Article: This is raw, this is real. The reality of living with mental illness

Monday 4th of May 2020

Hi my name is Hannah and at this particular point I am a 22yr old gal from Australia. I’ve written this article “This is raw, this is real. The reality of living with mental illness”. From a perspective of someone who gets it. This article reflects a particular time in my journey through mental illness, practically Anorexia Nervosa. I believe that talking about the real issues we face is so important, we often cut out the hard stuff and not talk about it, don’t know how to talk about it or feel ashamed to talk about it. I’ve found through my struggles with my eating disorder that it was often hard to explain to people what was going on inside my head. Here in this article I have a snapshot for you, a few hours inside the mind of someone with an eating disorder tossing up whether to stay unwell or fight to get well.

If your reading this, I hope it can help you not feel so alone in your own battles that you may be facing at this particular time. And I hope it helps to give people who are supporting people with eating disorders some more insight into our minds, our eating disorders minds.

I believe in the theory that we have a ‘healthy self’ and a ‘disordered self’. The term ‘healthy self’ I will use a lot in this article. You may not believe in this and that’s okay, but I see me- Hannah as two people. There’s “healthy Hannah” and “anorexic Hannah”. I haven’t always seen me as two, but through my journey and the different things I’ve been through and learnt, I see myself as two people.

A major disclaimer. I am not at this particular point classified as ‘recovered” but my aim of this was to create an opportunity for people to get an insight of the thought processes that run through the mind. Someone with an eating disorder, someone who is facing two roads right now. Which I will go into detail about latter.

I was first diagnosed with mental illnesses when I was in high school. I’ve bounced between therapists, therapy and GPs. And spent periods in and out of hospital since then. When I was 16, I was diagnosed with an Eating Disorder and struggle with it today. As I am writing this, I have disordered thoughts run rapidly through my mind, some of these include; “Stop being lazy” “Stop sitting around” “You need to do more exercise” “You can’t have afternoon tea” “Your fat” “You’re a waste of time” “Why are you even thinking about recovery from this illness, don’t be ridiculous”.  It very rarely stops, and if it does it’s when I’m obeying my eating disorder by exercising or restricting.

Most recently I realized I had two choices and that I needed to choose which path I was going to take before the path and choice was going to be made for me. Which is a daunting and confusing predicament I find myself in.

I’ve realized that I had to stop blaming the world, the people and the events life has thrown at me as an excuse for the way I behave and the choices I make. I need to start taking responsibility for what I do in the now, in the very moment of right now. I realized I don’t want to be in my fifties and still blaming the past for the things I say and do. I don’t want to be that person. I want to be free. I don’t want to keep being burdened by the unfortunate card’s life has dealt me. Its time I dealt with the real issues, stop denying that there’s a problem and accept that its time I tried to heal these wounds.

My healthy self, who is often hard to find. Doesn’t want to keep living life this way. Surely this wasn’t the life god had planned for me to life. I’m not a spiritual person but I believe everything happens for a reason in life. And surely this life I’m living in right now wasn’t intended to be permanent? Surely it wasn’t set out to be my life and the center of my world forever? Living with these illnesses has served their purposes to get me through life to this point. A way that helped me get through the stresses, trauma, emotions and everything from life’s highs and lows. They have taught me a lot and living with anorexia in particular has served its purpose to help me through my struggles. It gave me control when my world was feeling and spinning out of control. Now anorexia is controlling my life, instead of it helping me feel in control. I couldn’t be further from in control right now. Its’ got control of me. So it’s time to divorce this relationship with it. I didn’t choose this illness, it’s just a card I was dealt with. But I am going to choose to no longer let it be my life and my entire identity.

I’ve been running for a long time, running from reality and living in my own little bubble. Anorexia has convinced me that I am broken puzzle pieces that could never be put back together at all. That I would be broken forever. But maybe I don’t have to be broken forever, maybe I can start finding the puzzle pieces. They’ll be hard to find, hard to put together and may have imperfections but with time maybe the jigsaw can be put back together.

I am contemplating that maybe I don’t want to live in this world controlled by anorexia. That I don’t want to be dragged down by it anymore. That I don’t want to continue to be abused and bullied by it. I’m tired of listening to its nasty voice and list of commands, rules and rituals. I’m tired of having to obey everything it says and screams at me all of the time and dealing with the fall out if I don’t follow what it tells me to do.

