Hm, an interesting thought occured to me just now.
I am not ill because I know what my illness is.

I know my problem hence I don't have one. It's kind of true, I guess. I know I have an ED but because I know about it it can't take over control anymore as much as it used to. It's not defining my life to such an extent anymore, simply because I know this is my problem. I can live with it, I can cope, even manage. Sometimes it gets the better of me but in the end it's always me who's in charge. Knowledge is so powerful. I'm not in control but knowing that I lack control gives me a lot more of it.

Yesterday evening I went running and even though I had had some grapes and a drink just before I left I felt like I'd faint every time I slowed down to catch my breath. I actually got dizzy and had to be careful to not turn my head too quickly in order to keep going straight. Very weird. I enjoy running very much, it's nice to feel my heart pumping, listen to some music and see the trees go all beautiful. I love the colours of autumn here, everything is red and yellow, and absolutly stunning in the evening light. Anyway, I'll see how it goes tonight...

I hate these ambivalent feelings that inevitably come with an ED. I want help, I don't want anyone to know, I want to tell someone, I don't want anyone to worry about me, I want to be thin, I want to be happy with my body no matter how much I weigh, I want to be told I look skinny, I don't want people to notice I've lost weight, I love my ED, I hate my ED, I am thrilled to make it through the day with only 200 calories, I am depressed and feel out of control.
I don't even know who I am anymore.
This morning in mass I wondered if I even want to go to confession anymore. I haven't received the Eucharist for more than two months now because I haven't been to confession and I feel so guilty for my ED. But now I am wondering if I can even confess it at all because I don't really regret having an ED. And I'm not sure if an ED even qualifies as 'sin' per se, since I don't really have a choice, yet I still feel guilty. So maybe the priest couldn't even absolve me because I don't regret my eating habits, or he could because they're not really my choice anymore? I am so confused.

Maybe I'll donate blood this afternoon - always hoping that my iron levels are high enough. My faith is still the same, I do believe but I can't connect. It's a bit like I'm watching myself on TV.
Next week I'll be cooking for a children's camp which means it'll be pretty much impossible to not eat so I guess I'll just have to eat and not think about what I'm doing. Oh well, it's probably the healthier choice, anyway. Not the easier choice, though.

I'm feeling so incredibly lonely lately. It's like I'm deceiving everyone around me, it's all a mask, a role, a facade, nothing real on the outside, all smiling, but on the inside I'm crying all the time and just can't stop. Why does no one notice? Surely it must be impossibly to hide all this inner sadness and loneliness all the time from everybody? Surely someone must be able to see through my mask? I just need someone to hold me, to tell me I'm loved, I'm not alone, someone who will let me cry in their arms and who will dry away my tears until I fall asleep.
The only thing that is giving me some comfort is the fact that Christ suffers with me every little step of the way, He's been there before. But I can't feel Him, He still seems so distant, I just can't reach Him. And then - is He suffering my pain or am I suffering His? Am I maybe even adding to His pain? Is it all my fault?
And once again I'm about to cry.

I found this online community of people with EDs. They are really supportive (in a good way - they don't encourage anything seriously mad or suicidal but care very much about each other) so I decided to join them. I'm not sure if this is a very wise decision since if could be triggering but for now it's just what I need - people to whom I can talk and who really and truly understand me. The site is actually part of the pro-ana movement (pro-ana doesn't mean promoting anorexia or thinking it's a good thing, but rather support for those who have it and helping them to find a way of living with it as well and healthily as is possible) which I used to dislike but find more and more helpful as I find out more about it. Yes, it's not really helping people to get better but it is helping them to not get worse and come to terms with how their life is instead of how it could be. This is a lot when it comes to EDs if you ask me.

Why does meeting friends and socalising necessarily have to be linked to food? I don't want to lose my friends just because of my ED but what can I do if meeting them means barbecues, dinner invitations or going out for lunch? I'm not sure which feels worse - not meeting them or eating. I usually choose eating because this way I can tell myself that I still have power over my ED... But I feel terribly guilty which again induces me to purge or take laxatives. This can't be good.
And of course, I don't just write this without reason. I'm going to a barbeque tonight with three other friends (and since there's only four of us there's no way I could not eat - they'd be bound to notice) and I'm dreading it already. I really want to meet them and have a good time but on the other hand I really don't want to eat.

EDs and social life don't mix well. :(

Either malnourishment is finally taking its toll or I'm just having a fairly bad day. I'm feeling very slight and dizzy today, and when I went shopping earlier this afternoon I had trouble standing up straight every time after I had picked something up from the lower shelves. Funny, seeing that I am no where even close to being underweight. But I guess malnourishment isn't necessarily linked to weight, especially not when you were really overweight like I was.
It's wonderful to feel so light-headed, though. Makes me feel like I can just float with the wind, and it makes me feel rather pretty.
Oh yeah, my faith is still shaky but it's definitely getting better. I talked about it to a friend last night which really helped and also last weeks holiday did quite a bit for me spiritually.
I desperately need someone to talk about my ED but I guess it's in the nature of an ED that you can't really talk about it. Just the thought of someone else knowing about it sends me running away, let alone the thought of people being worried and trying to make me eat. I think I'd rather not talk and be left alone. Nothing's worse than being forced to eat, and I really don't want to offend my friends by not eating (and as long as they don't know about my ED it's quite easy to avoid meals or eat very little). This is one of the reasons why I started to blog here - no one will know who I am in real life yet I can still talk about it. And maybe, just maybe, I can help others who suffer from an ED with it... But that's probably just a very vain hope.

