Anonymous Entry (5)

I don’t know if you are still accepting entries, but partly for my own benefit I want to tell my story in hopes that I could start to put this chapter behind me. I’m not the best writer so this may at times seem all over the place.

For many years I have had issues with food. When I was 12 I was severely bullied at school, I felt out of the control and the only thing I felt I could control was my eating. I would avoid eating around people, extravagantly exercise and regularly purge, this was highly linked to my emotions at the time, if I would have a bad day at school my attitude to food would be terrible, whereas a day when I had be left alone I would be “ok”. These cycles went on for around a year.

I never spoke about it to anyone except one message to a friend, but was never spoke of again. As soon as I told her I was terrified she would spread my secret, we weren’t great friends and I thought she would revel in spreading gossip, in hindsight I should of given her more credit as still to this day as I do not think she has ever told anyone and I am very grateful of that. In the summer before year 9 I decided to myself that I could not have another year of struggling, I honestly can’t say how I managed to recover on my own without any support, but I did and my issues surrounding food stopped.

Roll on 8 years, I had completed GCSEs, A-levels and was now at University, something that I was told I would never achieve. I was completing a placement year and was about halfway through. This I suppose is where my story starts. Now I want to make it clear I never blame anyone for anything that happened, it was merely a range of circumstances that I was unable to cope with. I have always been a very private person and tend not to tell my problems/concerns to others. So here I was having had a recent management change to a manager who at the time I felt had a personal problem with me (I still don’t know if that is just how I felt or the truth). I was enjoying work, yes the workload was high but I cope well under pressure. I was working long hours and starting to get rundown, maybe that was the catalyst of what was to come. At the time I was starting to get increasingly frustrated with the people I was living with, this was a build-up of minor things and I can’t deny I overreacted on occasion, but it was frustrating.

At this point I was still coping, this was also around the time when there were the first posts being published on “The HEALTH Diary” and I have to say I wanted to tell the first part of this story, but this was prior to the anonymous entries so I never did.

After a month of feeling down and shattered I went to visit one of my longest closest friends at her Uni, we had an amazing time together, but on Saturday night we went out, after a copious amount of alcohol we came home. It was then that a joking comment was made by myself to her, which rightly she didn’t take well, this made me run out her kitchen to her room and breakdown, she came to me and hugged and consoled me. It was then that I first opened up about how I was feeling, I’m not sure if said friend even remembers this night as nothing was said about it the next day or indeed since. Over the next few months my eating started to fall apart again, I was constantly tired getting more upset about work and home life and slowly starting to isolate myself from people around me, avoiding social events and listening in the house to avoid seeing my house “mates”.

It was at this point that I knew I needed to speak to someone. I didn’t know who to turn to, so I decided to speak to a very close older friend referred to from now as “F”, although I had never spoken to F about anything so personal I knew I could trust her and believed she would be supportive and give good advice. It was coming up to Easter and I was heading back to my parents for a week, so I arranged to visit her. F made me feel completely at ease I told her everything, she talked it through and made me realise that actually everything is not as bad as it seemed I just needed to talk about it but my work situation was completely unacceptable and I needed to speak to HR about this, there were a lot of tears but she consoled me and calmed me down and tried to persuade me that my parents needed to know, I refused and F agreed (I think reluctantly) to keep it between us, I know this must have been difficult for F as she also was great friends with my parents.

I thought at this point speaking about it would of solved everything… Roll on a few days and I was back at work, feeling utterly sick with fear about going back into work. Within a few minutes of sitting at my desk my fears were confirmed, my manager made a snide comment, that did it for me, I walked away from the desk close to tears and immediately messaged F. This time F insisted she spoke to my Dad and really suggested I spoke to someone about it all. I have always had a close relationship with my Dad and he has always been very supportive but I was in complete panic that he was going to know about this part of my life, I thought I would be a disappoint and he would be ashamed of me, of course this wasn’t this case. So now he knew and again I thought things would start to look up. I think they did for a while but about a month later is when everything turns into a blur, I do not know what was the trigger or how it all fitted into place, but it was at this point I stopped eating almost completely, I was taking laxatives as well as purging, going to the gym twice a day, as well as doing home workouts, weighing myself multiple times a day and self-harming, through all of this I was messaging F sometimes telling her the full truth sometimes only giving her part the story, and although I would still be doing the above knowing F was there to listen and speak to is what got me through every day. I was on countdown for the last month till I could be back home, but also at the same time petrified as F had made it very clear that once I was home my parents had to know everything, because even though F had told my Dad she had been vague about the full extent.

It was in this last month that the suicidal thoughts started to creep up, although I never fully thought of doing anything the thoughts were there. During this time, I had also met a guy - someone who was completely wrong for me. Looking back we had nothing in common and was likely going to be a bad influence but at the time having someone to come home to was another crutch. For the final few days before I returned home, I begged and pleaded to F not to tell my parents about the full extent of everything, but it was at this point she told me of the emotional toll I had put her under. F said she didn’t mind and just wanted me to better but this led to me having one of the worst panic attacks I have had followed by more self-harming and hours of crying. F and I decided that we would tell my father together and then leave it up to us on where we go from there. A few days later I returned home and went straight to F’s house she was shocked by the weight I had lost, having by this point lost a quarter of my body weight.

We talked everything through and called my Dad who left work midday we talked it all through and it was decided that I must see a doctor. It was arranged for the next day that F would take me. This was the beginning of my recovery; it took me to hit absolute rock bottom to get professional help and at this point I still was not admitting I was ill. The doctor prescribed me with anti-depressants, which I have to admit really do help, but I was desperate to be off them as quickly as I could, it took me over a year until I completely stopped taking them, and now I am in a much better place, I know now how severe my depression was.

I cannot deny I am not fully recovered; I have my bad days, my whole experience has left me with anxiety and overthinking this flares up at various points which then leads to my eating disorder making an unwelcome appearance. But I am starting to find ways to deal and cope - I still speak to F on a daily basis, she is still the person who knows me best and exactly how to support me through the bad times, the friendship I have with her has always been strong but from this whole experience I know I can tell her anything and there will never be any judgement, I hope that for anyone that is going through a similar situation or any uncertainty or difficult times in their lives that they have someone to turn to like F.

I know this is a long read, and at times may seem vague. This is partly because this, the lowest part of my story, is now a complete blur. This is maybe because I had tried to forget it all. But it is also vague because my story is not yet over. I am certainly not fully recovered I’m not sure I will ever be, this is something that I am not ashamed of it is just something that happened in my life, 6 months ago I decided to get a semi-colon tattoo to symbolise this, for those that don’t know the meaning behind the tattoo it is: “When the author could’ve chosen to end their sentence but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life”.