'Emancipated?'

I saw Mary yesterday
After weighing me she told me that I am 'emaciated'
I almost laughed
For 2 reasons
1. In my eyes I am a perfectly healthy weight, chubby even
2. My old counsellor used to tell me that I was 'emancipated'
I think she was getting her words mixed up

Then I got a text from a friend who I had ran in to last week after not seeing her for a while
She said in the text that she got a fright when she saw me and I looked really ill
Why can't I see this?
What is wrong with me?
Do I see the world through fat tinted sun glasses?

My mother and I were chatting last night and she asked me the question 'Why are you so afraid that you're going to be fat?'
I had to think about this
None of my family are overweight
I've never been overweight
So why do I think if I eat normally I will be overweight
To be honest I think that I could easily be overweight
The other extreme of the same spectrum
I could easily be one of those 400lb people we see on tv
I'm a very all or nothing person
I either eat nothing or everything
So therefore I could either be really skinny or really overweight
Am I delusional?
Maybe I am
I just don't know anymore

I don't know what's real
I can't trust my own eyes
I can't trust my own judgement
I can't trust myself

I don't want to be like this
I've had enough of my ED ruling my head and life
I'm preparing myself for the fight of my life
Me V ED
Place your bets now
I know who my money is on......

Pro Ana

I've seen my doctor
I've seen my psychiatrist
I've rang the treatment centre
I've told Mary of my decision
Now I play the waiting game
These things take time and at some point I will have to go to Dublin for an assessment
If I could, I would go in tomorrow
Things are that bad

Yesterday I perused around some pro ana blogs
Just out of curiosity
I understand that most of these girls are young and naive but it is really rather sick
I can't believe that a lot of these girls have a bona fide ED because if they did they wouldn't wish what they are going through on anyone
When I started this blog I think my writing was on the verge of being pro ana
But that didn't last long as it just didn't sit right with me
Sometimes I see a blog post of someone trying to lose weight and lots of comments telling them to 'Stay strong' and to 'Think thin'
Surely we should be encouraging each other to be happy in our own skin
Surely we have learned by now that skinny does not equal happiness or success
Since I started this blog I have never made a comment to anyone encouraging  them to lose weight
It goes against everything that I believe in

It seems that Lot of these pro ana girls really want to have an ED
I just can't fathom this at all
Well if you do want to develop an ED stay tuned as we have a fabulous offer just for today
For the small price of your sanity, your health and your soul , you too can be skinny
You can be popular and loved
People will envy you
Boys will want to go out with you
Girls will want to be you
The only thing that you have to do is not eat
Easy right?
For the first few days restricting you will feel a hunger that you've never felt before
You will think about food all day and dream about it at night
You will start to become light headed and dizzy
Every time you stand up you will see stars
Over time your hunger will vanish
You feel strong and powerful
High almost
The weight falls off you and you have never felt so good
People comment on your new shape and you fit in to your favourite skinny jeans
Life is good
Your confidence  will sky rocket and you will feel thin and beautiful
You will constantly feel your bones, they are like trophies for all your hard work
You've never felt so happy

But gradually things  will begin to crumble
Now when you look in the mirror all you can see is fat
Even though the number on the scale is going down, you will still feel huge
You begin to withdraw from family and friends
They scale becomes both a friend and an enemy
Along with the weight, you will feel like you are losing your mind
Physically  you will look a mess
You look pale and gaunt
Your hair is falling out
Your skin is papery
Your eyes are black and hollow
Depression and anxiety will creep in
Nothing matters anymore
Your ED  and weight are the only things that you care about
Your family begin to get worried about your ever shrinking frame
But it doesn't matter
Nothing matters
You can't stop even if you wanted to do
And the you will never get the one thing that you desire the most, thinness because you will never believe that you are thin enough

Then one day you break
The hunger is unbearable and you can't stand it an minute
On auto pilot you will go to the supermarket
You will walk around filling your bag with all the foods that you have forbidden
You walk out of the shop with a bag full of binge food
When you get home you eat and eat
Eat, purge, eat, purge, eat, purge..........
You can't stop
You don't know how
This is your life now
You are on a treadmill
Running and running but getting no where
You are so miserable
So lonely
So sick and tired
But you still can't stop

This could go on for years if you are lucky enough that it doesn't kill you before then
Your health will suffer
Your mental health will really suffer
You will become a shell of a person
Living a half life somewhere between life and death

This is what you have to look forward to if you develop an ED
So go ahead
Sign up today
Sell your soul to the devil
Living with an ED is not glamorous
It's not romantic
It's not about being thin
It's a deadly illness that has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness
If you are looking for something
If you are trying to fill a hole in your life
If you are lonely or depressed or anxious
Losing weight is not the answer
It will not bring you happiness or success or popularity
If you develop an ED you will be lucky to make it out alive

What do you think of pro ana?
Have you ever been part of it?
What do you think pro ana means?

