Food For Thought page 3
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Hi Lisa,
You have done a fantastic job with your webpage. Its true and to the point, and yes, it shows the "not so glamorous side" of anorexia. People need to see that anorexia is not all cracked up to what they might think it is. Its a demon, one who grabs onto anyone who will let it, and stays there, until something major happens, like you die, or you stand up and "FIGHT" it. That is exactly what i did, fight it, and I am happy to say I am in recovery for anorexia for 5 years now. It's been a long and difficult road, but it is SO WORTH IT!! I finally have control of my life again, the anorexia is NOT
controlling me anymore.
I have had my eating disorder on and off for 20 years, nearly half my life. I, like the rest of us, have been hospitalized for it, and thats what saved my life. I also have medical conditions as a result of the eating disorder, but I have accepted them, and I know I can't change that, so I do my best to keep myself healthy. I still have some ups and downs with my anorexia, and thats why I say I am in recovery, as I feel, recovery is a life long committment. I know I will never go down that horrible road to anorexia again, I have come to far in my life and recovery to ever let it take my life again, I have worked hard for where I am today!
I just wanted to tell everyone that a life with an eating disorder is not an EXCITING life at all. Its a life of HELL, a constant battle in your head with the voice of anorexia, struggling to stay alive, feeling selfworthlessness, shame, guilt, isolating, you name it, its all there. Please, don't choose this life, its NOT WORTH IT, believe me I know. I almost LOST everything in my life, including my life!! YES, I know RECOVERY is hard, but it is so worth it, I can't stress that enough, to have my life back again, is the most wonderful FEELING in the world. I have so much to live for, and I am seeing that now. I finally love "me" for the first time in my life, and its great. I deserve a happy, healthy, eating disorder FREE life!! AND SO DO ALL OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!
Take care and have a great day!! Kim
VISIT KIM'S SITE: Eating Disorders - Recovery Is Possible - one woman's personal journey on the road to recovery:
http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/anorexia
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* * * * Helping the Helpless * * * *
I have never read something that made me feel so understood. Sometimes I want to ignore my problems and pretend that I am as " in control" as everyone is. Sometimes I want my problems to be acknowledged. My weight goes up and down, but my inner confusion stays about the same. I have lost 35 pounds in the past 2 months and people are treating me like some sort of spectacle, like something is wrong but they don't know what so they'll just tiptoe around me and be extra nice. Yes I'm in pain, but the pain is no more than it was before. Sometimes losing large quantities of weight feels like I'm screaming loudly LISTEN! I'M FALLING APART! And sometimes they do. My mom calls more often and more people say in a quiet voice, "how are you?" with a look in their eyes that means they really want to know. It almost makes me want to laugh, because when I gain weight again people talk about my problems in the past tense. "You were a real mess." You know what, I'm more of a mess with the weight on because I feel like a mess without a voice. I use my body as a monitor of my identity. I use those "measuring bones" that always look the same to everyone else, but I can feel when they are deeper inside my fat elbow after I eat more than I wanted to. I use them to tell me if I'm good or not. Thanks for being real and not using this site to show off your best skeleton pictures and act like you think they are gross when you are really prouder of them than anything in your life. Thanks for saying the things that are truly forbidden and talking about the competition. Thanks for saying that you don't have to weigh 50 lbs to prove you have a problem. Thanks for trying to truly help those who feel truly helpless.
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ANOREXIA OF THE HEART
Hey my name is Lauren. I recovered from anorexia (or so I thought) but I don't think it will ever really leave me. Anorexia, I believe is a part of me that I will always carry. I thought I had it beaten many times but I always seem so to back. Last year I thought I beat it for good. I remember being a slaze to my treadmill, freaking out if I couldn't do my usual hour and a half run, or if i went over my usual 560 calorie alotment. But I realized that no matter how thin I got, that I would never be satisfied. I thought if I could be just a little thinner, people would like me, guys would want me and life would be great. But theirs no weight where life is perfect. After this revolation, I was happy and was positive I'd never go back. So why am I, in actauality, going back? I have no idea. This is why I will be anorexic in my heart forever.
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Written September 5, 99
Trapped deep inside me is a hurt only I can feel. Does anybody realize what's going on inside? I have so many emmotions bottled up inside that will never escape. Everyone around me is so happy. I appear to be as well, but am only wearing a masque. Underneath this masque are so many tears that I've cried. So many nights I've lied awake in the dark as the tears flood out like a stream. This is when I feel like I'm traveling this journey alone. When I awaken in the morning, I know a new day awates. My heart is still broken, but I have my masque to cover up my hurt. I don't want to step out of bed. I don't want to begin a new day. Then I feel it. He is holding my hand. I know he will never let go. He guides me through the day and wipes my tears away. He whispers in my ear that everything will be okay. I feel very alone. But deep inside I know I'm wrong. God is traveling this journey with me. I'm not walking alone. -Erin
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(This is how I feel today. Here is I guess, a poem.)
