(mi) the boy who cried wolf

The boy who cried wolf

Mi

Somehow I had gotten used to breakfast in the unit and had almost got the art of it down to near perfection. In fairness staff tried to vary our meals but there was never much they could do with breakfast that wasn’t predictable and that was what made it easy, however today was one of those days that the customary orange juice had been replaced by a medium sized green apple and we were having some sort of bran mush the congealed into a sticky lump into the bottom of the dish for our cereal. The toast was pretty much the same as normal; one wholemeal slice and one white with some sort of strawberry jam scrapped over the top of both. It was all perfectly manageable really apart from one problem, I hated the taste of the bran mush and where as I loved orange juice I was not a fan of apples and the white bread… admittedly still one of my freak out foods.  I was struggling and it was plain to see.

The thing was my eversion to the breakfast was not really a calorie thing or a fat content thing or an “oh my god I am such a fat cow thing” it was mostly a “my cereal taste like baby sick and sawdust thing” but the staff did not see it this way and even with any amount of explaining that it wasn’t because I was trying to restrict but because it tasted so inhumanly horrible to me they did not or could not listen and all reacted in the same way. Eating disordered behaviour, we must stop this.

“What’s going on inside your head?” Edward asked over the noise of the rest of the patients that had all finished their breakfast and were trying to amuse them self’s as they had to all follow the ridicules rule that no one was allowed to the leave the table within the hour and a half allotted time for a meal unless everyone was finished. It was a stupid rule put in place I was told to try and bring some structure and normality around eating. It was meant to prove that Eating was normal and healthy and something to be enjoyed by all with the understanding that we all ate to live and that was Ok. It was meant to provide a supportive environment within a community and provide some expectation and guidance to those who could not eat that they must eat, that it was Ok and they were expected to do so. It was complete and utter bullshit.  It was concocted inside the head of some high up psychiatrist  who had no personal experience of mental illness, had earned their medical degree at some point in the 1950’s and hadn’t set foot inside an acute ward or even seen a patient since the 1980’s. There was no sense of reassurance given to anybody if they were the last one really struggling to eat in what could be a group of over twenty people. If you were they last on to finish all you actually gained was to be put in a spotlight and place centre stage in the cirque du freak, today like so often before I had this honour.

“Why is this so hard Mi?” Edward prompted again when I ignored his question and opted for putting another spoonful into my mouth and chewing what felt like several thousand times so the brown glue was thin enough to swallow. “You are demonstrating a lot of disordered behaviour this morning. I was wondering if there was something I could do to help you.”

“It’s not disordered behaviour,” I snapped angrily before popping in my last slice of the bitter apple and chewed wincing as it scrapped down the inside of my oesophagus. “I don’t like green apples and the cereal taste like baby poo. The only thing I did have any emotional problem was the white bread and if you haven’t noticed I have already eaten all of that. Edward sighed my perfectly true explanation going over the top if his head and somewhere into the clouds that threatened to rain over the unit again. In fairness to him I had heard the excuses ring confidently and true from my mouth so many times before declaring that I didn’t like something when I did but just didn’t fancy the calories that were put in front of me.

“Well you got about another ten minutes before time is called on breakfast and Crystals the one with the keys to the tube feed today. I’m sure she won’t think twice about using them.” Edward said softly.

I picked up my spoon and shovelled in the rest of the cereal in in around six bites without bothering to chew and trying not to taste. Crystal looked disappointed. I tried not to be sick and felt sorry for the boy who cried wolf after all did anyone of the village people every ask him honestly and truly why he did it?

(Esmee) A compromise with the devil

A compromise with the devil

I wasn’t sure what emotion took me first as I for the last time sucked in my tummy as far as it would go  to try and do up the button but there was no way it was going to do up. They had been tight for days but I  hoped if I just ignored it rubbed my belly and told my baby that I loved her it would be fine and time this day came I would be Ok with it, after all it meant my baby was growing but the trouble was so was I.

I suddenly felt lost in my own bathroom like maybe the four wall of the bathroom were responsible for my expanding waist line that if I stepped back outside the walls and into another room the 12 would slip on easily that in fact they might be a bit too lose again that I might need those size tens. Emmet had got scared when I first got back into that size. He had spotted the label in the back of my jeans when he was doing the washing and he had thrown them down on the table in front of me in an almost huff telling me to explain. I had done and apparently I did it well because he said nothing again after that as long as I promised I would try and fit back into the 12. I had done but neglected to mention that my head had been more obsessed with the size six jeans that lurked in the bottom of a box that I had stored labelled “Anorexia, never again.”  The trouble was for some reason unknown, for feelings beyond logic, beyond all common sense that I had gained as a nurse and a human being I longed to see bones under my skin again, to feel the cruel stab of a hunger denied as my body feasted on mussel and organs. It would be easy to get to the pits of anorexia again to watch my life fall away as I lost my baby first then the fat then my hair, as I developed the bones of a nighty year old and gained ankles that threatened to snap just by walking. I could blindly stand by and watch as sores appeared like magic on my skin and beaded down into my already crumbling bones. It would be Ok to lie and fight for every breath as my heat struggled to maintain a rhythm. The asystole that would follow… peaceful after that hell.

