I lay in bed wide awake last night for hours not able to sleep, so I had a good think about life, the universe and everything in it, and what it means to be a part of it. A. Part. Apart? So similar. Too similar actually, so thinking about it properly theye are, in fact, the same. If you are apart from someone. You are A PART of them. So you see, absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Little late, but Happy New Year readers.
Today's post is based around the idea of a cloud. And more specifically? What it is like living with a severe mental disease.
There's another one. Disease... I'm sure you've heard this one, it speaks for itself. Dis. Ease. And generally speaking, all disorders and diseases are a direct result of dis ease. In the mind. There is nothing happens to our bodies we cannot cure with our minds. Especially with the help of good old mother nature (remember Her? She's outside. Not on TV.) Everything we need to cure all those aches and pains and coughs and cancers and everything in between, is right outside. On this planet, where we live. So we were not put here by accident, we were put here because so was everything else to make sure we survived. It's all a neat little package we are a part of.
Unfortunately there's a lot of people out there full of greed and power hunger who choose to tell us we need this pill, that pill and this drug or that product. But that's for another days discussion.
Today, I talk of disease. Despite the fact that some diseases need a natural remedy, and need to be prevented by natural plants herbs and spices, the bottom line is that dis orders and diseases of the body are all of the mind. Because you see, it's not even a case of 'the two are connected' - there is no Two. It is one. So anything happening in your mind will reflect on your body and vica versa. We can be our own worst enemies. But we can also be our own best and most treasured friends.
It is hard to accept that we may be affecting our health by not being mentally healthy but it is just the truth and if nothing else I tell the truth. Don't like it? Have a think, as to why you may not like it.
This is why healthy eating is so important. I've done a lot of reading in to the properties of plants and herbs. It's actually magic. Lemon, for example. Antiseptic, anti depressant. Cleaning. Bay leaves. Cinnamon. Ginger. Garlic. Honey. To name a few. All these, they have astounding healing properties and it's just like magic. In fact, the definition, Oxford english, of magic, reads thus: the higher truths of nature.
I'm happy to know this stuff, and happy to know that I am helping to heal my dis ease with stuff that nature provides. That's why I'm not on antibiotics for the bug ive got at the moment. And that's why I choose to take CBD oil, or, medicinal cannabis. Again, looking at it for what it is, it is a plant, with abundant healing properties. Whether or not it can be used for a high is totally irrelevant. So can a lot of things. There's no end to the things people get highs from.
Drugs? Here's another Oxford definition for you. Drug: anything that alters your body's metabolism. I think I may have touched on this before, by saying, how can anyone have an opinion that food is not a drug? Truth is, it's possibly the biggest one.
And the basis of my dis ease. Which brings me to what I thought I might talk of for a little time: what is it like, to have anorexia and bulimia?
I'm not talking about a list of symptoms, or what it feels like, or what you look like or how you seem mentally to other people. I mean genuinely, what it is actually like. A description. I'm not going to bore you with the shit that goes through my head every minute of every day, thats more to do with what it feels like. I am going to make an attempt to describe in terms of other siterations or relationships, what it is like living with, at least part of, your mind being anorexic. And bulimic. Bulimic is more difficult, because still being burdened by it I feel a sense of betrayal when I bad mouth it. I am also going to name some conditions of it and some of the lengths and places I have been in order to prolong and maintain this illness. It's not pretty, but people listen to alcoholic stories and meth addict stories. This is similar.
Imagine a cloud. Any type of cloud. It doesn't have to be a dark one, full of rain and ready to burst and rain on you any second. But we'll start there. It's obvious, so easy to imagine for a reader who may never have heard of anorexia. So I will create as easy as picture as I can to begin. So. You're out for a walk. It might be a sunny day, and it might be near to rain. If you're Irish this is fairly likely. So either way, clouds draw in, even if it was from a sunny place. It could have been lovely and you're strolling, smiling, looking at the surroundings (we'll make this a 'walk in the park' for arguments sake.) So, life is, at present, a walk in the park. Any cares? Nah. It's a good day. Money in the bank, food in the fridge, all that. And then, even before the sun begins to disappear, the light fades. And there's a sort of, stillness. It's eerie and you know something bad is about to happen. You feel this sense of heaviness in your chest and then the sky begins to darken more and the clouds block that sun. It's gone. All the while, sky darkens, darkens, darkens. And there's a rush, a gathering and then... wet. There's nowhere to shelter and droplets cling to your every pore and you know there's no point in running because you're miles away and all you want is to go home.
