year 7 -1989

Year 7,1989

The year I started high school. It’s quite a scary time because it’s a time of establishing new friendships and a whole time of change with in yourself. I was still hanging around Mim and Julie, but it was not really doing me any good. In fact, if any one felt like a third wheel ever, it was me. Even though we were at the same high school, it felt as though sometimes they did not want to be associated with me. They always knew about things I didn’t know about, or made up jokes about me. One Wednesday I got changed into my sports uniform then went into the library leaving my bag outside, as we had to. I came out to have my lunch but could not find it. I searched my bag to find it stuck in my school shoe. It was one of the many jokes Mim and Julie played on me. Although I felt like the biggest idiot, I pretended that I thought it was funny, just so they would not get the satisfaction they probably wanted. For some reason I was always presumed to be the not so bright one, the naive one who did not know too much. Maybe it was because I was the youngest, and it used to be my nature to be the happy little chatterbox. It was just my way of coming across to people I suppose.
I was never one to open up about anything really. I half think that is where the problem stems from. I bottled up my emotions and kept everything to myself. Quite often I would sit on our back step and just think and think, sometimes I talked to our dog Lady. It was safe to talk to her because she never judged what I said or thought, and funnily enough she never spoke back. If I were ever upset about something I never told anyone. If something bothered me, I never told anyone. If I wanted or needed something it took me forever to ask, and then ages to feel right about asking. I tried my very hardest to never allow anyone to see me cry. It wasn’t that Mim or I were ever shamed to cry, because mum and Mim often showed their feelings. Often I yearned to be able to open up to people but I never knew how too. It was just easier for me to be the “happy-go-lucky” person people knew me as. In some ways I feel people never took me seriously because of the way I was. Mim was the serious one, the one who did all the thinking, the one who always helped mum and even others. I feel her and mum shared a great relationship. Because of this I did feel a bit on the outer. Sometimes non-existent.
I often wonder if the desire to be so skinny is actually a subconscious desire to not exist, but not being actually brave enough to try and commit suicide. In reality anorexia is a slow death. It is not the desire to have a perfect skinny body, because we know that anorexic's body’s are not desirable to look at. It is a look of almost death. An anorexic does not wish to be healthy, or does not wish to look good. We invite illness to come our way because with an illness it means to not have to eat, therefore get thinner and sicker. Anorexia is a torture and suffering to one’s body. But through it there is a visible, unspoken cry for help. A need to be noticed, and cared for. Then it becomes a trap, a way of life, an identity.
Sometime through out this year Mim, Julie and I made a pact to get fit and lose weight. It was one of the many peculiar things us three did together. It was our goal to jog every morning, and also swim laps in the pool. The person who failed to do this was to eat three mars bars in one sitting. Now to be honest, I don’t think we even stuck to this routine very much. Instead, we often pigged out on whole blocks of chocolate, or hot chips with tomato sauce. Although thankfully we were quite energetic and did a lot of walking.
At the end of this year one of mum’s aunts died, which meant mum had to travel to Germany. All of our relatives are from and live in Germany. Mum left for a total of two weeks, and trusted us to be by our selves. This also meant cooking for our selves. I am not sure if it was this time or another, when Mim cooked up some vegetables for us to eat for dinner. We sat down to eat, and after a sufficient amount I felt full and stopped. Mim was a bit taken aback I think, because she literally shoved the brussel sprouts in my mouth and made me chew them up. Within that same time frame, it may have even been the same day, Julie’s mother bought us each a rainbow flavoured paddle pop. This was another time I refused food and I was secretly surprised by her response. She was rather concerned and questioned why I did not want it then said to be careful because I wouldn’t want to waste away. The power if felt when saying no, and the response I got was amazing. I realised it was a way to get people to comment on me.
This was also a time when I had my first encounter with bulimia. At the time I didn’t know such a disease existed. To me it was a matter of getting rid of what could make me fat, and at the same time keep a secret from everyone. It happened when Mim had a friend over one night, and they were out in the back yard talking. I stayed in my room and ate tiny teddies and grapes. Grapes always have the effect of making me feel extremely bloated, so I thought I may as well be rid of them and then I wouldn’t have to worry. It was my secret that only I knew about.
One week after mum arrived home from Germany we all went to Europe together. Food was already becoming a minor issue. At our aunt’s house I weighed myself and I don’t think I liked what I saw, but wasn’t overly concerned. I think mum’s behaviour was both Mim’s and my main concern and annoyance. Mum drank a lot of alcohol there and often appeared on the drunken side. I was ashamed and angry about this and so was Mim. I never considered it to be a problem though. I thought it was just something she was doing while spending time with her sister. For some of the trip we stayed with mum’s sister, and for the other half we stayed with her ex-brother in law.
We travelled to other places around Europe, including Paris, Austria, Berlin and Holland. We stayed in a motel in Holland, which had an indoor pool. The pool was heated so Mim and I made the most of it. One night we were in the room getting into our swimmers, Mim was in the bathroom and I was in the main room. I was getting undressed and suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me. A man was peering through the gap in the curtain watching me change. I screamed and cried out for Mim who came and comforted me. I felt so uncomfortable and stupid.
Berlin had the biggest impact on me. We travelled to the east side of Berlin to try and track down information on our father. He died a few months before I was born. He was also from Germany, but that’s all the information mum had on him. We are still unaware of his family situation to this day. East Berlin looked as though it was still living in the time of war. We visited museums, which depicted how life was during the years when the wall was up and the war was taking place. For many nights after our visit here I had nightmares of being separated from my family by a wall.
Our trip to Germany ended at the end of January.
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year 6 -1988

