting hold of something in your life again. You feel like everything is slipping away from you, and you search for control. Unfortunately, food becomes a scapegoat.

 All of a sudden, like a thunder from a clear sky, it turns into an intense fear of food, to be more specific: calories. Calories become monsters, monsters that will hunt you every minute of every hour of every day, when in fact they are just a measurement of energy. Energy that is necessary for every living thing on the planet. No energy = no life. What will keep our bodies going if we don’t get any energy?

We humans do not photosynthesize, so the only way to get energy is through food. But when having an ED, you do not care about that. You don’t care if you are dead or alive. You feel dead, and you wouldn’t care if you were in fact dead. You don’t see any point in living, you do not have any energy, you do not have any social life because well, the ED took that away as well, and your health is shitty, because guess what! The lack of nourishment is eating you up, inside out. It is a slow process to suicide.

But what happens when you’ve been stuck in this pattern for a long long time and you’ve decided to want to change it? Maybe it is too late. Maybe your body is about to give up. Even though you mentally are ready to fight off those demons, your body might be worn out. The earlier you decide to fight, the better.

1 in every 5 of those suffering from Anorexia Nervosa dies. That is 20%. There is a bigger possibility to survive cancer than Anorexia; that is unbelievable, right? To me it isn’t. I, like other anorexics, know how powerful and destructive this disorder can be. The thoughts that hunt you down and drag you down with them. That drown you and mentally kill you. People, who haven’t experienced it, don’t know. They don’t understand.  And I guess they never will. And that is probably for the best. 

When a mental disorder takes over your life

When a mental disorder takes over your life, you just simply got to fight to get it back, because eventually it will take your life away. Maybe in the moment you are depressed that sounds pretty great. The thought of something taking your life away seems relieving. But in the moment you are NOT depressed, you can´t think of not being alive. Depression is like most other mental disorders, a disorder which you can recover from.  If you try hard enough, you will recover and learn to love life again. And when you’re recovered you will be thankful for being alive, I can promise you that.

When I was at my worst, I had pre-heart attack symptoms. I had chest pains and felt like there was a ton lying on my chest. I had constant back pain in my upper back, toothache and pain in my left arm, which are all known as pre-heart attack symptoms. I got help in time. Thankfully! I can‘t believe if I had gotten a heart attack, only 17 years old! 17 year old and a heart attack don‘t simply fit with each other.

An eating disorder CAN take your life away. No, you are not allowed to think that „nope, that won‘t happen to me, I‘m not sick enough“ because that´s bullshit. If you don‘t fight back, it WILL take your life away! And once it does, you can‘t get it back because, well, you´re dead. Everyone has their own struggles and have to fight through the day. If you want to live, you have got to fight twice as hard as them, because here we are talking about life or death.

 If you restrict, you can lose your life, even though you are categorized as “normal weighted”. If your body lacks nutrients and food in general over a long time, you can get serious complications which can lead to a tragic death. Reports of the 1981 hunger strike by political prisoners against the British presence in Northeast Ireland indicate that 10 individuals died after periods of between 46 and 73 days without food. Think! 46-73 days, that’s a pretty short time! You won’t survive much longer than that, and chances are that you won’t even survive that long!

My mom told me about a woman who worked out at her gym. She was there 24/7, usually on the skiing machine or the treadmill. She was thin, but not as thin as the pictures that come up on Google when you search for Anorexia (apropos, very few people who suffer from anorexia look that way). Nobody was fascinated or admired her of her stamina for running for hours. They looked at her and thought “poor lady”. Eventually they had to ban her from the gym. She was forced into several treatments, but once she was “better”, she came to the gym and was back to where she began, running or skiing for hours. Few months later, she died. She wasn't as thin as the anorexia pictures on the internet, but her body couldn't bare the restriction and over exercise any more. It gave up.  

That could be you. Think about it. Is this disorder gonna win, or are YOU going to win this fight? I bet on you.

Motivation

This disorder cuts pretty much everything out of your life. Your energy, your happiness, your health etc. It cuts pretty much all your abilities to enjoy life, your life. Your only chance of living. Your only chance to experience swimming with dolphins, watching the sunset from every corner of the world, learn to surf, scubadive in the Great Barrier reef, get married, go on a honeymoon, have children, do charity, make a career and leave a footprint after yourself here on earth. Either it is in form of descendants and in the heart of people you've met and you'll meet in the future, or in history. You can do whatever you want! you have all doors and windows open! Except if you drop out now. Then all chances of ever experiencing real happiness are thrown out the window, wich is closed afterwards. Starving yourself will lead to those chances disappearing. Yes, it will lead to death or so serious  medical complications that you won't be able to live your life.

Hold on, stay strong and all this kind of bullshit, because I believe in you and you CAN do this! 
-M