“I don’t want to fucking die!” I shouted at myself a little too loudly the last thought to travel through my mind scaring me at how easily it came, at how easily I could except that fact I could lose everyone around me. “You just need some maternity things, that’s all,” I tried to comfort myself. Six months and I could work hard. I could run and cut down and lose all the weight I had put on but it would all end the same way  for once I allowed myself to start there is no way I would be able to stop, making me trapped exactly where I was now, in a body that was slowly starting to fee alien to me again.  I was falling apart at the edges.

“Mummy loves you,” I whispered slowly to my baby gently stroking my fingers over where she lay inside of me, “and daddy, he loves you to, very much. You have to know that none of this is your fault and even if I go crazy I will always love you, that I will fight for you to the ends of the earth and take all the blows for you,” I promised tenderly even though the tears cracked the words open as I spoke them. The outline of my body lying in the mirror eating at my soul and sending my blood boiling as I tried not to look into the fun houses looking glass, I knew it distorted what I saw.

“An eight,” I confirmed to myself agreeing on a compromise that sounded good in my head as I looked at the reflection and let my hand drop from the side of my bump. “After the baby is born I will drop to an eight as quickly as I can and then I will stop, I promise I will stop at eight,” I stated confidently running my fingers down one of the longer scars that swirled down from my left breast to the top of my right hip where I could squeeze the lard that had gathered on them in between two fingers so hard that I hissed at the sharp pain that would go on to leave a bruise. “Or a six there are a load of women that are a size six and I am so short any way. A six would be better, longs I don’t go below 78lbs I will be OK,” I stated confidently bulking my body up to its full height and pulling everything in so the outline of my ribs pushed gently at the edges of my skin. I arranged the same smile on my face, the one that would get me throw the day and lie to everyone that I loved confirming that I was Ok before I turned the corner in our bathroom to leave and almost bumped into Emmet who stood frozen to the spot, tears glittering in his jade eyes.

(Esmee) The thing with 12

The thing with 12

Esmee

Pregnancy made a woman fatter, baby and fluid swelled inside the uterus and as the weeks rolled by counting down to the big day the weight increased. I would be expected to put on up to 40lbs in the next six months and I told myself that it would all be OK, that for my baby I could grow and I would eat because I loved her and I honestly wouldn’t care what I saw in the mirror. I loved my unborn child she was precious new and a gift and above all she had hung on for me against the odds, against how anorexia and bulimia had destroyed my fertility and left my body unable to support the promise of new life

When I was a teenager and in the throes of it I didn’t care about children or what they meant. I never thought I would find someone like Emmet who loved me and would want to grant me such treasures. I was being abused and I had learnt from my abuser that sexual expenses just hurt and if a woman could violate me the thought of a man just terrified me. After all like most girls I had been warned that some men could be sexual predators that they would pray on girls. I knew that no man was allowed to force you into sex and that rape was wrong and should have been reported but they never mentioned a woman who always came in when you showered… With a woman I was lost, all I knew was I wanted it to stop and a sure fire way was to die. In short I wanted to die not have kids, they didn’t matter and by starving myself I was reaching beyond a place even Julie could get to, then I found hope and I got better and I wanted the normal things and eventually I got them and I was happy. I managed to stay calm even if I was falling apart. Stupid things like a few extra pounds didn’t matter. That was until that morning at around week 12 gestation my size 12 jeans would simply not do up.

Maybe i am more then a number (Mi)

Maybe I am more than a number

I let my eyes flicker over the wall for a few seconds and tried to take in all of the names. It would have been impossible to remember them all and I didn’t want to remember just a few how could I have chosen which on was worth reading, what messages should I have taken on board out of all of them. They all had something to say, a story to tell but even the wall was monitored. The paint work was patchy were inappropriate things that had been written where painted over. I could still read the words welcome to hell and abandon all hope all those who enter here under a particularly bad patch job.  Bad feelings were not tolerated on the recovery wall.

Dragging my eyes away from the wall I turned my back on it and stood in front of the mirror and dropped my dressing gown and pyjama bottoms before pulling my top up and over my head so I could examine my body for its many flaws. It looked different these days and of course in reality it was. I had gained the weight they asked and the charts congratulated me for a normal body weight and a healthy BMI. I still saw the fat I still hated my tummy but somewhere inside it seemed a little bit less important now. I wanted to be thin but I never seemed to get there even at seventy five pounds I had not seen thin and if I did see the bones in the mirror I pushed them aside and saw the fat around them.

 At seventy five pounds I had been dying. I felt constantly awful but because I lived with it I assumed that everyone always felt the constant pain. That everyone’s joints where as stiff as mine, that everyone around me struggled to get the heart to pump blood around their body. Now I understood it was my body protesting. For so long I had allowed my body to become the whole of me but now I was gradually learning it was not the entire sum of who I was. I did not like my body. I doubt that I ever would be thrilled with what I saw when I looked at the shiny reflection in a mirror and for a long time I would freak when I gained a pound and sometimes even soup would be too much to bare, however I was learning slowly that I was so much more than the body that I walked around in and that the people who loved you- and Emmet and Esmee did love me even if I could really understand it- never really saw what was on the outside any way it was what lied beyond that shell, it was the spirit that they saw. To them you would always look like a super model. It was learning to see that in you that was the hard bit.