A-Z Of Reasons To Recover: J Is For Justice

On this day, August 4th, exactly one year ago, I received my diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, restrictive type. Eight years of body-checking, excessive exercising and starvation, all boiled down to one moment of medical confirmation…and I saw mine and my family’s world fall down around us. What seemed like an endless dark tunnel, suffocating with reams of questionnaires and assessments and blood tests and therapy sessions and dietetic appointments and weigh-ins, lay ahead. Most of the time, I was pessimistic. Most of the time, I believed I would not succeed. Most of the time, I made decisions to pack it all in, to succumb to my eating disorder and let the vile creature who lives inside my head to kill me.

This was me then:

A hell of a lot can change in a year.

This is me now (excuse the goofy pose…it was supposed to represent ‘celebration’):

Here are some differences which may be detected by a trained and observant human eye. Firstly, I have learned to let go of the regimental buzzcut, a hairstyle I claimed was a product of my rebellion but which was, if I am being completely honest with myself, yet another one of my OCD attempts at control, my ability to have a completely even cut all over my head a symbol of my success at perfection. I have added quite a significant amount of ink to my body since this exact moment, namely a completely breathtaking stomach piece which encapsulates both the struggle and the beauty of anorexia recovery. Above all, I have just recently entered my healthy BMI range.

There is much more going on inside this butterfly body of mine. This summer, I have successfully left the house numerous times without a coat as I no longer feel I am going to die of hypothermia anytime my frail and decaying skin is attacked by the slightest of breeze. I have the pleasure of complaining about my rosy cheeks ruining my Gothic aesthetic once again. The whites of my eyes are actually white again and my teeth are also white and my nails are getting stronger. (Warning: TMI ahead.) Despite currently being 19 days late, I am happy to say that I have had five very painful and very normal periods.

What a lot of people fail to realise is that reaching a healthy BMI does not equate to being anorexia-free. We can’t have everything and many aspects of my health have not improved, nor are they likely to ever be the same again. I am still covered in downy hair which I am extremely self-conscious about. My osteoporosis makes it difficult for me to be quite as bonkers and carefree as I used to be. I am chronically fatigued. I am awaiting an appointment to get tested for arthritis, meaning I could possibly be officially a 90-year-old woman at the tender age of 19. It remains to be seen if I will be able to have children without complications. I’m not happy. Yet.

But this is not a day for focusing on the negatives. I would prefer to see this day as a celebration of what I have achieved. A year is not a long time, yet I feel I have come so far in my journey. This book is nowhere near its conclusion but I am proud of the little victories in this chapter. So I guess that all that’s left for me to do is address all of you warriors out there who are currently suffering and tell you that it is time to do yourself and your body the justice it deserves. Recovery is a long and winding and difficult road but you never know what beautiful future lies beyond.

-Niamhy xx

A-Z Of Reasons To Recover: H Is For Having A Peaceful Night’s Sleep

Strap yourself in and prepare for a bumpy ride into the deepest, darkest landscapes of my subconscious, because it’s time to get Freudian!

I am tormented by nightmares. Correction: I am tormented by a nightmare. It’s a recurring feature and it is disrupting my already disturbed sleep all too frequently. Allow me to elaborate. The setting and situation tends to differ slightly each time the dream reappears but the general scenario remains the same. Basically, I have a baby in my care, a girl who is very obviously my own offspring; in the dream, I am fully aware of the fact that this is my biological child. Without going into detail, the course of events of this nightmare always leads to my baby being forcefully taken from me in some cruel and unusual circumstances. While this in itself is a distressing experience, what’s worse is what follows: I tend to wake in floods of tears with a haze of confusion hovering over my head; for a few minutes afterwards, I tend to find myself actually searching for the baby girl from my dream until I grow accustomed to the fact that I am now in my waking state, safe from the horrors of my nightmares, and that I actually do not have this child. This adds all too greatly to the entire experience, as I suddenly and rather uncomfortably begin to feel a sense of grieving loss, even in my waking life.

I am sure that my attempt to emphasise the point that it is a baby girl who features in my dream has not gone unnoticed (at least, I hope that has been an obvious emphasis). This is because this is not the first time I have experienced this brand of vision; I have regularly dreamed of losing a baby boy since around 2012. Coincidentally, the arrival of this recurring nightmare coincided with my fifteen year old self learning what it felt like to genuinely have your heart broken. Don’t worry, I will now allow for a pregnant pause to allow the readers to deliver their collective, “Awww…”

So, I had grown used to losing my baby boy (well, as much as you can…it does tend to reappear from time to time, but it acts as a comfort now more than a nuisance). The girl, however, knocked me for six, as the idiom goes.

So, what does it all mean? Looking at it from a positive perspective, I would suggest that the baby is a metaphor for my old self, this weak, wilting thing which had no independence whatsoever, both literally due to my physical state and from the disorder. That being said, my body image has been the lowest of the low after the past fortnight or so, the phrase, “I want to rip my eyeballs out so I never have to look at myself ever again,” featuring way too frequently in my vocabulary of late. I fear that, no matter how hard I may try, I see anorexia as my baby; this thing which I own. It is my own creation, it is part of me…and it tears me apart to lose it.

