It was the very end of summer and the very start of autumn that i started going downhill again. I had been taken off my medication in the spring when i was doing so much better which was a mistake for a few reasons, one that i suffer from SAD which means i generally get better during the summer anyway even without meds but worse in the winter and second that the meds weren’t making me better, they were numbing everything and making me feel less of what was there. Which meant that instead of dealing with the issues causing the problems they were focussing on dealing with the symptoms which had decreased a lot from the drugs which convinced them i was better and there wasn’t anything left to work on, i mean i had a job, i had a boyfriend, i went out, i could do things i hadn’t been able to do for years. But it was all temporary and even i couldn’t see it. After i came off the meds i was within a month taken out of care and told that they would be there in case i needed them again... They weren’t.
Anyway there is the back story, it was the early autumn and for the first time in over 4 years i started self harming and considering suicide. I remember the first time i lost it and actually cut myself and the amazing relief it brought to watch the blood trailing down my leg knowing that at my gymnastic group they would wonder how i got such an awful cut. It made me glow inside having that control over myself, i went downhill from there.
I stopped eating, i went down little by little until i lost weight constantly and even when i was hungry i couldn’t eat. I began to walk for hours until i was exhausted and in pain and id disassociate for weeks at a time. I felt so horribly empty and i knew i was going to leave T, either through the slow torture of starving myself or through a quick bloody death. I started doing things for him to remember me by. It was during one of those things that i snapped back to myself and realised what i was doing. I started talking to T and we tried to get my old psychiatrist to help me but he wasn’t interested. At about the same time all the stress etc had caused a few food intolerances to get me, i had always been lactose intolerant but i got gluten and egg intolerant too, Very difficult to find things to eat so we went to see the doctor who sent us to a dietritionist. (can’t spell that) She then started claiming i was making it up so i didn’t have to eat, so she spoke with the doctor who sent me to an eating disorder clinic. By this time i had my own mental health nurse assigned to me who came round to the house for sessions.
The man who i started seeing at the EDC (eating disorder clinic) even his name makes me feel so ill so i wont even think it, decided after knowing me for no more than an hour that i didn’t have OCD or panic attacks, or even a phobia but an eating disorder. He gathered my mental health nurse who i thought i could trust, my doctor and a huge group of others in the same sort of professions and they all agreed i needed to be ‘sent away’.
Me and T were not for the idea, i was aware of how bad i was doing by this time and was trying to pick myself up and i knew he was wrong, we both did to begin with. But after more meetings and my failing to really get a grip on things even though i was trying very hard-I was more able to go out but barely eating at all and trying not to self harm but failing but i wasn’t attempting suicide. I was being open with T so he could help me- he got my mum and T and in for a session and he convinced both of them and partially me that i was so ill that i didn’t know my own mind, i was confused and wasn’t capable of making my own decision to save myself. I didn’t want to be saved i was already to far gone and if i didn’t go into care then i would be dead within a few months.
We all went home in tears, we agreed that i would go and my bed waiting.
I don’t remember much of the night before, but i do know that i had been sleeping downstairs more and more, to be nearer the bathroom, i was so afraid of being ill. I was still too afraid even that night to share the bed with T in our room for what could be our last time together, it hurt and i was guilty and angry with myself. My bags were packed all around the living room, T had brought me a new blanket ( i have a weakness for blankets) and he gave me a special little pebble.
The next thing i remember was us arriving and me being too afraid to get out of the car after travelling the hundreds of miles to London. T persuaded me out of the car and into the building. Into a tiny waiting room where i had to answer questions and fill out forms. Then i was taken into another room and was weighed and my weight had dropped to lower than 5stone or something silly. The woman then said i needed a blood test and that i would have to have 2 a week. Before i could think about that she took out a needed (ill add in here that i am afraid of needles) this wasn’t a normal blood test needle, it was huge and very old fashioned looking and it drew the blood out. It was very thick and it hurt a lot. It hurt like hell and i remember trying to cling onto my stomach and consciousness desperately while the pain subsided and the bruise started to spread.
Then me and T went to get my stuff from the car, it was cold and damp outside being late January. I was terrified and T again had to talk me into going back into the building. The room that was mine was at the end of the corridor and felt impersonal and final and filled me with empty hopelessness. T helped me unpack and i think i just stood crying in hopeless silence. I was already lonely and desperate. Someone came to write out a list of the foods i liked and could eat because of my intolerances. Then it was time to say goodbye.
I can’t describe the feeling of leaving your fiancé knowing that you might never see them again, after what we had been told, doubting i would see him again. All my life i had watched people leave me when they went out or on holiday because i couldn’t go but this was so much harder. I delayed him then when i couldn’t possibly anymore i walked him to the end of the corridor and watched him leave me. Watched the door close as my future and my freedom went. And i turned to look at my new ‘home’.
It was dinner time and i was aloud to eat at my desk in my room for the first few days because of my fears. I was given a meal that was bigger than even T would be able to manage, i relaised part way through that it obviously contained gluten and when i asked they outright lied and said they would only feed me which was safe for me but by then end of the meal i felt ill from that on top of everything else. I left a lot and was given stern looks and made to feel hopeless and desolate. I felt so weak and my will was beginning to drain away until i felt like just walking was hard and i knew it was the place affecting me, the staff made you feel weakened and useless and already dead. I listened to the clock, a few of the other patients visited me, they seemed friendly but they also had that air of ‘I’m going to die in here’ about them. They all looked haunted and quite a few were on liquid food, as they had tubes going into their noses.
