Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will make me starve myself to death...

Hey guys, so its been a freaking age since I posted on my blog but here we are! I'm in need of a major vent so I hope you're ready?!

So, some of you won't know that I have split up with my husband. This happened at the beginning of October but this isn't the point of this vent, I am simply setting the scene! It would be a couple of weeks later that I am at work and I go outside my clients house (I'm a carer) and the next door neighbour shouts me over to the fence to tell me how sorry she is that my marriage hadn't worked out. I thought, bless her, how lovely! Then she says, 'I presume he left you?' and looks at me awaiting a response, dumbfounded at her bluntness I say nothing. 'Well, you better start losing weight again if you want to get yourself another!'
What do you say to that? I laughed it off at the time and then justified the comment saying to myself, she's old, old people just say whatever comes into their head and that's how that generation thinks.

I wasn't laughing when I binged and purged three times that evening and then starved myself for four days straight.

A few days ago, whilst sat in a cimena waiting for a film to start, I overhear two women talking about someone they both knew, I don't know the womens names so I'll call them bitch 1 and bitch 2- the conversation went something like this;

'The wedding is in March, she's kidding herself if she thinks she's going to fit in her dress! And I mean she really is attractive, its just you can't tell because she's so fat. I don't know how she could think about getting married at her size, everyone looking at her.'
'Yeah I know. More to the point, I don't know how she could get someone to marry her at her size!'

I remeber thinking what utter cows! Then I remember similar comments being made about me before my wedding and again, I stayed silent. I was still silent as I puked my tea into a bin bag that night as I heard their comments over and over in my head.

Today, I was invited to my Mum's for dinner. Though this causes no end of uncomfort and stress for me, I go because my Mum loves family dinners and I always want to please. I get there to be asked, 'are you sure you're meant to gain this much weight in recovery?' Again, I say nothing. I think, she doesn't understand what this is all about. Then I come home and weigh myself and then decide that she's right. I get on my knees and throw up the dinner I had only hours ago before walking in to my Mum's house, promised myself I would try and keep down. Then I cut myself to further my punishment.

I asked myself today why I never say anything, why I stay silent and let these people say whatever they think without any idea of how it effects others. And its because I agree. I've been taught to agree. We hear comments like this all our lives, whether directed at us, or at others and we develop our beliefs and understanding and behaviours as a result. And we are taught not to challenge elders or people in authority, or society as a whole because to go against society makes you an outcast. But you know what? We cannot stay silent any longer. We cannot allow these kinds of comments to remain acceptable. Because while we teach our children that we don't challenge others, we are teaching them that what they hear from others is truth.

The fact is, that the people making these comments are our Grandmothers and Mothers. They are our aunties, our teachers, our church leaders, our sports coaches and they are people we look up to and respect the opinions of. They are the people that teach us about who we are and who or what we should be.

And as we stay silent, we are allowing generations of women that have been taught to hate themselves to birth generations of women that hate themselves. We are allowing generations of women to raise generations of women that can only value themselves by the scale, that think they can only succeed at their career if they look a certain way, that believe that if they are thin enough they will get their prince, that if they are skinny they will be happy.

If we continue to stay silent, we are continuing to allow people to shame people into believing they are not good enough for this world simply because they are not a size ten.

I watched a friends video on youtube the other day. A friend who I consider to be very beautiful, very intelligent, very kind and wonderful. A friend, who in her video used the term 'I hold my hands up, I'm not small' by small she meant thin. This use of this phrase really struck me because it holds such meaning. This is a phrase we use when we are confessing to doing something wrong, 'I hold my hands up, it was me, I'm sorry.' She was saying 'I hold my hands up, I'm sorry I'm not 'thin', and I feel bad for it so I confess'. This struck me so hard because its something I feel every second of every day. I genuinely feel sorry for other people having to look at me. I feel guilty that I do not fit societies ideal. I feel like I need to apologise for my very existence- simply for being fat. I feel like I have to compensate for troubling others so much by having to 'put up with me' as I am.