I'm feeling a little dizzy right now. Maybe that's because I had too much coffee today.
The weirdest thing happened Saturday night on a party - two boys fancied me and got really jealous over each other, that's never happened before (no one ever fancies me, and two at once is a real first). Was very nice, though. I didn't fancy the younger one of them, he made me feel rather old... But the older one was really nice, and at some point we ended up holding hands (I felt sorry for the other one, he was so disappointed). Nothing happened, though, cos I felt I couldn't do it. He would have liked it but fortunately didn't push me. But it felt sooo good to know that they actually thought me attractive and sexy and erotic and all that. I never see myself like that so it's very nice to know that maybe I'm not a hopeless case after all.

I just realised I can't remember when was the last time that I had a full meal without puking afterwards. Well, I guess since I'm going away with some friends next week I might have to have the next one then if I can't think of a good excuse to skip meals for three days in a row. And not feeling well wouldn't be a very useful excuse since I don't want to mess up their holidays. I suppose I'll just have to go with salads, vegetables, chicken and such foods.

The memory just hit me of my grandmother calling me fat when I was only 12 or 13 years old. And my father was there, too, and didn't say a word. In fact, some time later he told me I looked like a pig when I run. So much for enjoying sports. It's great to have such a loving and supportive family. *bitter feelings all over the place*
How was I supposed to learn to live with my body or even like it? I have no idea what they thought they were doing. Well, probably they didn't think.
Oh well, what the heck. I don't want to blame my family for my ED. They just made it a little too easy to hate myself. And I guess being called a fat cow in school didn't help either. Why can't I just forget my past, why does it keep coming back?

Definitely no food for me today. Even though I ate very little yesterday, when I weighed myself this morning I had put on 1 lb. I'm so unbelievably fat, it's gross. I don't understand that people without an ED don't put on heaps of weight when they eat their 2000 cals a day. I just put on 1 lb for a mere 500 cals. I'm such a cow.

I really mustn't eat tomorrow. I want to be down at least 7 lbs by Saturday week, so I have to make sure I don't eat any more than 500 cals a day from now on. And I guess I should exercise, too.
Today the weirdest thing happened to me. I had to give back this book which I borrowed from our cantor and I said I'd make sure he had it for evening mass tonight. So I planned to go to adoration and evening mass but when I came into the church just before adoration I felt like leaving as quickly as possible. I felt awful but all I managed was to leave the book and a note outside the sacristy and then leave the church in a hurry. I feel really bad for this, it's like running away from your very best friend, like hitting them in the face, really.
The last few days have been quite good, I guess, I managed to lose a little more weight despite being at two barbeques this week (well ok, I admit I purged as much as I could and took laxatives before going to bed).
I think I'm about to become bulimic, as much as I purge. On Wednesday I even binged on purpose since I knew I could just purge after I'd eaten. Until now I have only been restricting but over the last few weeks I have been purging just a bit too much. And the worrying thing about it is that I can't help it. Whenever I eat I feel so guilty for eating that I have to purge to get rid of those calories that I just consumed. Well at least some of them, unfortunately it seems to be impossible to purge everything and your body starts to digest the food too quickly. I'm thinking about trying to chew and spit for a change but I'm kind of scared of that, so maybe I won't after all.

I hate myself. Today I made myself eat, so I had cauliflower for lunch and for dinner I ordered pizza and had some ice cream as dessert. Now I feel like a cow but I can't purge. Sounds silly, I know. And it's not like I ate because I want to eat and get better but because I want to lose more weight. So I need to keep my metabolism at a good rate which means I have to eat every now and then. I feel awful, depressed, sick, and I really really hate myself for it.
On top of it all I slowly seem to be losing my faith. No, wait, I'm not even sure you can call it losing my faith at all. I still believe in God, and I still believe all the stuff that you believe when you're a Catholic. But today in mass I realised I'm not sure anymore if my faith has any meaning for my life. I couldn't pray, my mind just went blank when I tried. Oh God, who am I going to turn to if not to You??! Help me!
And all the time I just want to bend over the toilet and get rid of all the food that I ate today.
Oh yeah, and if that all wasn't enough now my mother got suspicious - I once told her about the last time I had and ED and since then she freaks whenever I lose a little weight. I think I managed to calm her and said that everything was fine. I hate to lie. But it's not really helping either of us if she worries - she's worrying more than enough anyway so I really don't want to add to that. I'd really want to get better just for her sake and so that I can save her some worry. But it's not going to work like that, and if I don't want to get better for my own sake nothing's going to change. And fortunately I don't live with my parents anymore so my mother won't know everything. I just worry about going home every few weeks - I just can't hide my body from her so she's bound to notice if I've lost weight.

