Wednesday 26 June 2013

On attempting to find humour in my disordered eating.


This is a subject I am somewhat struggling to write about. I want to be sensitive yet still let my sense of humour shine through. Because that's partly what has got me through many of the things that life has thrown at me, my sense of humour. Not because I don't take these things seriously but because I have finally learnt the importance of laughing at myself. Now I do it all the time! I've just started a series of photos on Instagram where I will pull a funny face every day with the tag #faceoftheday. At no point would I ever laugh at anyone else or their situation this is simply what I have done for me, only me.

What does all this have to do with eating disorders then? Well since I was very young I have had disordered eating. It has verged from today's occasional "oh I'm hungry, I'll have a black coffee as that's only 2 calories" to my younger days where I would starve myself and then purge. My fingers became well acquainted with the back of my throat as did my head with the ground whenever I fainted. I also successfully managed to stop my periods. Today I also don't have periods but that's down to the marvel of birth control, not starving myself. Right now that I've informed the Internet about my lack of monthly bleeding I think it's time to move on. 

Did I do these things purely because I wanted to be thin? There were many things around me that I couldn't control so you could argue that I controlled food instead, lovingly holding onto that painful feeling of a truly empty stomach. Of course this is partially true but I did and still do to this day long to be thin. Intellectually I know that I'm not fat, I have big breasts and an ever expanding bottom but no I am not strictly speaking fat. Thinking about it rationally I see myself as ridiculous for craving to be a size that I can't easily adhere to. Especially as I do now love food, earnestly revelling in its deliciousness. Watching me eat must be an absolute delight. You're welcome!

Of course when I was younger and in the full grips of an eating disorder it was not funny, not even in the slightest. The lasting effect it may have left on my body is also not funny, neither is the sense of shame I still feel after eating. Actually that's a little funny, shame? After eating? Think about it. Although as a woman I do have to ask myself if the desperation to be thin was something that was in part imposed on me. I remember seeing my tiny mother staring into the mirror and calling herself fat. I, the ever pudgy child with what to this day still looks like a small pregnancy belly kept wondering "well then, what am I?" Do I blame her for my dysmorphic view of myself?  No, of course not. But I do partially blame a society and its media for the pressure it has put on us to be thin. As it still doesn't seem to matter to my emotional self what my logical self knows, that I do not need to change.

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