Hollowing Out
I wake up from a doze at 5:15 am.
I say doze because I don't really sleep anymore.
I am tall and I used to be very attractive.
I am tall and look like death in motion now.
I look the way I feel.
I feel hollow. I feel numb.
This disease came upon me in the strangest way.
I was sick, lost weight and I have never seen myself
the way I used to be when I was healthy for 2 years.
I want to eat, want to get better, want to live without obsessing about food. But, I can't seem to. I have a conflicted soul, a confused mind.
I worry about not eating and not gaining weight, not recovering
yet when I look at myself in the mirror, touch myself, I feel so proud that I can exist without anything. I have learned to supress my desire for the necessary.I have complete control. Yet, I am so scard to die this way.
As I lay here I am naked, my fingers roaming about my body. I smile as I feel my cheek bones, the hollow where my cheeks used to be. My jaw is so angular and my neck so narrow, sinking into the pools in my shoulders created by my very prominent collar bones. I wisp my fingers across my breastbone and I smile at the jutt of bones.
I touch my nipples where my breasts used to be. I get arroused.
I can feel each of my ribs. I count them and I smile as my fingers reach towards my pointed protruding hips. Stretched taught between my hips, a hollow flat empty stomach. Placing my hand on it, I can feel it rumble as it screams for food. It is a scream I have mastered ignoring.
I poke a bony finger into my belly button, I take a deep breath as I feel my pubic bone and masturbate. The sensation takes a lot out of me.
I am the only one to provide myself with such pleasure.
He could not do it anymore. He feared for my life. I nearly ruined his. He is gone now. I am alone. My skinny legs are far apart, my thighs as thin as arms, my calves like sticks. My knees and elbows are large and knobly but I love looking at them whenever I get a glimpse of myself walking.
As I rise from the bed, I reach for my water bottle. I drink and my thirst is quenched but the demon makes me feel bloated, full, fat.
I have to deny this feeling. I run to the sink, push my fingers into my abdomen and begin to heave. I vomit and I smile.
Weak and sweaty I go into the kitchen. I eat a rice cake as I jog in place.
Nothing moves, no fat, not even on my ass, for I am all bone.
I read that there is even fat within our bones... I often wonder how I can lose that. I panic as I see my reflection. I look very ill.
I eat another rice cake, sip some water and continue until the bag is empty. I stare at myself in the mirror. I do not look well but somehow, I am proud of my bones. I take a laxative with prune juice. I lie on the bed and I wait for it's effect. The whole bathroom experience is very painful as I have damaged myself with the laxatives and as I sit on the toilet, I shake and retch and even vomit a bit. All out. No food left.
I am hollowed out. Shrinking. Disappearing.
Getting thinner and thinner as my cells waste away.
I feel old and tired but I am thin and I don't need food or drink.
I am proud.
I am scared.
I will die at the hand of this mystery called anorexia.
God forgive me for this sin.
-S.J.
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First and foremost I would like to congratulate you on your recovery and wish you nothing but the best of luck through this process. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
Secondly, I saw your editorial in the People magazine and was overwhelmed by the idea that someone, other than me, was going through this and had COME OUT ON TOP. I am pleased to know that anorexia/bulimia/compulsive overeating are now being noticed and taken seriously. Kudos to your recovery and good luck. Now onto my journal...*sigh*.....all alone at home and scared to death to go to bed in fear of waking up to someone standing over me with an uncommon face. I am feeling the urge to completly binge my eyes out righ tnow and just not give a f*** anymore... I am crazy..im pyscho....im in deep now. I don't know how to fix this, or if i really even want to anymore. I'm tired of fighting...i'm tired of having this over my shoulders... but I'm not strong enough to fight this...to stand up. I try to stand up just to get beaten down and i become deeper into my hole than i was before i tried to fight. this is making no sense. i wish i had a ladder to crawl out of this hole...it would make things TONS easier but then again, i should learn how to crawl out on my own and fly and not have the accompany of a way out. i learn better and become stronger by picking myself up, right? i try to believe that is true, but i just want someone to come along and pick me up and if they have to, drag me out by my hair....i would be willing to deal with the consiquences of that. those consiquences are near to nothing compared to the consiquences in my head right now.