This is so sad. But so many of us feel this way. And its because we allow such hateful and unjustified comments so slide. How many times have people made comments about you, about your weight or someone elses weight that have caused you to feel bad about yourself but you've never said anything? Ask yourself why you have stayed silent? Is it because you feel you deserve it? Is it because you agree? Do you really agree or have you been taught to?

Its time to speak out. Its time to change things. If eating disorders are ever to be irradicated we need to change the way we allow women to speak about other women. Next time someone says something, just think, it could be your little sister, or niece, or daughter that these comments are influencing. Next time it could be your little sister, or niece, or daughter, weighing out her self worth and starving herself to death to fit in this broken mould.

Can you have that on your conscience?

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Life as I know it...

Hey world...


So, I'm not even going to apologise for being M.I.A (no pun intended) again for a while. I seem to come and go when the mood takes me. I can't get a routine with blogging any more than I can with my life or my eating disorder. All over the place kinda sums me up in all aspects of my life.


So why today?


Majorly struggling right now and I just need to get these thoughts out of my head and onto paper. Well 'virtual' paper at least. Life is so stressful of late. My husband is facing redundancy which is awful and I need to be positive and not panic for him which is difficult because I obviously feel the opposite. Plus this puts massive pressure on me financially. I was hoping to take a new job which would mean much less hours and time away from home than in my current job which is a major trigger for me as its very isolating and there is little to distract me from binge/purge urges. I was offered the job and now it looks like I can't take it because its less money and now we need every penny just to have a hope of being able to pay the bills. I can't say anything to my husband because I don't want to make him feel bad but it just kills me that I will probably have to turn it down. I was pinning so much of my hopes for recovery on it and also just for my general state of mind.


My husband and I are already really struggling with our relationship at the moment anyway and last week we came very close to splitting up for good- which still might happen. I spent some nights at my Mum's and we had decided we just didn't work anymore. This was sucha painful decision and emotionally I was wrecked. We went away for the night on Friday to fully talk things over and we decided to give ourselves two months too sort things out. But I know we are on very thin ice and I am scared to move for fear of falling under. I'm so confused about the whole situation. I don't know what I think, what I want, how to fix things, if I want to fix things? I'm just lost.


Also, my family could have their own T.V show with the amount of drama they bring along with them which I'm constantly dragged into to 'solve' everything and all I really want to do right now is run for the hills! Which obviously I can't do so I do my best to be there for everyone. But I don't have the energy to fix anyone. I have no idea how to fix myself.


I've really been struggling with depression and thoughts of self harm- (which so far, I have managed to avoid- though it has come very close) but I guess with everything going on its hardly suprising. I can't stand my reflection right now. I see myself and I want to be sick. I hate what I see and I hate that its getting worse and I hate that I can't stop it like I used to be able to do.


Getting through a day at work has been killing me because I'm so tired and wrapped up in all this confusion and feeling ill because ED has been so much worse. I'm going to bed crying every night because the thought of the next day is just too overwhelming. I've had constant headaches for almost a week and I just feel like I'm done. But I can't be done. So to deal, I have been convincing myself that I need my eating disorder more than recovery because it will give me that focus, that distraction from everything else and that if I can starve instead of binge and purge then I will feel in control of something at least.


I'm so frustrated because I feel like I've been stuck in limbo, halfway between recovery and this existence with ED for so long. I started trying to take steps towards recovery not long after I first went for treatment, so there was a year of this inbetween chaos while I was on the waiting list to be seen about my eating disorder. Binging only became a frequent thing for me during the waiting time for treatment. I resent that bulimia took over when I was trying to do better. Bulimia made everything worse. The truth is, I didn't actually mind my ED when I was restricting and only b/p-ing occasionally, and therefore losing weight. I didn't even want recovery then. I was forced into it to save a marriage that might fail anyway and I feel angry.


I don't want bulimia. But right now I don't want recovery either. I want to go back. Back to before I went for treatment and was just fasting and only b/p-ing on occasion. I was miserable then too but at least I had structure to my life and I was losing weight and not gaining. I didn't feel like such a failure. Now I fail at both ED and recovery. A huge part of me wants to give up ideas of recovery and focus on trying to fast and lose weight again. And part of me is terrified that I will never get that back now bulimia is so in control of me.