You get out what you put in!

It's funny how things can change in an instant
I don't know quite when it happened but I have gone from being slightly apathetic about treatment to being really quite motivated
At Last! I hear you cry!
All of a sudden I am incredibly angry with my ED
My ED had always been like a friend
Something to turn to in tough times
And of course she manipulates me in to thinking that she wants to help me
That she wants to be there for me
That she has my best interests at heart
That she is the only one that gets me and understands me
She tricked me in to believing that being thin is the only thing that matters
This illness is so sinister
The bottom line is that she wants be dead
She won't be happy until I am so miserable and sick that I either do it myself or let her do it
Not gonna happen anorexia!
I'm not going to be another statistic
Another young life that this illness has claimed
I won't let that happen

My family are getting increasingly frustrated with me
And I understand that
A lot of the time I think that no one notices my behaviours
I was the same in active addiction
I thought no one knew that I was using
But in reality everyone knows
Anyone with a pair of eyes in their head can see what I am doing
My behaviours are still very out of control
The purging is off the scale
I am afraid to tell you how much money I am spending on food
What a waste?
It's all such a terrible waste
A waste of time
A waste of money
A waste of a life

I am preparing myself for a tough road in treatment
If I do it properly and do the right thing it will be really difficult
But I am ready
I'm willing to do the work
Mary always tells me that 'You get out what you put in'
I want to get a lot out so I'm going to put a lot in

I have no idea what my weight is as I have stopped weighing
I'm not letting my scale have that power over me any more
It's held me prisoner for long enough

I'm thinking that when I go in to treatment that I won't bring my laptop
Therefore I won't be blogging
I hope you understand
I just need to focus on myself for a while
But of course if any one wants to stay touch please feel free to email me

I want a better life
For a long time I was content to live this way but I am just so fed up of entertaining anorexia and bulimia
I am so tired of their never ending appetite
Of their never ending demands
I want to wake up in the morning and not dread the day ahead
I want to be able to walk past a shop without being drawn in to buy binge food
I want to stand on my scale and be happy when I see I am a healthy weight
I want my family not to be so very worried about me all the time
I want to leave my house without feeling like a ball of anxiety
I want my friends back
I want to like a boy and get butterflies in my tummy when I see him
I want to be able to manage my money
I want to be able to look in the mirror and say 'Not too shabby'
I want  the constant tape in my head to shut up
I want to write about something other than my ED
I want to think about something other than my ED
I want to travel
I want to be more spontaneous
I want to be happy in my own skin
I want to be able so say 'I used to have an eating disorder'
I want to be able to say 'I am in recovery'
I want to my life back
I want to live

Treatment?

Doctor day
My usual doctor is off again so I saw Nice Woman Doctor this morning
I asked her to write a referral letter to the treatment centre which she did
Everyone keeps asking me why now, what is going to be different about this treatment admission
I don't know quite how to answer this question
All I can say is that I don't know what else to do
Where to go
Out patient therapy is not working
I am getting worse every day
Every day another little piece of me breaks off and shatters
I feel so numb
Can't cry
Can't get angry
Can't even say how I'm feeling
The lights are on but no one is home
I don't even know if I want to go to treatment if I am honest
But what other option do I have?

I remember the first time I went to drug rehab
I wasn't sure I wanted to go
I wasn't sure that I wanted to get clean
But I went because the only thing worse than going to treatment was carrying on the way I was
At some stage during treatment, things began to change and it was the start of me getting my life together
I'm hoping that will happen if I go this time

So I've had to think about what I will do differently in treatment this time
I always struggled massively with weight gain
It's the reason I was discharged on 2 occasions
I've decided not to look at the number on the scale when being weighed
Ignorance is bliss and all that
Also medication
I've always asked for more meds than I truly needed
Sleeping pills
Anti anxiety meds
It's the addict in me coming out
I need to be honest about this
And of course binging and purging
I really need to get on top of this in treatment
Another thing is that I used to spend a lot of time in the smoking room hanging out other patients
I probably need to do less of that and more working on myself
And also I need to try and not let myself get sucked in to ED behaviours by other girls
I need to try and do my own thing and not get in to intense ED friendships
I've always spent a lot of time on bedrest in treatment so I'm going to try and avoid that too
I don't know if these things will help but I think they've held me back in the past

