The story so far - Part 4

The realization of what has been happening the past months might be hitting home and that this is all about self-recovery. The illness is caused by the power of the mind, and so is the recovery. It has triggered a lot of other stuff as well from the past. Things people have said and things I have done that could have influenced me..

For weeks things have been going around in my head, but I've been afraid to say them. Yesterday I knew I had to. Or else it would keep on haunting me. I had read the letter and was still having the whole "out-of-body-experience" and waiting for the world to stop turning..I suddenly knew, this is it..So I looked at Mam, and suddenly I was back down on this planet, I was still here, I was still dealing with Anna..Everything is still happening and life is still real. So I had to say what it was that was bugging me..

I remember years ago, when I was 17 or 18 and at home, now and then we would talk and maybe even compare ourselves to each other. That's just how it goes, with 4 teenage girls.. Everyone with a different personality, different energy and a different approach to life. One day, Mam said that if there was any of us 4 girls that would develop an eating disorder, it would be me. I said this yesterday, and Mam was still adamant..Because she was right after all. But I remember how that made me feel. I felt special, and I even agreed with her. It was almost like I was the "chosen one". For Mam to think that I had the determination to go through so much in order to be skinny, made me feel proud of myself. But I told myself, back then, that it only happens to teenagers, not to adults, so it will never happen to me.

I felt awful saying this yesterday, but Mam wasn't offended. It just shows how well she knew me.. I wondered for the past while, if that conversation that stuck in my mind, and I felt the need to prove that I could become anorexic.. But it isn't as straight forward as that. It only happens to people with a certain determination, certain genes, certain personality and it can even be medical. Not all people can say: "It's easier for me to just NOT eat". But I have said it several times. Only people with a certain level lectum in their blood (this controls the amount of fat your blood-cells need), have the ability to be able to run wild without eating properly..

I've always had issues with food. I would never eat when I was little. I never ate veg, potatoes, red meat..I didn't like any of it. I would go through periods of just eating yogurt, and then spaghetti, and then beans.. It would become obsessive and it would only take one comment for me to do a 180 and despise a certain food and get hooked on another. For instance..when I was around 7 or 8, I used to eat beans all the time, until my grandad told me that if I were to eat anymore beans, I would turn into one..So that was that, I never ate beans again..

There were other things that I started to remember as well. Things that I have blocked out or things that I didn't see the importance of a the time. I remember a few weeks before I went to Oz, I was sitting in the back garden with my dear friend Natasja, and I was talking about my weight. I was 48 kilo's. She asked me, what would I do if I were to loose a kilo. Would I mind being 48 or 50 kilo's again? I said I would. I knew I would try to keep off the kilo that I had lost. She even said to me: "But Niamh, then it will never be enough, will it?".. She was right and I probably knew that there was a problem back then. That was over 2 years ago. But I chose to ignore it.

In Oz, Melbourne, my second week of backpacking, I met an English girl, Lucy. I only knew her a day, and we got pretty close. She told me that she used to be bulimic. She had never gotten any professional help and didn't talk to anybody about it but she managed to deal with it and had gotten passed it.. I told her that I didn't need food either, and how disciplined I was and how easy it is for me to resist food. She was envious of me being so disciplined.. This gave me an extra boost. She even said if she was able to resist food, she would, be she can't so she would vomit instead. The one piece of advice she gave, that stopped me from ever vomiting, was that if you make yourself sick once, then you know how easy it is to do it again. You won't be able to stop.

Months later I remember being at a Thai restaurant in Darwin. We were with a big group, and had a table full of food.. so much to choose from. I had been starving myself for days, because I knew I was going to a restaurant. I ate and ate and I couldn't stop. I had lots of booze as well, so I started to feel like a pig, overweight, fat and repulsive. I went to the toilet, knowing that this was the moment I'd been dreading.. This was it, I needed to get all the food I'd just stuffed myself with, out of my system. I stood in the toilet, the cubicles weren't closed off. So people outside the toilet would hear me being sick. There were people walking up and down..so I knew I wouldn't be able to go through with it, because everyone would hear it.. I felt awful for not being able to do it, but at the same time I knew that the lay-out of those toilets, saved me from going down that road..and I still reminded myself what Lucy said to me.. Never go there..so I didn't.

When I was traveling, I remember there was one day of me being home-sick. It was the 13th of July, last summer. I had spent nearly a month traveling the west coast, partying and just going wild. I hadn't worked for nearly a month. I had been drinking and eating excessively. On the day that I got so home-sick, I was talking to a girl I was traveling with, Jodie. I was telling her how worthless I felt, how much time I had wasted being in Oz, doing nothing productive and how miserable I was. I wasn't working and I was just eating and drinking whatever I wanted.. The combination of all these feelings at once was too much, and within a day I had found a job as a waitress, and I had said to Jodie that I wasn't eating anymore fast-food and I was only going to drink vodka with orange juice. From that day, I only let myself eat fruit, veg, yogurt and muesli.. Because the way I had been living, I was having too much fun, and I didn't deserve it. I had to change things, or else I couldn't deal with the turmoil inside my head.. and so I did. Looking back, that's probably when Anna really kicked in, with full force.. I was allowed to have fun, and lots of it, but in return I worked 10 hour days, running as fast as I could around the Italian restaurant and eating nothing.. I was compensating it brilliantly..

This realization only came to me, over the past day or 2.. I'll never forget that day I felt so awful..But now I can see why.. It was Anna all along, but I'm great at picking myself up and getting on with whatever needs to be done, so that's what I did..Until now that is.. Now it's all coming out..

I'm not looking for a reason anymore as to why this has happened to me, not like weeks and weeks ago, when that was the thing I would ask myself daily. It isn't about blame, it isn't about pointing the finger, it isn't about regretting how I chose to live my life. It was meant to happen. Traveling and pushing myself for years, was setting myself up for down-fall. It happened pretty fast, but I think the recovery is too.. I suppose that's just how I'm used to doing things..just get them done, with as little hassle as possible..

There was more said yesterday.. But for now, that's it.. Last night I was exhausted and the past few days I've felt like I've lost so much, because I've owned up to so much.. It's unreal how dealing with so much grief, can tire you so much. I feel lifeless and out of whack.. I don't want to speak and I don't want to think too much.
I don't want to laugh, I just want to be alone and cry. Yesterday's session was one of the hardest.. Afterwards, Mam gave me a much deserved hug and then I was wiped-out.. Game-over..