Grade 6, 1988.

to read grade 5 click here

 

Before school started back I spent the occasional weekend at a farm that Charles and Lana owned. They were a young adult couple who we’d known for a couple of years. It was fun to be with them I really looked up to Lana and liked to talk with her about many things. The more time I spent with them the more I liked them. I believe that every child at some stage in their life wished they had different parents. I wished they were mine because they were young, cool and fun and they lived in a nice house. Funnily enough my wish was granted a few years later.
Chloe’s and my friendship began to fizzle out this year and my new best friend was a girl named Kate. She got me involved in an activity she attended at church on Tuesday afternoons called Pete’s Corner. It was for children my age to get together, play games, do craft, and learn about God. The people here were really nice and caring, and I enjoyed going.
I was reasonably energetic at this age. As a past time I usually chased the dog in the back yard, did handstands and back flips, and just ran around to waste energy. One time I sat at the top of the slippery dip looking at my legs. I remember thinking they were too big and it was my hope to make them smaller. This was when I know I started being paranoid about the size of my legs.
This was the Bicentennial year. Our school was involved in a celebration that was at the park. It involved doing a dance and singing. We only wore tights and a t-shirt and had to walk around like this and all I can remember was that I had the biggest legs. Actually I was one of the biggest in class, in height that is. There was nothing I could do though to conceal my legs so I just tried hard not to look at them. One boy from my class actually said “hey Steff, you have a big bum”. I remember it clearly to this day. That is not the only comment I remember in regard to weight. One was from Mim’s Godmother, after Mim had lost weight from her illness with pneumonia earlier. We were at her place for dinner one night and I was lying on the floor watching television. She walked up to me and asked something along the lines of “ oh, what’s happened to you? Your sister has lost weight and you seem to be putting a bit on.” I tried not to let it bother me, but it actually really hurt that I was being compared to my sister like that. The other was from our gardener. Mum, Mim and I sat down for our meal as he walked through the house to inform Mum he was finished. He watched us eat then said to me “Don’t eat too much or you will get fatter.” To me this implied that I was already fat.
I look back on photos of around that time and realise that I wasn’t fat. I was healthy. Had I have remained eating sensibly as I was I could have the most perfect body now.

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year 5 - 1987

Grade 5, 1987.

I had my first periods this year. I was absolutely horrified. It happened at the beginning of the year when we had swimming lessons for sport at school. I only discovered it when we were getting changed and did not know what to do. All I remembered was mum telling Mim that when she had her periods not to go swimming. So, I went to the teacher and made up some excuse that I forgot my swimmers. I never told a soul about them, and prayed they wouldn’t come back. My prayer was answered for at least half a year because they did not return. But when they did I felt so sick from them that I realised I had to tell mum. She was rather concerned and motherly about the issue explaining everything, giving me what I needed including panadol and hot water bottles, and even kept me home from school. However, I was too embarrassed to talk much about it with her. I could not believe this was happening to me. No one at school knew which was a great relief because I just could not face it if they did know.
Sometime in the middle of this year a family moved in to a house down the road from us. They had two daughters Tarsha and Julie. Over a few weeks we all became friends. Tarsha was the youngest one and Julie was actually In between Mim’s and my ages. We spent heaps of time together at each other’s houses just playing games and doing stuff. I flitted between hanging around Tarsha, then spending time with Mim and Julie. Tarsha was fun to do kid stuff with, but Mim and Julie appeared to have more fun together. I actually preferred hanging around just Mim and Julie, and soon it was just the three of us who just hung out. We always were nicknamed by anyone who saw us all together all the time and some people even thought we were sisters. Being with this little group probably impacted on me quite a lot over the years but without realising it.
Just a few weeks after meeting them, my grade went on a school camp on at Lake Keepit. It was like a camp to get to know others in the grade, and to find out things about our selves. We filled out questions about what we like and don’t like. My dislike was something along the lines of Mim laughing at me. One of the sheets we had to complete was titled Getting to Know Your Feelings. I wrote that I felt loved when people care. On another sheet titled Who Am I one of the questions was three things to wish for. The only answer I had was to stay little. Chloe and I had heaps of fun together. We were both the teacher’s favourites. Coming home was somewhat disappointing. Mum said she missed me but not as much as she would have missed Mim. This was obviously upsetting to hear. She tried to clarify her point by stating I was the more outgoing one and she need not worry about me. It wasn’t exactly the best homecoming I’ve ever had.

