I’m afraid I’m not really feeling it this week. I have been feeling really down lately and whilst I have been able to enjoy the odd occasion, like going out for my birthday, I have just been feeling overwhelming sadness and depression on a daily basis. And I have been trying to think of the positives and keep myself looking on the bright side but I am really struggling, and this week has proved to be a difficult one.
Generally, I just feel like I have been hating my job…and hating my life. Previously I had been contemplating recovery but now I can’t face it. I haven’t got the energy to give it any thought and with feeling so down, it’s not the time to start thinking about leaving the one thing that gets me through difficult times. And I know this is wrong-anorexia doesn’t really help get me through anything, it is destructive. But I do use it as a coping mechanism and at the moment, I am struggling to cope.
This week has been quite emotional, not in the sense that I want to burst into tears all the time, but that it has been provoking. It was thought that my gran was going to die this week which is obviously upsetting. It brought up a lot of memories, a lot of regrets…a contemplation of what I am doing with my life. Also, it was nine years to do the day on Thursday that I had embarked on my new life as a fresher at Loughborough. Full of hope, full of ambition…my opportunity to achieve my dream. But over the course of 8 months my world (and my weight) came crashing down. Last week on Tuesday when I went athletics training, there were the fresher’s from Anglia Ruskin’s athletics club and it triggered a lot of memories and emotions. I can remember starting in my training group at Loughborough, feeling nervous, feeling excited…there were Olympians in my training group! But by the end of my 8 months there it was nothing but sadness, exhaustion and loneliness.
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| Me out with my uni friend this week which I enjoyed. |
When life is difficult and I feel down, as I have been this week, I cling on to anorexia. And that gives it its chance to creep back in, to take over. I look back on losing weight and been very skinny with rose-tinted glasses. I start thinking about how nice it would be to start losing weight again, to be skinny, to feel like I was achieving something. But reality is it wasn’t a nice feeling. For one, you are never skinny enough…there is always more weight to lose. And with being so skinny comes repercussions…hospital, isolation and all the horrible consequences as a result. Ultimately, you lose more of your life. And I can’t afford to lose any more of mine.
My mum reminds me of how different life has been this past year. Last week I went out for dinner in London with my uni friend. Our third time of meeting up and it was lovely. Me and my two best friends are going to spend the evening together tonight watching DVD’s…all things that I have never had before. So yes, I am not as skinny as I want to be but I have a lot more things in my life that I don’t want to sacrifice. I am by far from happy, but life with friends and going out is a step in the direction that I want to be heading. I do not want to go back to full blown anorexia. While life is not great now, it was a hell of a lot shittier then. I just need to keep reminding myself of this. The song by Cyndi Lauper ‘True colours’ has very relevant lyrics to how I am feeling:
“You with the sad eyes,
Don’t be discouraged oh I realize,
It’s hard to take courage,
In a world full of people,
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small.”
Although it feels like it, anorexia is not my true colours. Anorexia brings a world of darkness, a black cloud. My true colours are there somewhere and I have started to have glimpses of a rainbow. And I must follow this rainbow…the path to happiness, the path to life. It might lead me to my pot of gold.