I’ve got to find ‘healthy Hannah’. I don’t really know who she is, what she likes, dislikes, hobbies, passions, personality traits or if she has a sense of humor. But I know she has a whole lot of love to spread to the world and the people that come across her path. Not knowing exactly who this ‘healthy Hannah’ is, is absolutely terrifying, because for long I have been ‘anorexic Hannah’ and used my eating disorder as a way to control the pieces of the puzzle that I couldn’t get back together. So, I fixated on my weight, the size and shape of my body and controlled everything that went into my mouth. My goals in life became about what size clothing I could fit into and what number I saw on the scales. The goal posts would constantly be changing, but I could never see it as a problem. My entire purpose in life, my identity and my entire belief system was that the thinner I was, the more weight I lost the happier I would be and that the broken pieces of the puzzle would fit again. I became wrapped up in and completely consumed by my eating disorder thoughts and behaviors they began to take over my world. I began to no longer be in control, even though I thought I was. But in fact, anorexia became in control of every inch of my life.

Over the past week I have had a few reality checks and a few realizations which are making me question a lot of the thing’s anorexia has made me believe for a really long time. Just maybe there is so much more out there to life than being stuck in this bubble. This depressing, miserable and sad bubble. This bubble that controls everything I do, think and say. It convinces me that living to its rules is the only way in life, that that is your life and you can’t do anything about it, that this eating disorder will stick around and haunt you for the rest of your life. But my eyes are widening and finding out that people do recover from eating disorders, that this isn’t the only life out there.

Reality is, if I continue on the road, I am on with anorexia right now. I will die. There’s no sugar coating it.  I am very much aware of this reality. Am I completely in touch with it right now, no. I am not.  My eating disorder is still convincing me that ‘things are not that bad’, ‘your team is over -reacting and just trying to scare me’ or ‘I won’t die, it won’t happen to me’. These are just three on the many scenarios that run through my mind. At certain points through my journey with an eating disorder I have in fact wanted to die and haven’t been scared by the reality that at times I was dying or that this illness could kill me.

More recently I have come across some people on social media, who are so inspirational. They are genuine human beings and who have been through their own battles and come out the other side. It has showed me that they are living proof that you can change and turn things around, that you can recover. That there is still hope. Just a thought, but maybe a life free of this illness is possible for me too. If I can do this, I want to go on to be able to go and make a difference to other people’s lives and use my experiences with an eating disorder and mental illness to help others.  I want to find my purpose in this world, I want to find my passions and find meaning to what life means and looks like for ME. Everyone envisions their world differently, and what we vision may be different to our reality I know that. But we can dream right? We can rewrite new paths for ourselves and take the roads to make our dreams a reality. I think so anyway. I wonder what ‘healthy Hannah’ will like. Will she travel? Jump out of a plane? Will she study? What are her hopes and dreams?

I hope ‘healthy Hannah’ learns how to have a healthy relationship with exercise, movement and nutrition. I hope she can enjoy yoga or a morning walk. That she will be able to breathe in the fresh air and even be in touch with her feelings. That she can appreciate what her body does for her, what it allows her to do. Instead of using her body to exercise obsessively to burn off an apple or a choc chip cookie. I hope she learns how to eat and fuel her body without having an internal war inside her head. That she can eat freely, intuitively and not be beaten up in her mind for eating and living in fear that she is going to gain weight. That she doesn’t feel compelled to exercise every morsel of food that goes into her mouth. I hope she can learn that food is food and that food is fuel. That a cookie isn’t going to kill you or make you gain weight. That the body doesn’t know the difference between 100 calories of berries or 100 calorie biscuit. That she can normalize eating, can eat a range of foods. That she can go out for lunch or coffee with friends. That she doesn’t have to live by the food and exercise rules anymore. That when she eats, she no longer feels guilt or shame. Or have that voice in her head screaming that she is fat, not good enough, that your problems are insignificant and the voices that make you feel so small inside.

The eating disorder voice will convince you again and again that you have no way out of this illness and that following its rules and voice is the only way to live life. It makes you feel like you don’t have a choice. But let me tell you that you do. I know a lot of the time it feels like this is the only life you will be ever able to have. I know how it feels to feel like you’re stuck in a big dark cloud, and unable to see any sunshine or even a rainbow after a storm has passed. It feels like you are living in a storm every single minute of every single day. I get it. But I’m starting to believe that living with this illness, can be a way of the past. This doesn’t have to be the end of your life’s story and that you can write the next chapter of the book.

I know right now you are convinced this is your life, the only life you are destined to life. That breaking free from the toxic relationship you have with your eating disorder is impossible. I have believed this for myself for a long time. I recently picked up a book, a book that I have been carrying in and out of hospital admissions for years. I’d open the page, read a few sentences and then close it and say it wasn’t for me and put it back in the suitcase. The “8 Keys to Recovery”.  I am so glad I had hung onto it for all these years. I picked it up yet again for the millionth time more recently and downloaded the audio book for it as well. Still battling with a fully functioning eating disorder right at this time, I would listen to it as I went on my routine morning walk. For the first time I saw, well heard the words in a different light. I heard these people taking about recovery, and that they were living proof that recovery was a real thing, that it was possible. That the things I felt, thought about and struggled through, other people did too. That I wasn’t as alone as I thought I was.