year 4- 1986

Grade 4, 1986.

Anorexic was not a commonly used word then. I never did understand it, and I never thought I could have it. Now I still don’t understand it, and it has me.

This was the year I first came to know the word “anorexic”. My older sister, Mim, had started high school this year and became best friends with a girl named Lydia. Lydia had a sister who was the same age as me, but went to a different school. I was really excited to meet this girl, because I always wanted a real best friend. I read a lot of Trixie Beldon books then and liked the thought of a friend you did everything with. I was hoping Chloe could be this person. Mim informed me that Chloe’s family think she is anorexic. I had no idea what this word meant. What I understood was that it meant not eating, and exercising a lot. I noticed nothing unusual about Chloe, so I just couldn’t figure out the anorexic thing. So, it just did not bother me. Although I did not wish to be skinny like her, I did want to be like her in the way that she was likeable and popular. In fact, I wished to be any one but myself sometimes. I was always different from the other girls. It’s hard to explain why. I often thought it was to do with the fact that I never had a father while growing up so people viewed me as different. Then sometimes I thought it had to do with the fact that my mum was German and she talked differently and did things differently. One thing that was noticeably different was my early onset of puberty. I had to be one of the earliest developers in my class. Mum often tried to make me feel better by telling me that because I developed breasts earlier it meant mine would not be as big as the other girls later in life. Little did she know that what she said was true, because the first part of losing weight was from my breasts.
Whatever it was that made me different I did not like and so wished to be someone else. I now realise that it is pointless trying to be a person you are not, because then it delays finding out who you really are and it takes years to mend. What I know now and wished I knew then is that God creates us all differently but with a purpose. He knew us before we were born which means so much to me, yet I still find the concept hard to grasp. To know we were created with a purpose means we are meant to be here. I grew up often wondering if I am meant to exist. Mum sometimes told me how she often thought of aborting me because after our father’s death (when she was two months pregnant with me) she didn’t know if she could cope raising two children on her own. By saying this I felt I had no place on this earth.

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Getting better

linking up each week with  things i cna't say for Pour Your Heart Out  and with twinkle in the eye for Flash blog Fridayto tell the story of my battle and recovery from an eating disorder

You were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and your spirit which are God’s “