It's not so much going to treatment that worries me
It's when I come home
My house is quite a big trigger and I'm just afraid of relapsing when I get home
But I'm jumping way ahead
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it

I went clothes shopping with my mother and 2 of her friends at the weekend
My mother needed to get a winter coat
They all tried on clothes and I gave my opinion
I was fascinated with how honest they were with each other
When my mother's friend tried on a top, the other friend told her that she needed the next size up
And the friend was fine with that
If someone said that to me I think I would have a meltdown
I wasn't looking for clothes myself but I saw a lovely cream jumper and decided to try it on even though they didn't have my size
We all laughed when I came out of the dressing room and the jumper was swimming on me
Once the ladies had done their shopping they turned their attention to me
They coerced me in to trying on a purple coat
It looked ridiculous on me and I felt so uncomfortable
They all stood around telling me how lovely it looked
I couldn't wait to get it off

Another thing that is playing on my mind is my weight
I am not at a critically low weight and walking in to treatment at this weight is not a nice thought
Even though I know it's not about weight
Even though I know it's more about my behaviours
Even though I know most of the girls in treatment are of a healthy weight
I still feel I need to justify my place in treatment and the title of anorexic by being a suitably low weight
That sort of thinking is messed up but it's the way I feel

I will continue to see Mary until I go in to treatment and will also resume seeing her after I leave
I can't lie
I am terrified
I am terrified of leaving the safety of my ED entering the 'Real World'
I've lived this way for so long
In a prison of food and weight
I don't know how to live any other way
I don't know that normal people do
How they fill their time
What they think about
There will be a huge hole in my life when my ED is gone and I don't quite know how to fill it
What do I like to do?
What will I fill my time with?
What will I think about?
What will be my purpose?

Who is Ruby without anorexia, bulimia and addiction?
I have no idea

My mother said to me that I will die if I don't do something soon
Why doesn't that scare me more?
It sounds like freedom to me
I'm hesitant to write this but I have thought about taking more drastic measures
About disappearing for good
But I just couldn't do that
I couldn't do that to my family
And I guess that's as good a reason as any to stay around

I think all I can do at the moment is try to stay sane and keep my options open
There are other things going on in my family at the moment that I won't write about here but I will say that someone very close to me is going through a very tough time
I want to be there for that person as they have always been there for me
It's a tough road that we are on
But I know that we will come out the other side
I have to believe that
Otherwise what is the point?

'Mental Patient'

 Recently the supermarket ASDA  launched their new Halloween costume entitled 'Mental Patient'
Although they have since withdrawn it, it should never have seen the light of day
If I had the energy I would write about how utterly offensive and wrong this is
How the stigma of mental health is still very much alive and kicking
How I know many many people who have mental health issues and not one if them brandishes a meat cleaver or walks around in blood spattered clothes
How absolutely outrageous it is that ASDA suggests that people with mental health issues are violent and dangerous

This is not the face of a person with mental health issues



This is the face of a person with mental health issues

Spot the difference........

The Decision

I saw Mary yesterday
Things have finally come to a head
I was honest with her and told that I was spinning out of control
That the purging is the worst it's ever been
She weighed me and I had lost two and half kilos since last week
Usually I am quite coy about my ED behaviours but yesterday I just said it the way it was
I don't have the energy to sugar coat the truth
She that it's a choice between life and death
I said that I wasn't afraid of death
That life scares me more
That's when she brought up the 'treatment' word
She asked if I want to get well
I find this question impossible to answer
I do and I don't
I want to but I can't
I want to get well but I don't want to put on weight
I want to get well but...
There's always a but

She asked if I wanted to feel better
I said that I can't remember what it feels like to feel good so I don't know what I'm missing
I've been this way for so long that I don't know what it's like to feel any other way
We talked and talked
Going around in circles
In the end she gave me an ultimatum
She said that she can't continue to see me if I continue on the way I am
She gave me an ultimatum
My first option is that I go to treatment
My second option is that I continue to see her but agree to stop purging and restricting
I guess that there is a third option in there, that I do neither but I don't think I want that
That would be like giving up
So I have to make a decision and ring her on Friday morning to let her know

