My Anorexia Story

I don't remember how old I was the first time I was raped. I remember it vividly through "flashbacks" and nightmares, after having blocked it out until about 2 years ago, but I don't know how old I was.

I've been abused physically, emotionally/psychologically and sexually by my mentally ill, alcoholic mother. According to my psych, what little I can remember of her abuse constitutes "torture"...not fun... I used to (and still try to) "play buffer" (as I call it) between my mother and my younger sister (aged 14), so I kinda got it two-fold.

From what I can remember, I was raped by my grandfather, my uncle, my best friend's dad (a policeman -- go figure) a number of times, and once by a random parent at school (when I was in kindergarten), up until I was about 8 years old.

The first time I can remember using food to re-assert ownership over my body/myself, I was 5 years old. I refused to eat my breakfast. I never liked Weetabix, anyway. My mothers response was to ram over-loaded spoonful after over-loaded spoonful down my throat, shoving more at me as fast as I was choking it back up, until she'd emptied the entire box. The spoon hacked up the back of my throat so badly that, according to the last dentist I saw, I still have scars...didn't even know you could get scars at the back of your throat... I gotta say, it was interesting trying to explain to my teachers why I had a mouthful of blood and couldn't talk/walk/stop shaking when I got to school.

I did things like that a few times, though that memory stands out the clearest in my mind.

Then, when I was 11, my dad had to go interstate to find work and was gone for most of the year, coming back for maybe a weekend every 2-3 months. Even when he was working in Perth he usually wasn't around to stop Mum hurting my sister and me. When he left, though, she got so much worse... Quite often, we'd be late for school (or just miss it entirely) because she was hung over/too depressed/didn't care enough to get out of bed -- which, naturally, was our fault and therefore justified her hitting/throwing something at us in her mad rush to get dressed and out the door. She was paranoid and on a few occasions convinced herself that I was trying to poison her and/or turn ("program") my sister against her. She slept with a foot-long knife under her pillow and the house had more locks, deadbolts, chainlocks, etc., than Fort Knox.

She left for work around 2:30PM. I walked my then 8 year old sister home from school, battled with her all through "homework time" (the whole "you're not my mum" thing), cooked dinner and put her to bed at around 8-8:30PM. Then I waited up for Mum to get home at about 11PM. When she did, I had to run like mad for my bedroom and pretend to be researching stuff for school or something. Mum would drink about half a bottle of scotch (40% alcohol) every night. At about 3AM, when I heard her snoring, I'd get up and put her to bed. She'd either get violent or hug me and say how much she "loved me" and cry about how she "hated it when we fought". I kinda liked it better when she was violent, to be honest.

Just to add to the whole mess, at the start of that year, the day after my dad flew out for the first time, I started at a new school. On my first day, I got teased for being "fat". I know now that I wasn't -- the girl who said it was terribly insecure and picked on everyone for anything she could think of -- but I guess at the time I kinda clung to that insult. Mum tormented me for being the person I was -- called me weak, lazy, ungrateful, worthless, etc. My weight was something I could change. It was mine. No one else's.

I knew nothing about calories -- just cut down what I ate little by little so that eventually all I had each day was breakfast (usually a bowl of Cornflakes or Nutrigrain with soy milk). I made sure I was out of the house all weekend so I didn't have to eat. My BMI dropped from roughly 22 to 15.6 over about 8 months. When my dad was home, I just piled on the clothes and pretended I was sick (usually felt pretty awful, anyway).

When Dad got a job back in Perth, the stress lessened somewhat. I felt a little safer with him around again. Because he was home to cook dinner after work, I had to eat in the evenings. Within another 5 months or so, I was eating more or less normally again.

Over the next 5 years, I kinda flipped between anorexia and compulsive over-eating. When I was 15, I weighed 78kg (171.6lbs). I felt utterly disgusting and hated every inch of myself, physical and non-physical. So I went on a "diet". I didn't want to starve again -- I wanted to try and be "healthy", like all those TV shows and magazines said I should. By my 16th birthday, I was down to 65kg (143lbs). I felt better, but I knew I was still "overweight".

I got into a bad relationship that August. His name was Ryan and he was (is) mentally ill. He was great when we first started going out, but yeah...something to do with a "chemical shift" causing an imbalance in his brain. He had (has) psychotic episodes and got (gets) violent. I was constantly afraid of him. I did love him, but I was constantly afraid of him. I hated even answering the phone in case it was him calling to yell at me for some paranoid-delusional (literally) reason, or in case he'd tried to kill himself/someone else again. I missed how staving used to make me feel -- so empty and free and powerful... I wanted to lose more weight, so in April this year (2006) I started doing my research on things like calories, the value of carbs and proteins, etc. I restricted my intake to 1200cal a day and walked 3.5km each afternoon after school carrying 35kg-worth (77lbs) of school books on my back (Western Australian high schools are insane). I lost 1-3kg (2.2-6.6lbs) a week for about 2 months but it started to tail off...so I cut back some more -- this time to 1000cal.

After a while, my aim was basically to avoid eating wherever possible. If I could go for 3 days without eating anything at all, I would.

I broke up with Ryan in April after he publicly tried to kill me. It took my dad and his dad to hold him down for 45mins while he thrashed about and screamed abuse, believing that I was cheating on him (like I'd dare). I used my eating disorder as a way of dealing (or perhaps of avoiding having to deal) with my latest posttraumatic symptoms as I slowly had to adjust back to normal life (as "normal" as my life gets). By August I was down to 42kg (92.4lbs) with a BMI of 15. I don't know what triggered it, emotionally, but I binged. Then I purged... About a month later, still the same weight, I blacked out in my study class and had a close call that landed me in therapy. I just kind of went along with it all, too exhausted to fight anymore. I hated all of it -- having to eat more, not being able to work out, having everyone watch me all the time, etc. -- but it was either that or hospital...the one thing that scared me more than weight gain. Hospital meant a total loss of control -- or, more accurately, having my control taken away from me.

I played along for a while -- or pretended to... I b/p-ed (binged and purged) a lot and gained weight because of that. I got back up to 54kg (118.8lbs) with a BMI of about 19. I felt awful and still do...

It's now the first week of November and I've started restricting my intake to under 800cal a day and working out more again. I've lost 2kg (4.4lbs) so far...it's such a relief to be able to do that again. Every single second that passes is a struggle against bulimia. I loathe b/p. Anorexia is hard, but bulimia is sheer hell.

Anorexia almost killed me last time, but I don't care. I know that no one can look good at 42kg (92.4lbs). I don't care about that, either. It's not about how I look. It's about how I feel.

I'm still in therapy...part of me is hoping that'll work sooner or later. Part of me "knows" I'll never let that happen. Either way, I'm not ready to recover, yet.

Thank you and I hope you gained something of value from reading this.

For anyone who suffers from an eating disorder -- if I was with you now, I'd hug you <3 EDs suck, whether it's anorexia, bulimia, compulsive over-eating, binge-eating, or any number of others.

If you have a loved one who has an ED, please be patient with him/her. Forcing him/her into recovery probably won't do much good and will only serve to distance him/her from you further... If he/she doesn't want to recover, he/she won't. Weight gain does not equal recovery.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to read this.

Kathryn