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Being open and owning my transition helped me get through it. My eating disorder has been a completely different story.
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.
I always questioned “will I be taken seriously” or “perhaps I’m a just greedy person” or “everyone gets low and comfort eats” or “how can I have a disorder when I seem to have a normal life”.
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.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when I first experienced symptoms. It feels like I’d been living with binge eating disorder as long as I could remember.
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 know that there are a lot of factors involved in the development of my eating disorder and no two cases are the same. I was able to map what were the major triggers for me, and I am fully aware that this might not be the case for you.
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.”
I used to think that writing about my own story and struggles with an eating disorder was a bit self-absorbed or maybe even pretentious.
I believed no one understood my battle and dug myself a deep hole I did not anticipate I could re-emerge from. By definition, I was a person who was anxious and anorexic. I believed this was who I was, so it could not be changed.