So this morning I rang the treatment centre
I thought I had calculated the time so that I would ring while they were in group and could leave a message
But the phone was answered on the second ring
It was a voice I recognized but it wasn't Imelda who runs the EDRP (Eating Disorder Recovery Group)
I said who I was and the voice said 'Oh hi Ruby, it's Una here'
Una worked on the ward on the my first 2 admissions
I was glad she remembered me
That I wasn't just another anonymous anorectic
I didn't know what to say or where to start
She asked me some questions
My weight
My behaviours
I said that I was wondering about going back in
'Why now?' she asked 'What's different now?'
All I could say was that I am spinning out of control
Purging umpteen times a day
Feeling like I'm going crazy
She was very kind and said she would speak to the psychiatrist at lunch time and ring me back this afternoon
I felt relieved after the call
It wasn't so bad

I understand Mary's thinking behind asking me to make this decision
I can't go on this way
Every day march from the kitchen to the living room to the bathroom
I am literally going round in circles
My father sat me down last night
I could tell he was frustrated
I can't bear the fact that others know what I'm doing
In my mind no one knows
But in reality they all know

The purging is beyond bad at the moment
Something is going to break, be it my body or my mind
I just can't continue this way
It's a living hell
It's a bad dream that I can't wake up from
Every morning I wake up and dread the day ahead
The only respite I get is when my head hits the pillow at night
For those few moments before I fall asleep I have a little bit of peace
A little bit of freedom
But then I wake up the next day and start all over again

It's not that I particularly want to go to treatment but I have to do something
I guess it doesn't hurt to find out what my options are and go from there
That's all I can do for now

Ps, Apologies for not commenting, replying to comments or emailing back, my head is all over the place

Friends

Monday was doctor day
Just after I sat down in the waiting room, I saw an old friend of mine walk in
I haven't seen her in months
Maybe even years
My knee jerk reaction was to bury my head in the magazine I was reading
It's a reaction that I can't help
It's not that I didn't want to see her
I think it's a shame thing
Shame for not keeping in contact
For weighing the same as a baby elephant
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her approach me and sit down beside me
She envelopes me in a big hug
I had heard that she had relapsed back in to bulimia
She's in the same boat as me
We talked for a while
Compared war stories
She said that she felt so bad that she had gained weight but in my eyes she had lost weight
She told me that I was 'fading to nothing'
She hopes to go to treatment
This thing has almost broken her
I showed her the magazine I was reading (Slimming World) and we laughed
It was so nice to see her
To sit and talk to someone who gets it
To know that I'm not the only one who feels this way
Don't get me wrong, it's amazing to have the support here but it's not the same as sitting down with someone and having a cuppa and a chat
It's not the same as a hug
Her doctor called her and she was gone
I wondered when I would see her again

It got me thinking about friendship and how important it is
My social life online is very active and I have lots of friends who I am in contact with every day
But I have neglected my real life friends
I just haven't been able to socialize
I know some of you meet up sometimes and I would love to do that but I don't know of anyone that lives in this country
I was contacted a few months ago by a girl who lives a couple of hours away
We emailed back and forth
I suggested to her that we meet up sometime and I never heard back from her and she hasn't emailed me since
I wondered if I had scared her off

It is difficult to hold on to friendships when you are eating disordered
Along with the disorder often comes depression and anxiety and that makes it tough to socialize
Losing weight and maintaining my disorder became my priority and I distanced myself from a lot of my friends
I guess that was one of the main reasons that I started writing my blog
I was lonely
I needed to talk to people in the same situation as me
And I have found many amazing friends here
But I think as great as they are, it is no substitute for real life friends

It takes me a while to build a friendship
I'm naturally quite a shy person when I first meet someone so it takes a bit of work for me to become comfortable around them
And I'm not very good in groups
Ideally I'd like to speak to someone one on one
I tend to get on better with people who are older than me
When I said this to Mary she said that it was probably because I compared myself to people my own age
That's true I think

My friend is thinking of going in to treatment, the same as me
It's hard to see her struggling so much as she was always such a positive influence in my life
It just goes to show that anyone can relapse
Anyone can slip
It's scary

I have no doubt though that she will get back on track on
And hopefully I will too





I was wondering about you
Have you managed to hold on to your friendships?
Do you spend more time with on line friendships that real life ones?
Do you meet up with people that you've met on line?