The past - my eating disorder

 Can’t believe it’s taken me a week to get round to writing this.  In sharing this, this is where I hope that my parents and brothers don’t read or find this.  Last Wednesday morning on the parenting course we were talking about child abuse and domestic violence.  It’s always a hard one to cover.  One lady is watching her daughter suffer from domestic violence and her daughter won’t leave and she doesn’t understand why.  Another lady was abused by two different step dad’s, not sure at what age whether a child or a teenager and has 2 of her own children in care. 

I thought about sharing, I would have done but we kept moving on quite quickly and I missed my chance.  Then it comes to thinking about me.  And also to one of the things on my list of things I want to write about.  My eating disorder.  I had an eating disorder from being about 14 – 19.  I had Anorexia, well I had the mentality of a person with anorexia, regularly starved myself and lost a bit of weight but I never lost weight for it to be of medical concern.  There were several underlying causes / reasons behind it. 

I hated school and was made to do A-levels.  I was pressured to achieve at school but I only ever worked to pass I never worked for good grades.  I was bullied at school, initially for being a Christian but then just because I was an easy target and I didn’t fight back / retaliate.  Another reason is I was regularly told by my Mum and once or twice by an aunty / close family friend that I was fat and I was putting weight on.  I took this to heart and with the other contributing factors stopped eating.  I hated myself, hated life apart from God and church and Christian friends.  I had low self worth, low self confidence and low self esteem. 

My parents didn’t know or if they did know they never questioned me about it and never offered me any help of support, never did anything about it.  In recent years, the last 2 or 3 it occurred to me that it could be considered emotional abuse / some sort of neglect.  I know emotional abuse is such a grey hazy area and is hard to define.  I don’t think I can really label what happened as abuse.  But there was certainly some mild neglect and lack of care and concern.  My parents must have had some incline into what was going on. 

In the end it was Paul who was the main factor to be getting better when I was 18.  He made me eat, he loved me, made me feel valued, pretty, wanted, made me feel good about myself.  At some point on my year out I missed a period due to my body taking the first steps to protect itself as it as shutting down.  This was a wake-up call that I needed to do something about my eating disorder. 

I wonder now if it was a minor problem that I now exaggerate.  But on talking to friends who knew me at the time I am led to believe the opposite that it was a bigger issue than I made of it.  This is the very shortened version of the story of my eating disorder.  Maybe I will expand another time. 

10 years on and I’ve been happily married for 8 years.  I eat, physically, emotionally and mentally I am so much better.  However I very rarely enjoy food or want to eat.  I eat because my body needs food and I have to.  I need the energy from food to live / look after the children etc.  My having post natal depression was a 16 month big blip to me being better.  My saving grace through having post natal depression has been that I kept eating and did not give it up, however sorely I was tempted.  I didn’t want to eat.  But common sense said I need food because I needed the energy to function and to look after the children.  I found that breast feeding was a bit help to keep me eating. 

The subject last night at house group was very relevant to this, we were talking about David being on the run from Saul and he decides to settle with the Philistines in Ziklag(1 Samuel 30).  The questions were “How do you understand and make sense of difficult days?  What do you do when they come?”  “Where do you turn when trouble comes?” And “Are there any areas where you are recovering and it involves a fight? How can you help each other?” 

When I had an eating disorder I didn’t make sense of it at the time, I made sense of it years later.  On difficult days I didn’t eat, and hid!  On better days I talked to my church friends.  On he whole I’ve been pretty much recovered for 9 years now which is great.  Just a few traits remain like not enjoying food / eating.  I have been able to help others through talking about my experiences.