When you live with anorexia, that is home. When you live in your mind (will get to out of mind later) it rains everywhere, because there is no home. It's always like that, even inside.
To be honest, I wouldn't have run anyway, there was no point. One, chances are I've already gone for a six miles run at 5 am, and am on my 25th kilometer of walking that day and I know I still have twenty or more to go, and even if I go home and get dry, I am not allowed to eat my quarter of an apple that day because I haven't burned off six times its calorific value. I wouldn't deserve it. I wouldn't have earned it, and I would have to be punished by no half apple the next day, and double the exercise. So, I keep walking, in the rain.
Wet is not all bad. You get used to it. But let's face it, walking in the rain SUCKS ass. Nobody is know likes it. It's awkward even if you're dressed appropriately theres bulkiness of clothing, squelching, foggy glasses. It's a pain. And nothing really can prevent the unpleasant effects of walking in rain. And if you're not appropiately dressed? Forget it, it's horrible. Especially when you know that even when you're home and dry, literally, even when you're on the home stretch, somehow it's still raining.
Take the example of Right Now. I am sitting in the height of comfort and feeling better after a horrible bout of sickness, literally shrouded with love, devotion and good vibes. I could say more. It's just a happy picture and a happy life, yeah? And yet there in the back of my mind, is sheer and building terror about the next meal. How much to eat, what to make, how I'm going to manage the feelings afterwards and the possible consequences of not managing ALL of those feelings. I could make a list. It would take a while. And even right now, feeling good, happy, safe, loved and accomplished, an interruption in typing this as a phone call comes in which somehow translates in to my mind as an opportunity to self destruct. And so a plan forms. Yes. You see what I mean, by dis ease. The sense you get when even when everything is fine, your glasses are foggy or your feet are damp. All is not as well as it could be. It's discomfort, plain and simple. At least, that's and all it is now. It can be, may still be, and has been not so much a sensation of dis ease and discomfort, but a roaring, burning, screaming, hot fire of lava expldoing in your mindetails until you're unaware of everything around you or whose even in the room. It can happen anywhere, any time, it can creep up or it can come without warning. Just like a rainstorm. That's where living in your mind and going out of your mind can switch. And actions can become mindless.
I am happy to say that these days I see it as discomfort. This is what I mean by feeling okay about using anorexia as my subject for mental disease, because I do not feel she can hurt me or retaliate somehow if I write about what she can turn a person in to. Or infiltrate in to your personality. It's sort of like a virus. It's like an evil force which starts like any viral invasion, starts as one, and multiplies taking over each cell in multiples that double in size with every cell. Until it has taken over. Eventually the entire body is ridden with viral infections and the sickness sets in. I had a dream about it, while I was feverish during this illness. I woke up sweating and shouting. It's sinister, how viruses work. I feel okay today to sit here and compare that part of my mind as a virus, as not only am I full of antibodies to prevent infections and remedies to fight against this stuff (naturally, as I stated above, at the start) I have mental antibodies against it because I have the strength and will to allow it to work with me instead of by invasion. (End result, sickness) this is what I meant, when I said lemons etc have antidepressants in them. So I feel I have protected my body and mind of anorexia. And I know that as this stage in my life I will never go down under a safe body weight again. I know that I will never need physical help because of having a low weight. I am, by all accounts, free of my anorexia. I will not lie, she's having a bit of an auld roar at me at the moment but it will quiet. I cannot calm a storm so I wait for it to pass. Because it will. Nature. ".... after the rain the sun...after the sun the rain..."