My motivation to change is all over the place, like it does for a lot of people. I definitely go from one extreme to the other. For example. I sat in my gp appointment last week and was so negative about treatment and getting better. I said that there was no point me going back into inpatient treatment, that I didn’t need it and I would not follow the rules or the meal plan. That there was no point going if I was going to be kicked out for being non-compliant with the program. A few days later I picked up this book I mentioned on my walk and felt kind of inspired. I then flipped everything around and had convinced myself I would decide to try and get well and then go on to achieve all these massive goals for the future. I’d then come crashing back down an hour or so later, feeling completely overwhelmed with eating disorder thoughts and its voice screaming at me. I felt defeated and totally absorbed by it again. I lost hope faster than I had gained it.

One part of me is like “I can’t do this anymore, keep living like this” and the other part says that “you’re stuck with me forever, you have no choice”. It screams at me and I feel like I can’t escape it, this world living with an eating disorder.

I found myself back stuck between road A and road B. Lost to know which road to take and consumed by the pros, cons and the risks involved in taking either road. I don’t know what road I should be taking, what one was the right road? What road was I supposed to choose?

Going down road A would mean;

·       Reality that I may die

·       Hair loss

·       Organ failure

·       Severer depression and anxiety

·       Bruises

·       Always cold

·       Getting a NG tube again

·       Loss of making my own choices and decisions

·       So unhappy you just want it to all end

·       Feeling completely hopeless

·       So eel numb to everything

·       My body will shut down

·       The intrusive thoughts will in intensify

I’d feel like I was in control, even though the reality was that I wasn’t. Anorexia was. It was in control of me. This was the only life I knew, had only known for such a long time. It felt familiar and safe. I could depend of it, rely on it to always be there, and I felt like I could control everything. That I was in control. I would be losing weight and feel like I was achieving the goals that I had gotten in my head and believed I was doing well and had achieved the world. But it would never be enough. The reality would be the longer it went on I would be dying at the same time but would continue to be in denial of that.

Road B, well that’s so daunting it makes me feel anxious. I’d consider that I wanted things to be different, that I wanted to be free. But it would be a road I have never travelled on. A road full of unknowns and uncertainties. I wouldn’t know what twists and turns there would be in this road, or what speed humps I’d go over or how fast or slow to go up and down the hills.

This road B is terrifying, and I have no idea what traveling on this road is going to look like. But I think it’s time I take it, that I try it.  It’s going to be really hard, really hard. But right now, it is really not a good time at all. It’s going now where, apart from the road of potential death, more hospitalizations and further unhappiness. There will never be a thin enough, or a weight that I’m happy with. Fixating my entire worth on a number will never make me truly happy. This illness convinces me that these things will lead to lifetime of happiness. But ‘healthy Hannah’ is starting to realize these things are the eating disorder speaking and I need to work with my therapist about these issues and how to see myself as a person as more than a number. In some moments I’m realizing that I don’t want to stay living and breathing for this horrible illness anymore, I don’t want to be drowning in this ocean and I don’t want to be consumed by it anymore. I don’t want this to be my life’s story. There is so much opportunity in this world, it’s going to be hard to beat this, I don’t even know half of the battle I’m going to endure yet, but “I don’t need easy, I just need possible”. I need to give getting well a proper go, and properly trusting my treatment team.

1 in 5 people die from eating disorders, please don’t wish to be a part of these statistics.

This is not how I really want to exit this world. The eating disorder will try and convince you that you have nothing else to live for other than it but ‘healthy Hannah’ doesn’t want to die. I will be stronger than this illness. I know it’s hard, it’s really hard. It feels like you are constantly stuck in a giant black rain cloud or a deep hole you can’t climb out of. But keep holding on, don’t give up. Please don’t stop fighting. For me I’ve always referred to it as that 1% of me that holds onto hope, that 1% that keeps me fighting, that 1% that keeps me strong, that 1% that keeps me fighting when I don’t feel like fighting anymore or when I don’t want to go into treatment or therapy. I am so thankful to that 1%. That 1% gets me through the storms, rides the huge ocean waves as they go in and out. That 1% helps me to hold onto hope that I will get to see the sunshine again when I least expect it. That 1% keeps me on the road of life, it holds onto hope of a reality of a whole life out there waiting for me to discover it, explore it and fall in love with. I hold onto hope for this life. I know it’s going to be really hard to get there, but right now this isn’t living, this isn’t the life that was set out for me to be stuck and drowning in. A life free of illness is out there, I strongly believe that. I believe that for everyone who is struggling with their own battles. I have a tone load of hard work to get there and through this.  But the things we work the hardest for in life tend to turn out to be the most rewarding.

Love Hannah. X