So I shall open the floor up to interpretations. Please feel free to put your two cents in. This is your time to exercise your right to psychoanalyse; who knows, maybe we’ll find the next Freud, Jung or Klein amongst my small but loyal readership?

-Niamhy xx

A-Z Of Reasons To Recover: G Is For Growth

Note to reader: prepare to be bombarded with images of me being a pouting, posing imbecile over the next 500 words or so. I promise there is method to the madness.

Exhibit A: 10th March 2016. Formal number one of the year with my best friend of fifteen years.

Exhibit B: 13th April 2016. Demonstrating my newly discovered zest for life and desire for spontaneity, I was finally reunited with my favourite band of my youth, Two Door Cinema Club, after a two year estrangement. Tickets purchased approximately five hours before the show.

Exhibit C: 20th April 2016. Formal number two of the year, with the weirdest, whackiest, most brilliant pack of bookworms I have ever had the pleasure to know.

Okay, so this is a photo of a photo…shoot me.

Exhibit D: 7th May 2016. Dancing my life away with the most beautiful people to grace the planet, my glorious Urbanites. Still feeling the agonising aftermath but hey, I was sporting a new do, and it was totally worth it. Photo cred to the wonderful Miss Lauren McCune.

Exhibit E: 10th May 2016. Spontaneity is key; yes, an unpremeditated, off-the-cuff, completely irresistible trip to The Ulster Folk And Transport Museum. AN ENTIRE TRAIN JOURNEY AWAY. No planning, no scheming…it just happened. Spontaneously.

The reason behind this post is not to brag about how beautiful, perfect and carefree my life is through a series of snapshots. Believe me, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Every waking second is spent battling self-critical thoughts which pirouette in the forefront of my mind to mock every single action I perform throughout the day. But I am living. And that is what I want people to take from this.

Recovery is about so much more than physical growth around the bust, waist and hips.  So much more. It is about the mental, almost spiritual growth you experience. You learn who you are as an individual. You learn what it means to be alive. You simply learn what it is to be. And that is truly what I find to be the most beautiful gift of all. This is what makes this long, painful journey so worthwhile.

I am still learning. I am still growing (both literally and metaphorically). But I suppose we do have to acknowledge some of life’s greatest clichés and truly focus on how far we have come, leaving the worrying about how far we have to go for later. None of what I have referenced above would have been possible even as recently as three months ago. I (we) are entitled to off-days, off-hours, off-minutes, off-seconds, but it is in those moments that we must remember why we partake in this battle with ourselves daily: it is to live. And yes, I have overused superlatives in this post, but so what? That’s what life is about. Making everything bigger, better and more extraordinary.

Peace out.

-Niamhy xx

 

 

A-Z Of Reasons To Recover: F Is For Finding Happiness

I have a confession to make. The Niamh you have become acquainted with through the posts on this blog is not altogether real. I have constructed a character. There is nothing wrong with that; surely all of the personas we carry off on social media platforms are simply one facet of our true selves, but for the purposes of this post, I feel it is necessary for me to strip back the facade and (perhaps for the first time) unveil my personality in all its naked honesty.

I wish.

It is important for me to do this in order to tackle some misunderstandings about anorexia nervosa and eating disorders in general. For the common outsider, it seems to be the case that their understanding of anorexia nervosa is that this illness is simply a case of self-starvation. Thus, the recovery process is easy: eat some food, gain some weight, hey presto! All better. And that is perfectly understandable; the taboo surrounding such a difficult and complex disorder has led to a lack of education, so much so that even my own mother would admit to this being the extent of her knowledge before her own daughter was diagnosed.

This is not the case. While it is evident that, in general, my physical health is certainly on the mend as a result of my food consumption increasing significantly, I am in no way better. I am not so shallow as to fail to recognise the good nature of mankind when casual acquaintances, friends and family members comment on “how well I look” (despite the fact that this may translate in my head to, “Wow, look how much weight you’ve gained!”); I appreciate efforts to congratulate me on tackling my greatest fear for the sake of my health. But I do think that the use of the word “well” in this instance is anachronistic.

Here is the ugly truth: I am not “well”. I would argue that, despite approaching a healthy BMI, at this time I am the sickest I have ever been. I would argue that I am currently at greater risk of physical harm than I would ever have been at my lowest weight and all of the medical complications that came along with being at such a low weight. And this is because I am currently a danger to myself.

I know this isn’t a pleasant thing to read but I cannot ignore how necessary this is in order to stimulate some discussion and to educate, even if it is an address to a small readership. I hate myself. This is not news to me; after all, an individual must experience true self-loathing in order to feel that they do not deserve to eat. But before, starvation was the perfect distraction from such a harsh reality. If I could succeed at starvation, I had a raison d’être. This has been taken away from me. And that is terrifying.

