Your Stories

'No more, thank you'
As she piles my plate high
'Mum, I’m not hungry'
That’s my favourite lie

I guess the turning point for my recovery came after a long battle with my identity. Who am I if I’m not what anorexia tells me I am?

As I eat and function normally and crave that as a healthy human, this demonic part of my brain still pulls me back like an annoying toddler craving attention.

My battle with anorexia and bulimia made me lose my identity. Recovering from an eating disorder seemed very daunting and overwhelming but I knew it was something I had to do.

Shifty and devious anorexia is a master at disguise. Slotting itself nicely into societal norms, the morning gym session or missed breakfasts go unnoticed or are glorified by others in pursuit of aesthetic perfection.

Eating disorder vs. recovery isn’t as simplistic as poorly or not. It’s a grey fuzzy line and an uphill battle. I understand that you don’t have any energy or drive at the moment but step by step you can rebuild your life.

I needed to find some way to disappear and become inconsequential, as if I did society maybe wouldn’t notice the disability. The eating disorder was the only way I could see to do this.

The myths of eating disorders are stopping people getting help. These myths are making people more ill and in my case these myths destroyed my 17-year-old life.

Anorexia persuaded me that my actions were completely normal. When others behaved differently, they were wrong and I was right.

Developing an eating disorder is never an active choice. No individual would willingly put themselves through the torture of this type of mental illness...

I want to share my experience because I feel like while there is obviously a lot of support for the eating disorder sufferer and the parents, siblings are all too often the forgotten victims of eating disorders.

Throughout the years that I have suffered from an eating disorder, all the attempts that I have made at recovery, I would read other people’s stories and think, “what’s the point? It will never happen for me.”