As a child I was healthy, in both my weight and its correlation to my age and more importantly in my attitude to and relationship with food and displayed no eating disordered behaviours at all. I developed early; I got my period when I was ten, and had C cup boobs by the time I was twelve. I liked my body. When I was thirteen I met a guy who seemed perfect. He was charismatic and funny and so beautiful. He was also five years older than me and was not how he first appeared. The first time he hit me he punched me once in the face in front of our friends. I don’t want to detail exactly what happened in case anybody who reads this has similar experiences and is triggered by it. But suffice to say whilst the physical abuse escalated quickly, the emotional and psychological abuse had begun long before I even noticed it. He made comments about my personality, my clothes, my body – he would be silent with me as though I had upset him and I would rally round him begging him to tell me what I’d done. Then suddenly he’d ‘forgive me’ and I would be so grateful. I would berate myself for the way ‘I hurt him’ and think of ways I could make it up to him. I genuinely believed that I was the problem, that I was the reason he behaved the way he did, after all he was the amazing guy I met to all of our friends, so it must have been me. My body became a big part of his manipulation of me. He would tell me how much he liked me in skirts, so I’d wear a skirt, then he would tell me how I looked like a slut, so then I would cover up. When I covered up he would complaint that I never wore anything he liked, all the while consistently ensuring I believed this was all my fault.

On January 7th 1999 he raped me. People often underestimate the power of rape and the depth of that violation. He made my body the canvas for his rage, perversion and misogyny and in response I recognised the danger my body put me in, I began to see my body as the enemy. He had manipulated me to such a degree, as is often the case for victims of domestic and sexual violence, that I didn’t consider for a moment that he might be to blame. I blamed myself, my actions, my body, and my inadequacies and felt somehow if I could just be better, kinder, more considerate, more obedient, more attractive, less attractive, quieter, and more attentive – if I could just not be me then it would all be ok. That first rape marked the beginning of an eight month ordeal of rape, perversion, humiliation, physical violation, emotional abuse, psychological beatings and things that I dare not commit to print in these circumstances. He was breaking me down; while I was with him I did the best I could to please him; when he attacked me I tried to stop my body’s fighting instinct so it would hurt less. I blamed my body for fighting back. As time went on my mind would take over I would dissociate, click out of reality while he did what he did. He left me in the end, on reflection I think I’d become so broken my body did stop fighting back, I no longer cried, my mind developed a way of taking me somewhere else while he did what he did and I honestly believe now, that it stopped being fun for him – I don’t think the fantasy worked without my opposition. 

Away from him I pretended I was fine, piled on the makeup and tried desperately not to let the mask fall away. Alone I began coping in ways I didn’t understand; in ways, that for a long time I thought were unique to me. I didn’t want to eat anymore. I was brought to such a place where I felt undeserving of nourishment. And beyond that – I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to be thinner, or more beautiful, or more desirable. I wanted to fade away completely so nobody would see the disgusting worthless creature I felt I was back then. Ironically as the weight fell from my body I became more visible not less, people asked questions and their interest in my body, in my weight triggered me and in many respects saved me from what may have developed into chronic anorexia nervosa. I couldn’t fade away, but I still had all these intense raw emotions inside a fourteen year old who had no insight or understanding of what had happened to her. 

I felt dirty. It was an unbearable feeling of maggots crawling inside me and while rationally I knew they couldn’t really be real, that didn’t matter because I felt them and they intensified and reinforced his voice in my head telling me how dirty and disgusting I was. And somewhere in that mass of feelings I began purging and shortly afterwards, binging and purging. The world was different even in the late 90s; eating disorder awareness was poor and for me personally I had no idea people did what I was doing. All I knew was that it wasn’t normal and that it must be kept secret. My weight ‘stabilised’ back to a ‘healthy weight’ and people stopped watching my body, they assumed I was fine. I wasn’t fine. I was falling faster and faster into bulimia finding a kind of warped release in myself destructive behaviours, which were rapidly becoming more and more compulsive. On the surface I was a ‘normal’ teenage girl – make up on, hair neat, a little rebellious to say the least, though simultaneously obsessed with getting good grades, I took part in drama club productions, smoked behind the old technology buildings, spent a lot of time in my room at home. Inside I was tormented and traumatised, trapped inside a body which I perceived to be dangerous, poisoned and infected with filth and maggots and completely overwhelmed with the depth of emotions I felt, all the while knowing that if I told anybody what was really going on that they’d see how awful I was, they’d know what I made him do to me and I would disappoint them all.

The four short years that passed from thirteen to seventeen brought me to a place where my head was filled with negative messages and destructive thoughts, my wardrobes were places to hide bags of vomit not to store clothes, food was tasted in purging not in eating and I was trapped in a hellish existence where fear was rampant, genuine happiness a distant memory, while self-destruction and self-loathing became normal. I had begun self-harming mid-way through my relationship with Michael and after once frightening myself at fifteen by going a little too far I had searched online to see what on earth was wrong with me that I did these things and in doing so came across a forum filled with people who did the things I did. This pro-recovery, support forum still exists and it is too many of those members that I owe my life. It was in this forum that I recognised that my behaviours were actually bulimia. And first began to take on board those small challenges that chipped away at my resistance to recovery.