All I want is to lose what I've gained over the past 18 months and then I can contemplate recovery again. I know its wrong to think like that but I just don't know how else to hold on. I can't carry on like this. I don't want to be here like this. :'( Everythings wrong and everything hurts.


What else can I do?

My epiphany :)

Hey world :)

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. The last few weeks I really haven't been able to make sense of anything. Not my thoughts, not my actions, not my eating disordered behaviours, not my past, my present or my future. My head has been somewhat of a whirlwind and I have been avoiding facing the storm.

I really don't know what has caused this sudden flooding of thoughts (for something other than food, weight and calories). Maybe its because of treatment. Maybe its just a new kind of madness and anxiety. Or maybe I'm just searching for some kind of answer or justification for why I have spent the last 15 years of my life pulling myself apart and having a love affair with the toilet.

I finally picked up my pen and started to write this blog entry from my bathroom while I run a bath. Why? Because it occurred to me that I had no idea what to do while I waited for the bath to fill. I tried to think of the last time I hadn't been purging whilst running a bath. I couldn't remember.

For some reason this struck me as nothing but sad. It made no sense. So I started to write, to make sense of this and of everything else I've been thinking over the past few weeks. I've been thinking about my childhood and my teenage years a lot lately- I guess just trying to figure out how I got to this point. I have good memories; Good times with friends, kisses with boys (and a couple of girls), fun family holidays, happy school days. But the memories that stand out to me most are all tied in to my eating disorder.

When I think about school, my first thoughts aren't about my favourite teachers or subjects. They are about the toilets I used to throw up in. Which ones were safest to use because they were the least frequented by others. I remember how I'd hide in the library so I didn't have to eat dinner with my friends. I remember food tech class, where I'd cunjure up endless lists of allergies and claim them as my own even though I didn't possess them, just to get out of eating whatever culinary efforts we'd cooked up. I remember how I panicked about seeing the school nurse and having to be weighed, so much that I actually hyperventilated and had to go home sick. I remember (painfully) the science class in which we had to be weighed in front of the teacher who then wrote out everyone's weight on the blackboard for some expreiment (the name of the teacher and the point of the experiment I don't recall). Just the numbers. She wrote the evil numbers in order. Fattest first. I remember I was the third heaviest girl in my class. I remember how the embarrassment was painted on my cheeks in slut red and how I choked back tears, unable to speak. I remember how when I got home that day I calved out those tears and watched the same slut red colour cry out of my arms instead of my cheeks. A punishment. A constant reminder of my failures.

When I think of my friends, who I loved dearly; I don't think of girly sleepovers and make over sessions with magazines and popcorn, though they happened and I know I would have had fun. I think of their bathrooms and how many times I puked up my pain in them. I could only think of one of my friends houses that I didn't vomit in. That's good I thought, some normality. Then I remembered I only ever stood in the hallway for brief moments before walking to school together.

When I think of boys, I don't think of first kisses and holding hands and valentines cards. I think of the worry I felt at the thought of them having to touch someone as repulsive as me. I remember lying at night fantasising of a surgeon creating me into a materpiece, a perfect presence- I imagined how he would cut off all the bits of me that were too much and just leave me with a brain and stick arms and stick legs.

And when I was fifteen and absolutely in love- the thing I remember most are the arguments we had on opposite sides of the bathroom door as he begged me to stop throwing up the pathetic amount of food I had for dinner. I remember begging him one day to come for a walk with me after dinner so that I could throw up in the bushes along the canal near my house because my Dad was in his bedroom next to the bathroom and he would definitely hear me puke through the thin walls. I remember telling him to walk ahead while I puked. But he said no. He said if I had to do it that bad I'd have to do it infront of him. So I did. It was all that mattered in that moment. I remember him breaking up with me. I remember the pain. I remember promising myself I'd fix it by getting thin then he'd want me again. I remember numbers. Notebooks full of numbers. Weights. Calories. Fat content.

