Admissions

A week ago I was admitted to an eating disorders unit. Finally giving in and accepting help is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but the worst thing is that the struggle is by no means over. In fact, it is actually only just beginning.

It is only just starting to hit me just how ill I have become and the extent to which the anorexia has taken over my mind. Physically, I feel ok and am convinced I look normal, if not fat. But had I weighed about 1kg less on admission, my weight would have been around the level where the unit prefer patients to go to a medical ward to be stabilised as they are considered too high a risk. And I cannot fathom how that could be me. I simply do not see or believe it. On Monday I was told that I am so sick that if I refuse to stay at the moment, I can be assessed and sectioned and treated here involuntarily. It must sound like I have well and truly lost my mind to anyone who knows me, but I genuinely do not see myself as the ill person the doctors keep talking about and it is as if they are talking about another person.

My doctors won't be pinned down to dates or target weights, but the general idea is that I will be here for several months. And I am torn between the real me, who wants to get well, to get to a healthy weight and go on and live life, and the anorexic me, the monkey on my shoulder, who believes I am the fattest patient here, that I am not thin or ill enough to deserve my bed. That side of me wants to cling to the eating disorder, to resist gaining weight and to get out of here and lose even more.

Rationally I know how insane that would be. We never know what the future will hold, and there could be no more chances. If I don't embrace this now, I could well and truly ruin my career as a teacher as well as my relationships with my friends and family. They have stood by me and supported me through so much and walking away from treatment would just be a real slap in the face to everyone. Recently I have really started to see just how much my illness upsets those around me and how much pain it causes my parents to see their daughter slowly starving herself to death. And then there is my physical health - until now I have been unbelievably lucky. Somehow I seem to have inherited the constitution of an ox and my blood tests come back relatively normal, which is apparently a miracle considering what I have been doing to my body for the past few years. But even I know that one day those tests may not come back alright and that by then it could be too late to reverse any damage I have done.

So for now, I am taking things day by day, trying to stick with the treatment and just hanging in there because I hope that one day I can look back and see that it will have been worth it. Deep down I do believe and know that I am doing the right thing, but when a force like anorexia which has literally taken over your entire mind keeps telling you otherwise, it is not always easy to fight.....

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.

~ Christopher Reeve