My eating disorder surfaced when I was 10, it wasn't a snap and change immediately. Things started getting cut from my diet - because I was told I was overweight... at ten I wasn't. But I cut and cut food and exercised 6 time a week. It went from healthy eating to not eating at all. I could tell my family knew something was wrong as they took me unwillingly to the doctors at the age of 14. It wasn't a quick process. It took time. And by that I mean it took time for my head to change. My thinking and behaviour changed. I wasn't myself. I refused to eat almost all meals. And two months later, at 4st 5 I was sectioned to go into a psychiatric ward. I spent a year there, with a tube forced down my nose to feed me, I couldn't see that eating would solve my problems. Until one day it clicked, that if I didn't push myself I was going to end up here forever. Trying was the most difficult and exhausting thing, it hurt and felt wrong. It felt wrong to go against my thoughts. It started with a glass of water, I hadn't drunk in 6 months. I sat for one hour, trying to pick it up and force myself to sip it. And eventually 3 months later I was eating apples and drinking. I was still tube fed to get all my nutrition but after one more month I was off of that nasty tube. 

 

It was and still is the hardest battle of my life, it doesn't go away. I'm eighteen now, and I still force myself to eat, and not too. But, I can't explain it. It's not a choice of not to eat, it's a choice to die. And I chose living. 

 

This blog has been written and released as part of QMUSU Eating Disorder Awareness Week

Registered address: The Students' Union, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, EH21 6UU              

Telephone: 0131 474 0170

Email: union@qmu.ac.uk