I try to remember who I was before bulimia. I truly have no idea. My earliest memories are of just wanting to be someone else. Anything but me. Looking back now, I think bulimia had me a long time before I actually started starving and making myself sick. While I was busy playing with dolls and living in the world of Disney dreaming up my magical future, bulimia was busy manipulating my thoughts, making the rules, carving out the mold I could never fit into and tying on the strings it now uses to control me.

I do remember that I was a lively child. I wanted to be someone. Do something amazing. Achieve everything. I had so many passions, so much energy. I wanted to teach, to dance, to mend, to sing, to heal, to make music, to touch, to draw, to love, to create, to act, to write, to listen, to be heard, to be wonderful and to do it all. To just be. To just be anything but me. There was so much I wanted to do that I could never focus on one thing.

If I hadn't been so absolutely convinced of my total incompetance, my total incapability, my talentlessness, my ugliness, and of my very presence just being too much- something that needed reigning in and controlling; If I hadn't been so afraid of failure and rejection and just getting in people's way- I might have had grabbed onto one or more of those things and actually been someone. Instead I hid in a world that seemed safe. A world I could actually focus on and give all my time and attention to. A world that was private and safe where I wouldnt be in anyones way. A world that meant I couldn't disappoint anyone because they would never know I was there. My secret. My world. My life. It became me. Bulimia was my career, my life, my passion, my art, my friend. Its all I know. Its as much a part of me as my heart.

And its killing me.

I was overwhelmed by all the things I wanted to be; All the passions, needs and desires that seeped from my vains. I was so scared of trying and failing that I let bulimia fool me into biting into its apple. It promised me a security, a guarenteed future, the keys to the Kingdom. It promised me thinness, success, control, happiness. It promised if I followed its rules I'd be someone. I never got anything it promised. It am not someone. I am just bulimic.

Living with an eating disorder is incredibly boring. It takes all your time, all your thoughts. I've recognised that fact and known it well for a long time. But I think that what I've realised and made sense of in this blog is that bulimia steals and taints the most precious thing of all. Your memories. I've never realised that before. It hurts to remember my life through my bulimic eyes- unable to recall properly or appreciate the good times because those memories are overshadowed by the darkness of an eating disordered mind. This realisation feels like grief. It's just too sad. Too much of a waste. Too much that I've lost that I cant ever take back.

I don't want another ten years to pass where my strongest memories are still of all the public toilets I've puked in. All the times I've parked my car in desserted streets or car parks and thrown up into carrier bags. All the times I've silently been sick into the bin in my room at work. I don't want to only remember depression and loneliness and fear and vomit and pain.

I want my strongest memories to be of carefree nights out with my wonderful friends. Of finding myself and being the me I was meant to be before bulimia stole her. I want to remember publishing a book. Flying a kite with my children. Learning piano and guitar. Singing. I want to take photos of flowers and sunsets and beauty in the world that I haven't seen clearly since I was a kid. I want to remember laughter and smiles. I want to feel happiness.

I realised I could have been someone and its not too late to find out who and still become her. I realised its not too late to turn things around and make those new memories I long to treasure.

I think I finally found a reason for the fight. My reason to recover. And that's the next step.

Me vs Mia...

Hey guys :)


I've been away for a week to celebrate my Mothers coming of age! She turned 60 this week and so we went on a family holiday as part of her birthday present.


Any occasion like this is met with much anxiety and deliberation for me. How will I get away without eating? How will I purge without everyone hearing? What if I need a binge and can't control the urges?
However, this is the first time I have been on holiday with my family since they knew about my relapse. I guess it took a little stress off my shoulders as I didn't have to stress too much about hiding it. Having said that, I don't want to rub it in their faces- especially on my Mum's birthday holiday!


I tried my hardest and even got through the whole of the first day (two full meals) without making myself sick! Of course this meant my old acquaintance 'Pain' woke me up at 3 a.m due to my body not really knowing what to do with the foreign substance non e.d folk call food! Which meant that belated purging ensued (always worse than immediate purging) and set me up for feeling ill, guilty and disgusting for the next few days.