Incidentally, I was thinking about the aforementioned opportunity. I have options. As to whether to use it as a bulimic opportunity to go out of my mind for fifteen minutes, and balance my way through the rest of the day fuelled by temporary euphoria and tension relief. Or. To take the opportunity to grow. To do something else. To turn my back on temptation and do something pleasant. For me. Or for someone else. Sometimes I find if I am choosing not to self destruct, then the other option is to do something nice for somebody else. Maybe it makes me feel like a better person or maybe it just distracts. Whichever, it helps. If the end result is the absence of a bulimic episode, then job done. It will eventually be the case that I consciously choose to do something for me in that period of time, but for now, usually I clean. Or do something nice for someone. With this in mind, tomorrow looks brighter and moreleasing hopeful than it did a few minutes ago.
Here's something else to imagine. I don't know if everyone has felt this, but my guess is it's a fairly common occurrence through most people's primary, secondary education or even later in life. It is this. Imagine you make a friend. A friend who was someone who you spotted a while back and wondered how it would be to be friends with them. It looks good, you even went home from school and imagined scenarios involving you and this potential friend. All looks good. And then she spots you, and it's possible she's thinking the same. After a time, you become friends. Those scenarios come true and you feel safe and it seems like the right thing. And it seems like the right answer. It's just you and her and fuck who ever gets in the way.
After a time something begins to shift. She's beginning to look a lot better from a distance, from where you were before. You begin to dislike her. You try to avoid her and try to make other friends. And then trouble starts. She gets possessive and then you feel trapped. You feel like you can't get away. Etc....
Apply that to a mind with anorexia. It's a lot like an abusive relationship, what I described and even touches on what being bullied is like. But if you think of anorexia as that friend.... or so called. Because it seems like your best friend for a long time, during the intensive training period of self control. It's a long time disguised, and usually someone else points it out.
But that bit, in the story, where I said that she spots you. Well she does. This demon. In that respect it is like an abusive relationship as serial abusers will prey on the weak and they know how to choose them. You are a potential victim if you're vulnerable. And if you've been battered emotionally, or you're vulnerable enough to be looking desperately for an answer from someone or something other than your own soul, then you're an easy target. I was juicy meat, and the wolf came to feed. But instead of feeding straight away, she enticed me in to her lair with lies and empty promises. And by the time I realised it was a problem, I couldn't get out.
Friendships like the one I described are not forgotten. Even if you get away - which is the only way. Sever. Run. Shut out. Surely everyone has had, at the very least, someone who they befriended and eventually ended up hating and finding a burden? Surely. I went in to a lot of described but that's the basis of what I was asking you to imagine. But they are nothe forgotten. This can be used to ones advantage when in a recurring situation. And having anorexia is like groundhog day. Routine. Rituals..timing. practice..dedication..focus. control. Frightening just how much these things can be applied with devastating results. Imagine turning them 180 degrees and using it for recovery.
This is just another way of describing what it is like to live with it. Certainly for my anorexia. My bulimia is a different story because I feel this is more of an addiction. Even more. Anorexia is an addictive too, weight loss and obsessions are highly addictive.
After a while, people in the fad diet world will know, your body goes in to a state of ketosis. In this state, it begins to feed on stored fat. There's a whole science behind it and nowadays there are 'keto-diet' recipes which follow a high fat and high protein diet which urge you to put your body in to ketosis. And after a while it feeds itself on your own organs. Heart muscle. Etc. What it produces though, is a sugary taste in your mouth and sweet sugary smelling breath. I used to be addicted to that taste... watching your body change and shrink and knowing it's all your own self control and sheer will power that's making it happen
(have you any idea how difficult it is to starve yourself? I mean starve. Like, when you wake up on the bathroom floor after blacking out for 45 minutes and seeing that maybe it's time you ate because it's been eight days with nothing, and I mean nothing, but black tea, so you eat one bran flake. And then take 100 laxatives, as you have every day for a year, and run 8 miles to the gym, do a four hour workout and walk home again. And then repeat for another 8 days. Over and over. That kind of starving)
it's extraordinarily empowering and power, too, is addictive.
