DENISA'S STORY: "I ESCAPED. AND CONTINUED IN MY MADNESS."

“This is my story:

I wish my fingers were so quick as thoughts running my mind when I think about it all

My anorexia started in second or third grade of secondary school, so I was 16-17. I’m not sure how exactly it started, maybe it’s enough just to say that I have always been very desperate person. There was always a blank place in my mind I desperately deserved to fill. I used to read books, write stories a lot. I was talented in drawing and painting. I liked singing (as I do until now but I’ve never had courage to show it, I still think it is horrible as everything I do, I have, everything of my person is so BAD and so it was yet then - under cover, looking happy, but it was there hidden)

I was doing my best in school. I wanted everything perfect. So it was with my body. I got an idea to lose on weight just a little, just a few kilograms. I had 60kg or more that time for my height 170cm. I wasn’t very muscular in that time and had a lot fat on my body. I started to realize that, what I hadn’t been interested in anytime in the past. Girls were so beautiful. So thin. I saw them in school, in TV, in magazines and I saw myself.

I felt so poor, so fat, so disgusting, stuffed in jeans. But it all was only beginning, just thoughts running in my head and nobody knew it would spread like it did.

I started with healthy food and that became a perfect camouflage at home - a scene for parents and whole surrounding. I liked it very much in story at your site: anorexia is lonely place. One is seeking to beat loneliness, get rid of horrible thoughts, bad things that other say, and falls into even more horrible loneliness. Once I wrote a poem in desperation, about a horrible secret no one could ever find out. I have always been very secret person. And there are dark things laying deep inside me, haunting me and tormenting me even today. I have never had a good friend. I have never had anyone. Nor today. I am lonely. Because of my secrets. I am tired of it. But I hope I am improving, I am not so vulnerable about people as I used to be, and I am getting out of my shell gradually. This is one of attempts. To tell the story, that other people heard only shreds of it.

So I got very consumed in my new obsession. I was reading articles and books about healthy food, diets, exercise, losing weight and I developed my perfect functional system! Gradually, I started getting slimmer. Slowly and I liked it. I told myself - I had never been able to admit I am anorectic even to myself!! - I didn’t understand those girls who just don’t eat and think they would put off. I was eating - a perfect composition of sacharids, lipids, and proteins and doing exercise to not lose my condition. I had even muscles on my arms. No fat but muscles.

So I had my perfect food system, and I was proud about it, thinking I am not anorectic, but the PROBLEM was I fell in love with my figure getting thinner and thinner, so I was eating less and less and less. There was time I ate one graham roll a day, did a lot exercise, walking and all. Chocolate was something unthinkable, fictional taste, fictional thing I couldn’t afford.

People started telling me how thin I am and I liked it even more. I liked the thought that I shock them. I have always been very quiet, lonesome and sad girl. Maybe this all was just one of all another unsuccessful attempts to get rid of this bad part of ME, the part I hated! So I didn’t have to care very much in my small world of calories taken and burned, taken and burned and so on and finally only burned calories.

Finally I was eating just vegetables and very little of it.

Everything was alright until my body started to give out. Within some time - I don’t know how time passed in my mad circle, but it had to be some years. That time I had only 42 kg for 170 cm. I really don’t remember what time it took. Only things I remember from that time is getting weaker. Started to guess there must be done something. I was afraid of eat. But I knew I couldn’t go on like this because I would die. I was still enough aware of things - thanks to God!

I got terrible depressions, horrible anxiety I’d never wish anybody and the most horrible thing about it was: IT HAD TO BE KEPT SECRET. Nobody could know. "I cannot tell anybody or I would die!" I was so afraid of telling things people, getting help. I forgot to say I still have some kind of social phobia or something. And signs of AvPD [Avoidant Personality Disorder] fit on me exactly.

I had problems with constipation. It was more tolerable thing to say, so I looked up help to cover my problem and to help myself. Later I somehow got in issue of thyroid gland. I really don’t remember how. But my father used to say I am too slim (finally noticed) and insisted on going to doctor. Even he would never admit I could have much worse problem. He thought he raised us perfectly. So once again I camouflaged it all with dysfunction of thyroid gland. A friend of mine - my friend Anorexia - was in my case very very intelligent and slick. Doctor wrote anorexia in my list and I demonstratively laughed about it with words he didn’t have anything to write there and I’d bet my father didn’t even know what is anorexia.