Despite this, I was determined to have a good time. And bulimia aside, I really did. We had our own hot tub which we frequented nightly. Went swimming. I joined the boys on a bike ride which left my arse in agony but was totally worth it. Had a couple of sauna sessions and even a manicure!


It was truly a lovely time. -So what's my problem? I can't do things like that without incredible guilt. Why should I be allowed to treat myself nicely when I'm so hideous and disgusting?
Because I'm a person, just like anyone else and everyone is entitled to a nice time and a bit of luxury when on holiday.
Well not me. Didn't I see myself in that swimming costume? Don't I understand that I have put on 12lbs in the last two months? And I'm rewarding myself?!
But its Mum's birthday. I'll make up for it when we leave.
I'm disgusting. I should be ashamed. I should be punished.


This is the conversation with myself that never stops. Not even in sleep. Not even when I'm physically talking to someone else. Not even when I'm watching a film or reading a book. This verbal battle never takes a break.


So yes, I had a lovely time. Yes, I tried to join in with everything and not punish myself. Yes I managed at least one meal each day without throwing up. I should be proud of myself.


I'm not.


The first thing I did when I got home was weigh out my gluttonous rewards and review my failings. And now I have some serious making up to do and self punishment to endure for my week of rebellion from following the rules. The rules that keep things in order. Keep things safe.


Looks like I'm in for a fun week... I'll keep you posted. <3 xoxo

Back ground...

Hey guys, thanks for dropping by!

So all you know about me is that I have bulimia. There is a lot more to tell!

I had a diagnosable eating disorder from the age of 11. My E.D (eating disorder) has taken many forms over the years; bulimarexia, ednos, binge eating disorder and bulimia, with a couple of times you might call 'normal', thrown in there to! My ED has had a massive impact on my weight and has seen me go from 126lbs to 296lbs over the years, so I really have used my scales to their full potential and accessed all those evil numbers!!

For the last three years I have struggled badly with bulimia. Starving and then binging and purging my way through most of my days. Constantly battling with my mind about what is right, what is allowed, what I want and what I need to do. Bulimia mostly winning the arguments.

A year and a half ago I decided I could not live like this anymore. At almost 25 at the time I had tried to keep this thing quiet and deal with it alone for 14 years (barring a short time of counselling I had through school once teachers got a bit worried about my ghostly face and my frequent fainting). I did not want to look into a future where I saw only this for the rest of my days- putting everything else on hold. I went to my G.P and started the long process of waiting for appointments, several evaluations, more waiting, several referrals, more waiting and now I have finally been offered treatment which I start in two weeks time.

I'm going to blog my daily events. Right up to hopefully being on the other side of this! My hope is that my journey can help pull someone else through or just know that they aren't alone. Recovery is out there for all of us. I found the map when I went to my G.P. It took a long time but now I've found the road. Now I have to do the hard bit and actually walk along it. It's going to be hard and I'm sure I'll take a few wrong turns and git stuck, arse up in a ditch a couple of times, but I will get to where I'm going! I'm going to get my hope back. Take back my crown. Sew back on my butterly wings and fly to recovery and freedom!

Who's coming with me?

How it all started...

So this is the prologue to a book I have written about my continuing battle with bulimia. I thought it would be a good way to introduce my blog! Following this, my posts will be about my day to day life with bulimia and my journey to recovery which is just beginning.


People ask me why. I tell them I don't know- but maybe that's a lie. Maybe I know but I don't even want to tell myself. Maybe I really don't know why. But I know how.

When I was little I believed the world was a fairy tale. I believed I was a princess, or a butterfly. I didn't just sleep. I slept in magical lands, dreams full of summer, fairy dust and hope.
One night as I naively slept, something crept into my dreams and choked out my hope. They stole my princess crown and pulled off my butterfly wings so I could never fly again.
When I awoke, I wasn't the same person. My dreams of summer and fairy dust were replaced by a nightmare reality of a never ending winter, a painful existence, something eating away at me causing a slow death that would end in grey dust. I no longer heard laughter or saw smiles. Instead, angry voices screamed so loudly, they shattered the glass stones that were once my eyes.