1 Cor: 6:20

It is the year 2001. It is yet another year that I am putting my body through torment from an eating disorder. This body that God has given me to be a temple, I abuse it, starve it, and hate it. It is not only my body that is suffering though, it is my emotions as well. Some days I feel like it’s time to just let go and let myself recover and grow up to the physical person I deserve to be. Other days it is such a struggle and I can not even bare to look at myself, or even think of how I have let myself go in just the past year. I often feel like I have lost the fight with my body. I realise I do not have the strength or will power to starve. That may seem more like I have won, but it is far from it. If I had won then I would be serious about getting better. I am hoping that through writing I may figure all this out and be the person I am meant to be. I am not an eating disorder, but it is trying to rule my life. Food and I are separate now. Food is not a normal part of my life. I so much want it to be, I just want to feel normal and accepted by everyone else. What I have always wanted was “to be noticed.” Losing weight was definitely one way of getting noticed, but then it became an obsession. I wanted to test how far I could go, but never went over the limit. Losing weight was one way also that I could cry out for help and attention, without actually having to ask for it, and it worked. Few people though understand it. Many think it is a problem with food and a fear of weight gain only. They only associate anorexia with food and weight. I have learnt this by the way of opening up and telling people there is a problem there, and seeking help, only to find them thinking I was better once I gained a few kilograms. So, the cycle starts over again. It is not solely about food. It is about self worth, self acceptance. Weight gain does not signify a person is better. It is often when a person finds it even harder to cope. Weight gain for my self is confusing, it’s a lack of control, and it is shameful. So many people can come to me now and tell me how good I look thinking they are doing something nice, yet what they are telling me is that with a few extra kilos I don’t look sickly. I don’t need them to remind me that I have put on weight. It is hard enough dealing with it myself. I am trying to come to terms with it because I don’t have the energy or determination to lose it. The harder thing to come to terms with is finding out the person I am.
Once I was a skinny person. My battle and struggle with food was my identity and my life. It was the one thing I could say no to and feel in control of. I don’t think I was a very nice person then. Issues involving food consumed my mindset, and controlled the way I thought, did things, and also how I reacted to people. I tried to have fun, but if it involved food I panicked. I tried to involve my self in social groups, but if that was associated with food I avoided it. To eat would be to lose self respect. It would be denying what people saw me as, it would be going against what I tried so hard to fight. I just could not do it because I was afraid and ashamed of what people would say or think. In a way I guess I was afraid of who I am and what I wanted. I used to think I was happy but really I wasn’t. Everyday was a struggle because I was so depressed, and so focussed on food
Now I would say I am at a normal weight, although people still think I am skinny. I have a life now, and I am enjoying my self at most times. I have been told that I am more fun to be around now, and it is a lot easier to talk about or even eat food with me. Although I may eat more now it does not mean the battle is over. Once the battle of food was my life, but now my life is moving ahead and I have to try and fight this battle while I am living a life. Once upon a time my goal was to be in hospital because of my eating disorder. It was to take me to near death. At one stage I was going to admit myself because I couldn’t go on with the struggle any more. I was sick of making decisions regarding food. I was getting scared of myself and of what this problem had become. Now, my goal is to be able to talk about my experience with an eating disorder, not to live with it and then die from it. I want people to see me for who I am now. To see the person I am becoming as a result of this, and to see other achievements in my life apart from weight loss. It is more fun to order pizza at work
and all of us eat it, than to be the one who always refuses and gets comments. It is easier to go for a walk, and only a walk, rather than “having to go” for a walk everyday, yet needing to know where the toilets are because too many laxatives were taken the night before. I laugh with my friends now, and I am starting to feel connected to them, not like an outsider.
I am now a person who is trying to find out what life really is about. I am scared to let go of the eating disorder because I don’t know life any other way now. Gradually though it is leaving, and I am discovering myself again.
I will write year by year as I remember them, and significant parts of those years that have formed the person I became. Some parts may be intertwined with others, because in the overall things of life each little bit is linked to another. I will also write characteristics of myself throughout each year so there is a fair description of the kind of person I am.

Consumed....the reason behind the name

Linking with Things I can't say for pour your heart out each wednesday and with Twinkle in the Eye for Flash blog fridays
Normally I blog at For the Love but have written a story about my journey with anorexia and hope to gradually have it read and get feedback. So each week will post a bit more.

I chose the name Consumed, because of the meaning of the word. The English Dictionary gives a few meanings, and the two that stuck out the most were possess and destroy. I couldn’t describe an eating disorder any better my self.
So many people suffer from some form of an eating disorder, and it scares me when I see how it is affecting children now of such a young age. It isn’t any body’s fault, but so many people blame themselves if someone close to them is suffering. Often, an eating disorder is a reaction to an event in a person’s life, whether it be emotional, physical, or in the world around them. I found it useful as an escape mechanism.
We go through life experiencing events, and not any one person perceives an event the same way as another person. I wrote this story using my perception of my childhood and my teenage years. For a lot of my teenage years I was consumed by the eating disorder, and I found it hard to get close to anyone. I hated life, and I hated myself. I am saddened to think how much I hurt those around me, especially my mother and my sister (Mim). But unfortunately I couldn’t see that because that is one of the effects of anorexia. Through this story I want people to realise that an eating disorder is extremely destructive.
There are a lot of negative thought patterns throughout the story, which I guess highlight how miserable life is with an eating disorder. A person with an eating disorder is not a pathetic or miserable person, it is the disease that is pathetic and miserable. I can only see that now I have worked through it. I was lucky to have a lot of support, but I was also lucky to get to a point where I believed in the people who were willing to support me. That’s the thing with any disease, nobody can support or help you until you are willing to believe there is a problem. The next step is to believe and trust that these people will see you through it no matter what. Trust is the hardest thing to do, but at times we need to take these steps, or otherwise die (either physically or emotionally).
It is a challenge to get through the disorder, but such an achievement in the end.