#nedaw2017

[perceivingwords]

It's National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and I just want to say that if you are fighting (or have fought) an eating disorder, I am so proud of you. Recovery is real, and you deserve it.

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find friends who make you wanna love yourself as much as they love you, even when it’s hard. (at Garage Coffee Company Nashville)

[imreallyamermaid28]

My Story Part 2

I went back to school for my Junior year of college. I had a new roommate who I didn’t get along with. She was a year younger than me, slightly immature, was obsessed with her designer bags, and joined a sorority my fall semester. All of these things were fine with me because in actuality I never should have been directly affected by it. It was fine until random girls were coming into my room and trashing it for some sort of initiation and it was fine until invaded my privacy. I had lost respect for her after a couple under-handed things she pulled as well. One example being that she didn’t like her computer so she purposefully poured Sprite on it and called her parents to get her a new one (Just to give you an idea).

Again all of her actions were easily ignorable and that’s what I did. I think she was upset that I didn’t want to be her best friend and as an upperclassman I was busy and had many obligations. She then started reading my blog over my shoulder wen I’d be typing something up or sitting at my desk. She made a fake one and started following mine everyday. She confronted me about my eating disorder but it was more of a matter of jealousy which I thought was weird at the time. She printed my blog off and gave it to my RA who handed that over to housing. She then typed up an entry on her faux blog and posted it online via AIM for everyone to see and wrote about my eating disorder and how it was too much stress for her to deal with and how she hated me because I was disgusting. 

At this point I had learned to purge and wasn’t as careful about it as I should have been. I confronted housing about changing rooms halfway through the year. The school called my house while I was on winter break again being forced to work full time at my internship. My mom freaked out and took me to the Dr. There was talk of me not being allowed to go back to school. I worked with a nutritionist and was told I’d have to be weighed every week if I did return to school.

 During this time in my life again, everything felt so completely out of control. My friends had all graduated although I was making new friends. It still wasn’t easy feeling like I had lost my support system. It felt like everyone was against me. When I met with housing to ask about changing rooms halfway through the semester, the head of housing took that time to attack me about my eating disorder and take my roommate’s side. She had said I was a liability for the school and that I might even get expelled for it. This was how I found out about how my roommate had printed out my blog and handed it over to my RA.

I never had support from my RA and didn’t feel comfortable talking to her either since she seemed to hate me as well. She sent me an email scolding me for missing a general floor meeting because I was at another meeting that I was required to be at. She held a grudge ever since that happened which I still look back on and don’t really understand. 

Everyone working against me and telling me I was disgusting and gross for having an eating disorder just made me feel even worse about myself. I remember writing in my blog that I wished I could disappear. My Dr put me on Zoloft around this time. I agreed to everything everyone told me to do. I ate what I was supposed to, went to my internship, skated, and then went to bed at night only to do it all over again. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I hated myself for being an ungrateful, disgusting, repulsive human. I hated my existance. I floated through each day without purpose. 

Because of my willingness to do what I was told I was allowed back to school for Spring Semester. I moved into a single room, bought a toaster, quit one of my part time jobs so I could focus on school, and pretended everything was fine. 

For the first month I tried. I followed my meal plan, but then I realized no one followed up with me. No one really cared. My mom wanted to pretend it never happened so she didn’t really ask how it was going either. Not that it’s a pleasant topic of conversation but it seemed like my mom just wanted it to go away. I also felt lost and alone most of the time. I’d come home after my noon class and sleep for 3 hours which I later realized was probably a side effect of the Zoloft. Needless to say I felt very alone. I felt like I was going through this by myself. Luckily my friends did reach out to me even though they weren’t close by and living at school. 

The only thing that seemed to be going right was skating. I started competing again that spring and even won a bronze medal at Intercollegiate nationals. I was landing my triple and performing well. Luckily that was a welcome distraction from my issues with food.

I started repeating bad habits after a while. I made sure to cover my tracks better. I would purge on the third floor of the library or a bathroom in the student center’s basement. I lived off of coffee, tea, and lean cuisines.When my parents came to town I ate with them as if it were normal ordering a burger and fries at the steak house restaurant we’d go to. I learned how to trick people and keep them off my case but I’m sure people still knew something was wrong. I just don’t think they cared to do anything about it and I certainly had stopped caring myself.

[overcomingchaos]

As most of you know, today begins NEDAwareness week of 2017. This week comes one time a year and the purpose that it serves is to spread awareness about eating disorders and also encourage people to reach out. As many of you know, I was consumed by an eating disorder for a great majority of my life. Up until about 3 years ago, I was unaware that help for this illness was available. I always thought that I was so alone in this struggle and figured that since I was the only one who had this struggle, why would there be available help? Seeking treatment was not only the best thing I could've ever done for myself but it was also the bravest thing. I'm not going to lie when I say that I fought treatment for a great while before coming to the realization that I WANT recovery. I'm going to get real right now- I don't want to be years down the road, lying on my death bed, wondering why I didn't allow myself that extra piece of pizza or packet of sugar in my tea. I don't want to be lying there, exhausted because all I've done in my life is try to fit into a mold of perfection. I want to lay there and be able to know that I have lived my life to the fullest way I know how to. For so many years, I didn't want to allow myself to feel that "recovery" feeling. I think mostly that was because I had no idea what that "recovery" feeling would feel like. It was foreign and most of the time, foreign things are scary... Let me tell you all something though, recovery isn't just something you feel. It's also something that you do. Both the feeling and the action of recovery are the best things that could have ever happened to me. As cliché as it sounds, I can now dance as if nobody is watching, I can sing as if nobody is listening, and I can now love even when I don't have someone else to love because I can love myself. I feel beautiful, I look beautiful, I am beautiful. This NEDAwareness week, I encourage you to do some self discovery and find out what the things are that make you beautiful. Recovery is hard... but it's worth it. #fatisnotanadjective