I've decided to eat today. So far I had a slice of cheese cake and I am also planning to have something tonight at the graduation ceremony. I know, it's not very much but it's a whole lot more than I had over the last couple of weeks. I'm feeling terribly full right now from the cheese cake but I'll try and bear it. Puking isn't really a good thing to do and today I hope I have the strength to not do it even though I feel I already ate too much.
God seems to be very distant these days. The funny thing is I don't feel like I'm losing faith at all, I believe as strongly as I ever have. But I feel like I'm moving away from God, I can't really pray anymore, yet I still go to mass and I don't feel I'm a hypocrit for going. I need God but somehow I don't seem to be able to ask Him for help. Maybe I should go to confession about this.
Two days ago I talked to my sister about our adolescence and all I could think is 'I wouldn't want to go back there for all the money in the world yet it seems to be exactly where I am right now'...

Not many practising Catholics I know have an eating disorder. Actually, I don't know a single one. It doesn't really seem to fit very well together, does it...
Even I struggle to make out how these two parts of my life go together.
I haven't always had an ED (and btw, strictly speaking I have never been diagnosed, but that's due to the fact that so far I've either managed to avoid my GP or to pretend that everything is fine). The first time I developed an ED was when I was 15 and we were doing food chemistry in school. I had been fat for quite a few years; after my parent's divorce I had started to put on weight. When I realised one day in November in class how much calories I actually eat every day I was really shocked and disgusted by myself. I decided it was time to seriously lose some weight now.
As disgusted as I was I couldn't eat a thing the next day. And well, as things go, I discovered what a powerful feeling it is to have conquered myself, my hunger, my body, and basically everything that I hated about me.
Since my parents were divorced but still living in the same area it was so easy for me to avoid meals - I just told them I had eaten at the other's place or at school or at a friend's house. No one ever managed to keep track of were I and my siblings were all the time so no one worried about my eating habits simply because no one noticed they were kind of odd.
I started to lose weight very quickly and lost about two stone over the first month. Still then no one really seemed to notice, I still wore the same clothes and frankly, people tend to ignore you when you are shy, not particularly beautiful and in no other way sticking out of the crowd.
After a few months when I had already lost more than three stone my mum began to see that I lost weight but since I was the fattie of the family this was a good thing. She also saw that I ate little but never actually grasped that it wasn't really little but more or less nothing at all. I hid food wherever I could - during meal times in my mouth (and then ran to the toilet or the kitchen sink to spit it out) or I'd secretly put it back or on my brother's plate, and I used to spoon yoghurts and other creamy food down the sink and leave the empty boxes in the kitchen so that my mother would think I ate them.
Sooner or later other people noticed I had lost weight, teachers, friends and the family I used to babysit for. Scarily enough, none of them ever worried, all I got was compliments on how well I looked. When I look now at the few photos I have of this time I look terrible - circles under my eyes, pale as death, frizzy hair and terribly baggy clothes. I can't believe nobody ever worried. Either I was a very talented and convincing actress or else they all never really looked at me in the first place.
When I think back to the feelings of the time all I remember is anger, self-hatred and - yes - the wonderful and amazing feeling of power. Power over my own body, power that allowed me to deceive everyone around me, and this immense willpower which let me succeed.
At all this time I was decidedly christian (not really Catholic then but I guess I'll come to that in due time), reading the bible, going to church, praying and all that. And, believe it or not, fasting is a very effective religious exercise. You can feel very close to God when you haven't eaten for a couple of days, and even in retrospective I don't think that this feeling of closeness to God was an illusion. He was there with me all the time, and the worse I felt in life the closer He was to me.
I must have been very thin then. Not dangerously skinny, I never reached this stage, but thin. As it is with EDs you don't see yourself for what you are. I never felt thin, but was always the fattie that I used to be. So no number on the scales was low enough because I'd not feel it.
By March I realised I had a serious problem: I was starting to worry about receiving the Eucharist because it might make me put on weight. This thought struck me with such intensity that I decided I had to change. God was the only one I could still trust and rely on so not being able to receive Him because of my ED was just too much to bear. It wasn't like I changed over night. It took me weeks, months even, to start eating again. I had no support from anyone but God - after all, no one else knew about my problem. People are blind for what they do not want to see. I prayed, I prayed and I prayed, and slowly, ever so slowly I could let go. I still counted calories, I still was afraid to put on weight. But I would make myself eat because I had had a glimpse of what I would become if I continued on this way. The prospect of losing God was the only thing that made me turn. Of course, I put on weight. But over time I found out that those who like me don't care about my weight and those who don't like me don't either - they just use it as a means to hurt me but they still didn't like me when I was thin so what's the point in destroying yourself for them.
So, that's briefly how it all started with my ED...