It steals every sparkle...

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… I’ve sat trying to find adequate words but today I’m struggling. So instead, I’m going to share something that I wrote during NEDAW last year but never got round to posting, or at least let’s start there…

‘Want to know what mental illness feels like? Like a cloud looming over you and when it rains it doesn’t just rain, it pours. Throwing darkness onto light, stealing every sparkle. 

On Sunday it was my birthday, a day too many know I absolutely love. Everyone was so kind, messages, presents, the most special pre-birthday sparkly dinner ever. 

Yet by 5:00 on Sunday afternoon, sparkles were swapped for pyjamas as I lay in bed trying to forget that I even existed. Completely shut down. I wanted the world to swallow me up there and then, feeling like the most undeserving human being alive. So unworthy of all the kindness and love, that’s how I felt.

The presents sat unwrapped, candles unlit, cake uncut. I couldn’t even bring myself to pretend. That is the crippling reality of mental illness, the behind the scenes of all the smiles and sparkles. 

‘I assume you don’t want to do the cake today?’... my eyes slowly shut in an attempt to escape the pain. The pain my existence was causing, the pain this illness was inflicting, especially on those I love most. I couldn’t hide it, my lowness had seeped onto them. 

I lay there a shell of Mima, wondering how much longer I can go on fighting this, trying to get well, when on days like today I just can’t seem to win. Its utterly exhausting. It knows just when and where to get me. And I’m sick of it. 

This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, a week that four years ago acted as a catalyst for me sharing my very private battle with Anorexia Nervosa. I wish I could sit here and relay how I am now better, reeling off hope to others out there. But evidently, I’m not. I’m still very much on my journey battling this awful illness. But I do think there’s hope in the fact that I am still battling, that I refuse to give up. 

All too easily I forget that how I felt on Sunday is how I used to feel every day. But things have changed, and things are changing. I can now say it - using smiles to silence sadness doesn’t help anyone. And that in itself means I’m further forward than I’ve ever been. 

If you know someone struggling or are struggling yourself please reach out to someone you trust. Don’t let it silence you.’ 

I can’t believe I wrote that a year ago?! So much has changed since then yet all too easily I still beat myself up, ‘why can’t I just be a normal human being?’ ‘why can’t I cope?’, and I’m always met with the same response, ‘Jemima, who is this ‘normal human being’ you talk about?! Because I’m yet to meet them!’. And she’s quite right, who is this aspirational ‘normal’ human being? Because really everyone struggles, some just choose to share it, others not. 

On Monday, it was my birthday but this year it wasn’t sparkly or OTT, really, it was very ordinary. In fact, it was probably the most ordinary birthday I’ve had in years, but to me it was still special. It was special because I wasn’t in hospital or a day patient, instead I was at work for it.

In January I started a new full-time job at a prep school in London (working full-time is something I haven’t managed to do in seven years!). Throughout the day each class I went into sang to me, I was drawn little paper presents, one child even ‘gifted’ me her purple unicorn lip salve – such a treat! But truth be told, I didn’t wake up feeling on cloud 9, in fact I actually woke up feeling quite low. However, unlike last year I wasn’t consumed by it, I actually managed to bring myself out of it. I managed to go to work, get on with the day, and even ended it with pizza and prosecco!

I often think it’s hard for outsiders to see how much of life an eating disorder impacts, even as a sufferer I lose sight of at times; eating disorders don’t just steal the sparkle out of birthdays, they steal the sparkle out of every aspect of life. But they are not choices, they are are coping mechanisms and they take an awful lot of strength to overcome. 

So for NEDAW this year I am going to repeat what I wanted to say last year…

If you know someone who is struggling or are struggling yourself please reach out to someone you trust. Don’t let it silence you.