But I felt the powers of addiction take over when my eating disorder swayed much more heavily, in to the hands of a spirit called bulimia. I'm aware of course, that those hands are mine, and this demon and 'she' that I refer to are me. It was all me and I do not deny it. It helped me, and others I know who lived with this, to turn it in to a separate entiny, a different part of me, at least for a while. It means you can understand it as an illness and realise that it's not making you a bad person, and so to reduce feelings of self blame for being this way. They used to say 'it's not you, it's the illness, we understand that it's not you' nurses I mean. Which actually isn't true, because it is always you. We are always always responsible for our actions, no matter how we feel. But they wanted to help. Other nurses, they allowed me to scream binge and then vomit all over them while being dragged across the floor by security guards and pinning me to a bed.
Addiction is incredibly, mind blowingly character altering. The need to engage in the addictive behaviour or substance can make you, and you allow yourself, to do things that others would never even have nightmares about. You read stories of them in Best and That's Life etc. These SHOCKING STORIES YOU WON'T BELIEVE ps buy this magazine, rags they have in doctors waiting rooms. You wouldn't believe them. Some of them seem so. I didn't lie, about vomiting on the nurse and being dragged by security guards. I don't lie when I say I have, more than once, eaten my own vomit. Hadn't had enough of a 'hit' and shops were closed or had no more money to buy any more binge food, and so... I'm not lying when I say I have let dogs eat my vomit. Nor am I telling a lie when I say I spent nearly 12 solid years vomiting over fifty times a day in plant pots, cups, sinks, fires, bins, out of windows to name a few. I'm not lying when I say I have climbed in to bins looking for food, not turned up to parties when I judge the situation enough to realise I can't binge, i tell no lies when I say I got banned from gyms, banned from pharmacies for laxative abuse, thrown out of shops for eating foodd directly from shelves because I was so hungry, and have ripped naso gastric tubes out of my stomach even when nothing else was keeping me alive. I do not lie when I say that I have shoplifted food countless times, and I am not lying when I say I researched prostitution in order to buy more binge food.
Addiction is ugly
It was the life I chose. And as I write this, with the man I love sleeping on my lap next to me, I feel nothing but joy, not only to be alive after all that. But also that I do not choose it anymore. I feel a sense of rejoicing that for tonight, I chose to cook a meal full of goodness, and keep it there. It really does feel good, to show yourself a bit of love. I think it's cyclic, like shame and guilt. In the same way that feeling shame about doing something causes such low esteem that you do it's again, causing more shame; so too, do self love and deserving. Giving yourself some lovin', even as small as opting for something healthy, or having a candlelit bath, sparks feelings of deserving, resulting in more love and kindness towards oneself.
Clouds, even light fluffy ones, leave you in a haze and you can't see what's sometimes right in front of you. If you're in this cloud, often even further clouded by body dismorphia, yes it is incredibly hard to ever see a way out. And that friend looks pretty attractive, because it seems there's no other choice, nobody else and that nobody understands. There is always, always a choice. It comes down to that, do I live? Or... (no, not die, though that too, is a choice and option) or do I exist? Living with an eating disorder is an existence, not a life. With life, comes peace. And freedom. Freedom from a trap you set for yourself by not giving yourself the love that you, like every single other person on this earth deserves. Empowerment from self control? No. Empowerment from waking up in the morning and saying, I'm alive! Yes. Empowerment from starvation? No. Empowerment from knowing that just by waking up every day and breathing, you see stronger than your demonic force. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Believe it. All of you. Those with mental health good and diseased. Love that. Love you. It's working out pretty well for me. It took patience, time, and a lot if near death experiences, but I feel like I'm on the other side. It pays, not to give up. Life has rewarded me in ways I never thought possible. I will sleep, tonight. Knowing that one day someone will read my story and have courage to make the steps I have.
"I know my worth. I paid dearly for every ounce of it"
And it was worth it.