They wanted me to stay at mental hospital. I argued that and we came to arrangement I will have clinical treatment so I will go to sessions with psychiatrist.

I escaped.

And continued in my madness.

Anxiety was with me all the time. The summer came and my heart was getting very weak. Many many times I almost fainted. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t go out very much. I was on examination and they found out my heart is getting dysfunctional. And I still wasn’t willing to admit I have to eat. I’d get outburst of anger and anxiety and fear until I thrown the food away.

It was piling up gradually, all the thinks that forced me to do something. People were shouting at me on street bad things about my figure. I wasn’t able to run for bus, I had to stop and I almost fainted. The sun shining and I felt like in hell. And in the middle of all that I recollect that I used to like sun, I used to run well, I used to race with boys, where’s my strength.

I started to feel sorry for myself. I don’t even tell about all those tears I cried. I had a feeling that everything in my life is now rounding around my food problem. I perceived world through narrow view of it but I was fortunately enough perceptual. Every word, every thing I saw, everything I saw connected with my problem but I didn’t see it as a coincidence. I stopped to fear and started thinking. A book got in my hands. It wrote about God, about purpose of Man - to develop in our physical universe. I believe in karma, and in free will and I think that one is always able to change a destiny if he wants. "A strong spirit cannot get into weak body." - was a sentence that affected me very powerfully and even now I have tears in my eyes - despite my semi consciousness I am stumbling now.

I realized how much I was abusing my body. I realized I got my body to get through this world, to discover life, to learn how to live good and tackle with my own faults, defects and mistakes. There was written it is never late to change and to start over. And that helped me much because I felt so horribly drown in my problem I could never get out. But this was so insistent, so urgent, it filled whole my mind and then I realized I couldn’t live more this way and I have to do something about it. Then like a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky came a strong decision to start to eat and get strong! I was afraid of bulimia and so I never got into that and I am proud of myself how I did it.

Even today a mention about anorexia gets in my ear, and all I feel is just nostalgia. All buried in past. I even got some ideas I could start over as it helped to occupy my mind with something I saw as very important and very good, but I am not able. Because I don’t see a reason in that anymore. It was enough. I realize I could never think like I used to think and count calories like mad - now it seems to me so ... vain. But I don’t say I am free of thoughts and worries about my figure - they are still with me and will be there up to end of my life.

When I started with anorectic thoughts - or when I stopped to eat I was completely healthy and strong young girl. Just with a little psychic problem. Today I have those problems back and as a souvenir from my old friend left just heart arrhythmia, dysfunction of thyroid gland and another untold secret I had to keep for myself. Just like an oath.

My psychic problems continued, my figure got normal, and I started to drink. A lot! But secretly. There were bottles piling up in my wardrobe and I had problem to get rid of them.

It started to do brainwash with my mind so the edge of necessity forced me to stop. I still a kind of liked myself to not allow that. I wanted my mind! Today I cannot even smell alcohol.

Today I am addicted to tramadol. It’s prescription drug I’m getting illegally. Now it’s almost one year.

Finally I got rid of all the bad feelings I had - failed relationship mixed into it and I wasn’t able to get over it. Even now I start shake, my heart thumping in my chest, so I have to get my dose. I love that. I still have a bit clear mind. There are no those bad feelings, but there are no good feelings. I feel just empty. I don’t know what is to be happy just because I reached something I wanted. It all just pass me, the emptiness I always tried to fill is now getting greater and greater like some huge chasm I am falling into.

I don’t say I am free of thoughts and worries about my figure - they are still with me and will be there up to end of my life. And even though I thought a friend of mine - dear anorexia - is gone. It will never be. She is still with me, destroying me by even worse and more dangerous means. I am addicted to tramadol. I like it because of states it brings me, and because of the fact I lost 10 kg of weight since I started to use it.

So the circle is starting anew with new scene on new stage and new, dangerous things I am playing with.


PS:

And I don’t know what has to happen what would force me to quit. But I know that with every won battle with myself, I also kill and lose a part of myself, I get a little emptier, a little sadder, a little more bored of life, more cynic and more desperate.

And I am still afraid of getting help from other - its unthinkable - and I cannot help myself. So I am stumbling in my never ending circle so far and up to - nobody knows, maybe until I die. No one ever knew, no one ever will, and maybe it is the best like that.”

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