At sixteen I began to receive treatment from the community mental health team for depression and anxiety before later being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite all the people involved in my care at this time being lovely people and amazing professionals, nobody noticed my eating disorder. In a setting where the DSM IV is like the Ten Commandments, why would anyone suspect bulimia from calloused broken knuckles and hamster cheeks in a girl who was a healthy weight and actually beginning to become clinically overweight? In fact for me the first professional to recognise my bulimia was my dentist; after roughly 45 seconds of looking in my mouth he asked me if I had bulimia and I swear my heart almost stopped beating! 

I made it into university and moved to Leeds under the misguided notion that this was a new beginning and that all my issues, dysfunctions and illness would be left behind. It turned out they caught that train with me. Behind toilet stall doors and my bedroom door in halls my behaviours continued and began to escalate. I continued to gain weight in spite of my purging; in large part because I was using weight gain products in hindsight I think to make myself repulsive and therefore safe perhaps. Self-induced vomiting became insufficient and I began abusing laxatives. I ran up roughly £3000 in credit cards and overdrafts buying food to waste, laxatives and tums. My teeth became irreparably damaged and incredibly painful. I was at this stage binging and purging from four to nine times a day; my eating disorder had replaced my life. Finally I stole laxatives from a supermarket because I felt I needed them but didn’t have the money to pay for them. I was a mess. My throat constantly sore, I felt permanently unwell, frequently in intense pain either from my teeth or stomach. In terms of my eating disorders I was at rock bottom.

I was by this stage actively involved in the support forum I mentioned and received a huge amount of support and encouragement from the girls. I made a decision to fight for my life and for myself instead of destroying myself. In all honesty the weeks and months that followed that decision were hellish, peppered with slip ups, uncomfortable, painful, and exhausting BUT entirely worthwhile. I reduced my laxatives down until I finally flushed (literally) the last of them. I began to retrain myself to eat better, I worked with a therapist, and I was honest with those involved in my care and allowed myself to let them in and to trust them. It wasn’t magical – I would meet my friends for lunch and be so terrified to eat because I was afraid of messing up and purging, but they supported me. I learned to develop healthy coping strategies. I weaned myself off the weight gain products. By 2006 I was firmly in recovery, not cured, but strong in reclaiming myself. Some days were harder than others and I still had all these feelings that had originally caused my eating to become disordered and later the bulimia. I bit the bullet and began seeing a trauma therapist and in the early stages of our sessions I identified the profound damage to my self-esteem, confidence and self-worth and began a confidence building course and joined an eating disorder support group to help strengthen my recovery. 

Going to those groups early on was so difficult, particularly with the eating disorder group. A large number of those there were very much what people expect an eating disorder sufferer to look like. They weren’t, for the most part emaciated but they were very visibly unhealthy and slight. I felt like a fraud sometimes.  And battled with not feeling ill enough and the notion that I didn’t fit in there. But in time that settled and the group became a great source of hope and encouragement for me. As time passed I got stronger, I learned to manage well enough so I didn’t need group. I also learned that the consequences of and damage from eating disorders cannot be avoided my retaining a higher weight. I was medicated for acid reflux and irritable bowel syndrome which sometimes are no problem to live with, other times the pain and discomfort is ridiculous. I underwent hours and hours of painful dental surgery and still have teeth that are damaged and in need of fixing. I was also diagnosed with pernicious anaemia – as a result of the damage my ed did to my body it can no longer absorb vitamin B12 from food, so I have to get shots which vary from one month to every three months depending upon blood test results. My eating disorder took my teens and a part of my twenties, it cost me friends, wound me in substantial debt, made a liar of me. It ran its course in the same destructive, devastating manner it does for all sufferers regardless of how far from the stereotype I was.

I am now almost twenty six. I have been without eating disordered behaviours now for almost six years. My food intake is balanced for the most part though I do remain over weight; my weight no longer increases but rather was maintained and in the past eighteen months has begun to decrease at a healthy rate as I work through the trauma that causes me to cling to the false safety of a bigger body. I have no desire to be thin. I no longer have a desire to be repulsive. I seek only to be healthy in terms of mind and body and I am getting there. I actually feel proud of myself for the wars I have battled and the obstacles I have overcome to reach this place. I don’t love myself yet, but I kind of like myself for the most part. I found my voice and I have learned to use it. That’s what telling my story was about – using my voice in such a way that somewhere, sometime, someone might read these words and realise that I am as much the face of eating disorders, for want of a better analogy, as the talented, yet sadly emaciated Karen Carpenter. Eating disorders are illnesses which do not discriminate. The indicators lie in behaviours, emotional responses, personality changes, mood changes, in the subtle markers, and not just in the obviously emaciated frame. Personally my belief is that a first time purge (or any other disordered eating indicator) is already eating disordered enough to need addressing. And while of course, professional treatment may not be given in early stages, support is available online and all around you – reach out, it’s already bad enough.it.