I have lived with disordered eating for eight years of my life. Those were my eight years of adolescence, the time in a person’s life when they truly come into their own and begin to understand who they are as an individual and learn what their position is in society. Unfortunately, I have no idea who this person is. When your main focus in life is to eat so little as to be a waif in the wind and to be the greatest dieter that the world has ever seen, it is almost impossible to be yourself. You are not you. You are Anorexia. And, at the time, that is all that matters and you are perfectly okay with that.

I am proud to say that I am now trying to leave Anorexia in the past in order to be Niamh, but this is honestly the hardest part of the journey so far. It is difficult having to face your greatest fear every few hours in the form of eating. It is difficult waking up every morning knowing that you have to spend the next few hours or so walking around the planet wearing a body that you are not comfortable in. It is difficult knowing that you wasted years of your life creating something only to have it taken away from you. It is difficult knowing that you are causing your loved ones pain because sadness is an inherent part of your life now and you can’t explain why. It is difficult hating yourself.

I don’t know whether depression is a cause or a symptom of my anorexia nervosa (and yes, it is “my” anorexia nervosa; I feel I have every right to “own” my illness now) but what I do know is that it is certainly present throughout and after the event. So the next time you use the term “depressed” in reference to a fleeting feeling of sadness or frustration, take a moment to think about what the word “depression” really refers to. Self-loathing. Worthlessness. Hopelessness. These emotions are constantly present in the mind of someone suffering from depression. So please, think before you speak.

Finally, before you assume I or any other ED warrior is recovered because I now eat sandwiches for lunch or my palette has developed beyond one serving of spinach for dinner or I don’t perform jumping jacks until I collapse into a sweat-drenched faint, think again. There is more going on in this head of mine than you will ever know.

-Niamhy xx

A-Z Of Reasons To Recover: E Is For Eating What I Want When I Want

DISCLAIMER: this is not an article detailing my hopes and ambition for a miraculous Damascus of a recovery, in which I spend each day indulging in the richest, most luxurious of foods every breathing second. So don’t be expecting it. It ain’t gonna happen. You have to be realistic about recovery. I gotta suck it up and accept the fact that I am never going to be a Nigella. As much as I may dream to be. A moment’s silence in praise of Our Lady Lawson, please…

Instead, this post is about these:

No, not my ridiculously distorted facial expressions in every single photograph of me ever taken (although that would prove an interesting read). This post shall be about that little booklet of treasures in my hand. If you can decipher the smudgy black line along the top of the page, it reads: EATING PLAN FOR – NIAMH LUNDY. Boring. Sorry.

My dismissive smirk in this selfie is a tad misleading. I don’t know what I would do without this. I was pathetic. I am pathetic. I didn’t know what a snack food was. I didn’t know what filled a sandwich. I didn’t know what an appropriate dinner portion was. I still don’t. This is why my meal plan is the greatest thing to happen to me in the past six months. It is essentially my holy bible, my guide to maintain…well…an existence, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Who would have thought that seven stapled pages could literally be a life saver?

Now for downfall. Many people believe that sticking stringently to such a plan equates to being a recovered individual. After all, you are eating. Ergo, you are normal, right? No disordered eating patterns here, isn’t that so? This plan does it all for me and I just have to think of it as medication, like someone with a physical ailment would take pills at particular intervals throughout the day to keep their health in check. I have had these thoughts. I was one of those people who was led into a false sense of security, believing that because I was putting food into my belly in accordance with a meal plan that I was fine and dandy, that I could keep following this plan for the rest of my natural existence and everything would be okay.

This is not okay. This is not normal eating.

How many people do you know that cling to a booklet which dictates exactly what they eat (right down to teaspoon measurements and milliliters of liquid accompaniment, I kid you not) and at what precise hour they eat it? How many people do you know who have seven meals assigned to them which must be consumed in the seven days, with no adjustments or replacements? Yeah. The silence is deafening. This is not recovered eating. This is one of the earliest stages of recovery, missy. You are nowhere near recovered.

Clichés are my forte.

I am not putting us down. This is my attempt at encouragement, as backward as it may be. The thing that fuels me is the desire to be adventurous. I will say it: I AM BORED. I am bored of the same dinners, I am bored of being dictated to by a piece of paper telling me when I can and can’t eat something, I am bored of having to use the excuse, “It isn’t in my meal plan,” or, “It doesn’t comply with my meal plan,” when my friends invite me out. This is not the life I want to lead. This meal plan allows for existence. This meal plan does not allow for living. I want to live. I deserve to live.

I will admit, it is my freedom with fruit that I miss most of all. I want to be trusted to lead a healthy lifestyle again but not exploit it, to acknowledge that I deserve to be treated to foods that aren’t necessarily part of a ‘clean eating’ diet and to recognise that if I’m craving the darn cake, I should eat the darn cake.

Been a bit cake on the brain since I made this lemon drizzle badboy…

I have been promised greater freedom of choice with the foods I eat once I reach a BMI between 17 and 17.5. Today, my BMI was calculated at 16.2. But slow and steady wins the race. And victory will be sweet.

-Niamhy xx