MY STORY, PROBABLY JUST LIKE YOURS
I have to tell you a little bit about myself so that you can trust me more about this matter. I started modelling when I was only 13 like many other girls out there, and that is probably the worst industry to be in that is body related. Obviously, I was told to lose weight and keep it off forever. Initially, It was relatively easy, because one has a strong metabolism when at such a young age, so cutting off bread and sweets was quite easy. But in time, as you probably already now, a woman’s body changes and of course hormones and things like that started to play up with my head. As I started having relationships with the oposite sex, my sex life being not always very regular, the traveling and continuous timezone changes took a toll on my health, but most of all the tiredness and stess caught with my body.
And so gradually weight control became a part of my life as natural as sleeping, without me even realising it was there. No wonder that every time that something stressful happened (and I tend to blame myself first of course as most of us women usually do) , I blamed the body for it, going on another diet, starting a new excercise routine or stupidly keeping myself so busy with work that the exostion will not even leave me time and space to feed my body correctly.
Although it sounds self centered when I write about it, as one could now say °hey, you think about yourself too much°, make some kids or something, take care of the straving in Africa... Which is essentially right, no doubt about that, but…you are missing the point.
This is not about doing this thing more than another, or that more then this. People like Princess Diana or Jane Fonda already had beautiful healthy children and a blossoming carrer, yet they were bullimic like many other successfull people.
An eating dissorder is a way of battling depression. This is serrious.
And I would like to emphasise this, especially for people that know somebody in their family who is struggling with it and can’t get out of the repetitive vicious circle. An ill person can not get out of it on his own. He needs some help, but a sort of help than can only be offered with love. No therapist in the world can offer you love, no doctor in the world can tell you °I really love you°. Only a close to you person can. If you really want to help out your family member who is in real need of help, never criticise or force her/him to do something. Simply love, and you will heal him.
With my dissorder, which started with a few but astonishing binging sesions in my solitude whilst divorcing my husband and finding myself helpless and without money in a foreign country after years of phisical abuse within this unhappy marriage.
Then it temporary kind of went away as I found a job and kind of healed my mind with prayers and a new loving partner at the time. Yet body awareness was always with me anyway as it was installed in my mind at a very early age, but, as most of us, I wasn’t even aware of it. So I simply °kept myself fit° by being carefull with what I eat and exercising.
You see, the main problem with this beast called °staying fit° is that it kind of keeps you restricted; it is always with you, somehow sleeping, waiting for a °wake up call° in order to wake up.
I got my wakeup call when I caght the man that I really loved with another woman.
No illness in my entire life, no tragedy or loss has ever affected me as strongly as this thing. Believe me, I went through several tragedies in my life, but somehow, his betrayal really knocked me off my feet for good. Even now, when I remember about it, I can steel feel a profound loss. It was a massive hit to my self esteem.
And of course, I took it with my body. The fact that the other woman was really skinny didn’t help eigher. Then, he made a few other coments about me having a big arse and how he hates fat women and so on, so that was enogh for me to completely wipe of my personality and rebild that °whatever he saw as beautiful° new me. That new me was a 1.85m tall girl weighing 52kg for a very, very long time and at the point where I had such strong heart pains that even my depression would seem pale. Yes, I still loved that man very much.
It took me many years to heal my broken heart.
First, I became anorexic, depriving myself of food. My boyfriend liked me that way and encouraged it as months passed by. Then, as I inevitably noticed, I wasn’t loved or cared for much more by looking the way I did, yet the body was trying to regain it’s normal weight in the meantime, so ironically I got psichologically stuck beetwen my new body and mother nature’s tendency. This is when bulimia started to chick in. Boy, was it strong and paintfull! Every girl out there knows how awfull, humiliating, sad and lifethreatening it is. And it keeps its repeatitive circle over and over and over and over again untill you drop down powerless.
I would never ever wish something like that to anyone on this planet.