The behind the scenes…
“Eating disorders may not come about in isolation but my God do they create it. That’s what really kills; the isolation and the loneliness, not the illness itself. That’s why I’m sharing these photos, taken just 12 hours apart, because social media is brilliant at helping us create a façade convincing the outside world that we have it all together, when actually… this was my reality this weekend - tears, and a lot of them. Despite people reaching out to me I shut down. Well no, actually I let the illness shut me down, convincing me that I’d be better off alone, the classic lie that I should be wiser to by now – be careful Mima we know that ‘shoulds’ are another of anorexia’s relentless rhetoric… ‘Should be better by now, should be able to cope, should should should should…’. It knows just where to get me, and as the top photo shows, this weekend it really got me. I believed that familiar sneering voice, ‘Small and incapable. You can’t do it. Why do you keep trying. Just give up’. But I won’t give up. Not until I’ve beaten it.
It’s absolutely exhausting. I feel like I’m permanently living two separate lives, there’s the Mima I want the world to see vs. the behind the scenes of my illness. I know that I’ve come SO far from those days but I think it’s important that I’m honest, that I admit that I do still get them, because this illness thrives on silence and that’s what isolates us. When I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one out there who has at some point struggled to do ‘life’ whilst contending against an eating disorder”.
The saddest part is, I actually wrote that three months ago, but I never posted it. Instead, I swapped my sharing for silence as I uploaded a bright, shiny Instagram picture only telling half the story… did that make me feel better? Or did it actually leave me feeling even further from myself? Unsurprisingly, the latter. I can’t find smart, succinct words this time round, in fact I’m struggling to find any but they say a picture says a thousand anyway, right? The bottom photo, that’s the place that denying my reality takes me to. A disassociated shell of myself.
So, instead of filtering this post like my Instagram feed, I’m going to share the diary entry I wrote on that day…
“I feel like I’m breaking, like my world’s crumbling all around me but it looks so perfect no one would know. The other night, as I stood on the Tube in my sparkly dress, I probably looked to outsiders like someone who had it all together, the dress, the party, the friends, the job, it all… when really I couldn’t have felt further from it. Thing is, as Kerrie said to me a few weeks ago, “people pleasers never pause”. I never pause. I’ve learnt to override almost every sensation and signal my body tells me, be it hunger or emotion, but what I’ve learnt this week is that I can only do so for so long, and what’s more, delving into the illness to help me distract from what I’m really feeling leaves further from myself than ever. As I layer on the fake smile and perfect my food, I feel further and further from myself. I’m surrounded by so many people who tell me, ‘you can do it! I know you’ll get there’, but the one person who needs to believe it more than anyone else is me, and the thing that this illness does better than anything is destroy every ounce of self-belief. It tells me, ‘you can’t do it, who are you kidding, you can’t rely on them – rely on me instead! Just give up!’. It goes on and on and on. And I’m exhausted. YOU CAN’T KEEP GOING AS YOU ARE. Please hear that Mima. You have an illness but you are NOT your illness, there’s a difference. No one wants to share their life with Anorexia. I want a very different life to the one that this illness is dictating. So, I need to start being honest, because it’s the dishonesty that takes me further from myself and it’s the dishonesty that ultimately kills. I want a very different life to the one that I’m living right now and that’s enough to create change. Hold onto that Mima. Hold onto that.
It’s okay, you can come back from this Mima. You CAN recover.
‘When I feel stuck I feel worse’”.
That last sentence there, that’s the bit I want to focus on, “When I feel stuck I feel worse”. It’s something that I’ve known for some time now, but have been running from. Why? Because of fear. Fear of the backlash my eating disorder creates in the face of change, fear of ‘failing’ to do ‘life’, fear of the all the unknowns. But as my diary entries throughout this year affirm, when I feel stuck I do most definitely feel worse. For me, it’s got to the point where my fear of staying stuck outweighs my fear of changing. So, I’ve decided to go out to South Africa to get some more intensive help, to essentially help set myself free, to truly live and not just survive.
(I will not be easily contactable whilst out there so I will not be able to respond to many messages. But I will continue to write and journal throughout).
