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+__ ?).::r is for reality::.__ _ ___
************************************************************************* ‘Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.’
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I never really took my life seriously, it was all just a game which could be flittered away. It didn’t seem to sink in that I only had one chance at this living thing so I better use it and not waste it. I guess no-one ever really accepts the importance as life, we just can’t face the harsh reality. Once my dad told me about his visit to an old people’s home where the lady he was visiting died almost as soon as he had arrived. He was just making conversation but at that moment I realised how fragile life is and how I should try and protect my body, not hurt it deliberately. Still, a day later I was back in the toilets at school hurriedly shovelling paracetemol (i think these are called tylenol in the US) down my throat, washing them down with black cherry water bought for that very purpose. I wonder if perhaps I was so afraid of death that I felt that I had to cause it myself. I was afraid of death quite a lot by this time, I guess I thought about it more than a lot of people my age so it frightened me, not knowing. Maybe I was having a mid-life crisis! I always was quite nostalgic, like an old lady! When my mouse died I was too scared to admit to myself that it had in fact died and I blocked it out. I left it there for weeks, months even, getting smellier and smellier, until I was able to whisper to my brother that it had died. He told my mum and she kindly sorted it out for me. I couldn’t even go to the funeral! They laughed at me for weeks after that! While everyone else concentrated on how to revise for upcoming exams, they never concerned me, nothing ever really did. They all talked about exam timetables and not letting stress get too much. That baffled me, I was massively understressed considering the exams could decide the rest of my life. But I would just laugh it off, telling myself it would be fine to revise (study) the night before, if at all. I hated the way I left all my work, A-level revision or coursework, to the night before. It made me so angry with myself that I was so lazy when all this work, and the exams, were going to shape the rest of my life. But maybe I needed to live on the edge like that to give me feelings back, to give me excitement in this big game that I was playing. And it was nice to get a buzz and to give my mind a rest when I had to spend every minute of the day, or night, concentrating on writing this essay or learning a book off by heart for the exam the next day. Still, I would have done a lot better if I’d paid a little more attention to that tiny conscience reminding me that my life was not, I repeat, not, a game and that this work was vitally important. It was great for me when people were able to laugh with me and joke about some of the things I did to myself. Sometimes it was upsetting, didn’t they care? But I did appreciate the way everything didn’t have to be heavy all of the time. At the hospital my twitch began to get worse and I started throwing peas and orange juice and things! Once I dropped a knife and it broke so I mentioned it to a nurse. He said that it was not surprising that it broke if I pushed it in too far! That was hilarious, made me feel much more comfortable! Because normally everyone was so serious about my self-harm when a lot of it was quite funny, especially in retrospect. Really, it’s hardly surprising that my life was not serious to me, considering that I often couldn’t feel anything at all. How could I be expected to see life for what it was when I was watching my life from a detached position? The denial of eating disorders often prevents people from seeing the reality, as well as the fact that they are constantly glamourised in the media. i know that for a while before i really went into anorexia i flirted with it for a while. Like death i saw it as romantic and passionate, peaceful and calm. In retrospect the first word springs to mind if i think of anorexia is the word 'ravaging'. Eating disorders tear you apart inside, that is the reality. The fantasy is so dangerous as it draws people in, they are unaware of the harsh reality that will hit them when the honeymoon period is over. Eating disorders are raw and painful, there is no glamour, especially not in being fed through a nasogastric tube, in being incontinent, in your bones hurting you when you sit down in the bath, in being able to see your spine through your stomach. The myth that they are peaceful is wrong, oh so wrong - either that or i went reallyyyyy wrong in my anorexia and bulimia. Well, if you still dont believe me then visit my anorexic mind page, see what really goes on in your mind during anorexia. Add to that the pain in your body and the indecision, the isolation as you lock everyone out of your life, the secrecy being unable to tell anyone the thoughts in your mind, just constantly under attack from your head. |