Fighting in my head seems so odd, but yet, giving in and NOT listening seems worse....what to do (?) ~K
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Dear Lisa,
Your site is great and you've done a fabulous job. I was actually crying when I started reading because I felt that I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I don't want to have this crazy life thinking of food every minute, I don't want to be scared of dying whenever I binge and purge, I don't want to be tired, I don't want to be in pain and I don't want to be fooled by my "healthy" looks. I'm ill and I have decided to do something about it. I've never sough for any help but I've realised it's time to do that. I don't care if it's a doctor or a therapist, I won't let bulimia rule my life anymore. With love, C
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Hi there Lisa,
Congrats on an excellent site. I was honestly at first in awe of the pictures. But then I did exactly what you intended the site to be for: I read it. It all makes sense, and I think when looked at the way it is meant to be it is a very powerful message. One I never heard till recently. I am 19 (just turned 19) and have had an ED for about 5 years. I was always aware that eating disorders were out there, but I never looked hard enough to figure out why. I knew it was to lose weight--I knew all about weight loss; I was a gymnast. I, however, knew nothing of the true, deeper, reasons for it. And I, like almost all of the others, believed it couldn't happen to me, I had the perfect family, and all I needed to do was diet. I had a "unique" case of an eating disorder, one that would leave when I wanted it to. Thus begins my wake up call. Nope, I was just an average jo blow victim of an eating disorder. I should have been thrown into the pool of them at my high school. But why I was I taken such good care of? I realized later that it was because eating disorders are serious conditions, and I was "sick." And also that the vast majority of my school was stuck in the "Thinner is Better" era, and did not take it to the extreme that I did.
So now I sit. Dreaming of goals that I may not reach if I ever dare to venture to where I have been. Dreaming of attention I never got until I got "sick." Longing to be loved. Longing to be dead. Basically living between two extremes. I am "recovering," I never have been able to
admit that before. I long for my comfort, but I long for freedom. I know one that I have always hated is feeling controlled, so why should I let this thing control me? So I think, if I am strong enough to repress hunger, then damn it I am strong enough to allow it. After all it is natural. Normal. By God I am sick of not being normal. It's about damn time I fight. Maybe if I stop doing abnormal things to my body, I will feel like I fit in with those out there I long to be a part of.
"Survival" - January 12, 1999
You find yourself so high
Unfortunately only for a little while.
You are merely surviving
In a lonely world so cold.
As your whole life passes by-
You sit back and realize
Hey- somethingās wrong.
You find yourself so proud
Lasting but that mere moment.
You find your survival compromised
In a selfish world.
You think of life so far
And realize- Hey somethingās wrong.
You find yourself in a state of change
Taking more than youāve prepared.
You learn what itās like to struggle
Soon to make the difference in your world.
A whole life ahead of you
Sitting back- You realize
Hey- itās not that wrong.
"Internet" - February 16, 1999
I want to disconnect from this world that has me so torn.
Sign off the internet of life.
Run away from my fears-
Run away from my problems.
An avoidance of responsibility
An avoidance of myself.
I have an urge to reconnect to my habits that cause me to rip.
Sign on to the internet of hell.
Run around through my fears
Run around through my problems
An avoidance of responsibility
An avoidance of myself.
"Holding on to Letting Go" - April 9, 1999
Holding on to letting go
Is my destructive routine.
Caught up in confusion
Is my insanity never seen.
Secrets hidden, secrets revealed-
Each step pulls me in a different direction.
In experiencing new worlds
I find where I need correction.
Taking that step to letting go
While I remain torn.
Resurfacing conflicts appear instantaneously.
Making to wrong decision - my destruction reborn.
My life too vivid to find a focal point-
I beat myself up to help myself grow.
I close my eyes - this ridiculous struggle could likely be a dream.
Once open - I know
This is only me holding on to letting go.
"Where your Heart is" - August 17, 1999
Try to explain the mysteries of life,
But you cannot.
Try to explain the ironies of life÷
Impossible.
For many each is turmoil,
And not knowing what to expect is horror.
They withdraw:
Sharp people, trusting no one.
Doubting, now, any glimpse of hope÷
Just disregard it.
Itās such a shame hurting others
While you jeopardize your life.
Impossible to move on, you say.
But look harder,
Deeper.
Thereās a small exit
To a small town.
Take it.
It just might be where your heart is.
"Father of Insanity" - October 10, 1999
A growth of some sort
Leads to fear.
Possible attempts of revival
Straight to fear.
Shaking hands,
Sweating feet,
Pounding heart÷
A broken heart;
Unable to trust,
Unable to love,
Unable to speak the truth,
Leading to fear.
Scattered mind:
Incoherent and dysfunctional,
Self destruction,
Leads to fear.
And my attempt of fixture
Fails
and
Falls
To fear÷
The father of insanity.
Thanks for your site. Good luck for your recovery, Sincerely - K.K. 19
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Head over to page 4 of Food for Thought.