I had a few members of staff visit, telling me i wasn’t aloud food in my room anymore at all; drinks weren’t aloud at all unless they were given with food at meals or snacks. I would have to eat everything that was put in front of me, the curtains on the window of my door had to be open constantly no matter what i was doing, not allowed to visit the toilet after meals, not allowed to leave the tables until everyone did, There is a time limit to the food in, no talking at the tables, no being outside our rooms between meals unless it is going to a check-up or session. There were lot more. One of the main one affecting me was the no drinks as i usually still now sip a cool drink when I’m nervous to help calm me, but they wouldn’t allow even that.
By the time everyone else was in bed sleeping, i sat on my bed still crying holding my pebble and contemplating the tie on my dressing gown. I knew by this time that this wasn’t the place for me. I didn’t have an eating disorder, i had a phobia and their rules and things didn’t work for me, but i was torn between this and wondering if i was delusional as everyone else believed me to be. I spoke to T and told him how i felt, how i thought i wasn’t right there but he had been warned about it, told that i would try every trick in the book to get back out and that he would have to stay strong and not give into me for my sake no matter what. ( I know this from talking to him since, at the time he just seemed definite that i needed to stay and i didn’t know what to believe but my gut told me this wasn’t the place for me). I lay on the bed and cried all night. I was starving from not being able to eat through nerves and i was so thirsty, i fought stomach cramps from hunger pangs and thirst and effects of gluten all night. I couldn’t even go to the loo as there were guards posted at every door. The cord was looking very inviting and i made up my mind if T wouldn’t believe me i would use it. I couldn’t stay there no matter what.
The next day i was weighed again and had dropped a few more pounds, they forced drugs into my empty stomach. They didn’t know i had a stash of lorazapam in my pocket and i downed some of those to deal with everything. It was breakfast time and i was sat down in a chair in a crowded room of people, an Asian guy sat next to me. I like to talk and i talk when nervous and someone asked me a question and i got chatting, i got told off and humiliated in front of everyone. I sat and stared at the bowl of rice crispies in front of me, a huge bowel, half a banana and a whole jug of milk, along with a glass of orange juice. (i haven’t told you about my eating habits yet but i can’t have bright colours, remind me and ill talk about it). I also dislike milk and bananas. But i forced myself to eat some but i couldn’t manage even a quarter of this huge meal. The time was up and the guy next to me told me to meet him in his office after i had put my food on the trolley. I realised he was a member of staff.
In the office he closed the door behind me and stood in front of it, he started shouting at me about not eating, i was setting a bad example to everyone else, i wasn’t ever aloud to talk even if asked a question, i was to eat every crumb in front of me, if i didn’t on the next meal he would check up on me and put me on a tube feed. I ran out of the room terrified and hid in my room in full view of all the staff walking by. I took out my phone and called T, i spoke to him for an hour but he still wasn’t convinced. I spoke to my mental health nurse but he wasn’t either. But in fact he seemed to be able to be more so than T. His mistrust of me shook me so much and i felt rejected and hurt on top of everything else. I ran the cord through my hands over and over until i was called for snack.
I was so nervous at meal times i couldn’t eat, i spend all my time concentrating on ways to get out or die. I was inspected and degraded. As a result of not being able to eat surrounded by people and being watched i starved when i was on my own, i battled with constant stomach cramps.
Strangely when i thought i would actually loose my mind, i became stronger minded and i convinced myself i could do this alone, if was under the right circumstances then i could nurse myself back to health, i rang T again, i was constantly trying to convince him. It shook my confidence in him that he didn’t believe me. Finally, I’m not sure what broke him into realising i was thinking straight and in my right mind but he realised and he agreed to come for me straight away. I began packing my stuff up and hoped he would be there before my next meal. He wasn’t though and i had to suffer through another.
Finally he arrived and i as good as fell into his arms, i remember feeling so betrayed by him but he was all i had to get out of that place, and i could get out and sort my feelings out later. (Apparently my room smelled of the strawberry milkshake they had been forcing into me and to this day he still can not stand the smell of it) He carried my cases and we went home, after signing papers and being told again that if i left i would die within weeks, that i wouldn’t be able to do this alone, that i would end up back there and i could see the whole time the doubt in his eyes.
On the way home i was so thirsty i drank pints of water, then i made him stop at a garage to get food, finally the panic attack that had lasted the whole time i had been there from weeks before i had gone was going and i was starved because of the conditions i had been kept in. He was so surprised to see me eat so much and i knew i looked like shit because i had been treated such that i had lost more weight and was so fragile and frail. I had to sleep downstairs for weeks because even walking around the room tired me out i had been made so ill, i didn’t talk much and i was tired constantly. That’s when the guilt started to creep into his eyes.
I remember the constant flashbacks and nightmares that made me scream to the point of waking him up from upstairs. The fear of all therapists in case they sent me back there or somewhere similar. I cut my connection with them all. And within a month of a schedule i made myself with feeding and resting and little activities i had put on weight at a good rate and was keeping my eating up and gaining in appetite. I won’t say it was easy, it wasn’t at all, it took a bugger load of will power i don’t even know where it came from and it took encouragement from T and it took a lot of pushing my phobia to the limit with forcing myself to eat to stretch my stomach to its limit and i accepted that sometimes it would reject it. After a month i was healthy enough that we got married and i ate out at my first meal that day, i had salmon and herb potatoes, i enjoyed it and i even had some dessert. Within 5 months after that i was almost at my usual weight and we had our summer wedding where we had a huge picnic and hundreds of guests. Then no more than 4 months after that i got pregnant with Angel. So in a lot less than a year i went from deaths door to fit and healthy. With no meds, no therapists, just T’s support and my will power and determination. It was hard to have my freedom and my life very almost taken away from me and from a therapist that insisted that i had something i didn’t so he could make his patient numbers work out. Its a long 3 year road since then but i still have flashbacks and things trigger the nightmares and memories. I am still working on myself but i know that if anyone can make me into the person i want to be then it is me.
