May is for Mental Health

With May being Mental Health Awareness.... I figured it’s time to talk about my mental health. Something I’ve debated bringing into my life on social media. Why? Because it doesn’t define me, but it is a part of me.

I’d like to think that I am a very open and vulnerable person to begin with, but even this seems heavy. For the entirety of my life I’ve struggled with my mental health. We all have, that’s what makes us human; An intelligent and unique species.

At a young age I struggled with body image, anxiety and depression. As I grew into an adult those problems grew too! I spent all of my teenage years and half of my 20s hiding my Eating Disorder and my crippling, existential anxiety from everyone I knew.

One day, it dawned on me and I knew that if I didn’t face my problems head on, they would devour me. They had single handedly dismantled every relationship I had ever had up to that point.

Seeking help by telling my mom, my friends and finding a doctor and therapist that understood me was one of the hardest and most relieving tasks of recovery.

Getting to share the pain I had carried around secretly for over 15 years was so amazing and yet terrifying. What would my friends think? Would I break my mother’s heart? How do I move forward?

Telling my mom was THE biggest step and she simply wanted to know more. She had no idea that I had been hiding it since I was 13 years old. She offered only support and love. To this day she’ll randomly ask how I’m doing with things and leaves the conversation open to me if I ever need to talk about it.

With time I realized that I didn’t ask to develop these mental health conditions as a child, I was sick just like a kid with a virus. I didn’t choose my diseases.... I needed to proud of my progress and not dwell on my fear.

Am I healed? There is no cure to ED and anxiety, only awareness, education and resources to fight back!

So here I am... open to the world. Sharing my fear, my pain and my struggles. I hope that this finds whoever it needs to, to know that you are not alone, you are not unworthy of acceptance and you are not your mental health disease!

Here is a part of my story that I am writing:

...After hitting puberty, I started to realize that things were changing. I was gaining weight and it started to affect how I felt about myself. After getting home from school, I would find myself unable to control my snacking. Oftentimes eating anything I could. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was ineffectively coping with my anxiety, which I didn't understand at all...

..I really started feeling the pressure to look a certain way once I was in high school. The upperclassmen were beautiful and practically adults. It wasn’t long before I discovered my mom’s diet pills and used and eventually abused them until she caught on that someone else was taking them. After trying them herself, the effects of the pills made my mother's heart race and she did not enjoy it. She stopped taking them due to that fact. It wasn’t long until I was looking for other ways to help me maintain my weight and not be so damn hungry all the time. The diet pills that I was consuming eventually were outlawed do the terrible side effects of Ephedra...

...Some of the girls in my friend group would talk of dieting. Dieting to them meant starving themselves for as long as possible. One of my friends claimed that she had only eaten 6 saltines in 48 hours. I couldn’t believe that my group of friends was competing on who could eat less. I remember thinking that there was no way I would ever be able to do that, I couldn’t control my cravings and my snacking. I would find myself eating way more than everyone else at lunch...

...One day, my mom picked up a free stair-stepper from spring cleaning in town and I remember I would exercise for as long as I could each day and feel so much better when the floor was covered in sweat. At this point I was restricting my food intake as much as possible. When I couldn’t bear it any longer I would binge. I would eat as much, as fast as I possibly could. My weight was always at the forefront of my mind. It was my obsession....

...It was around this time that I also dabbled in a full blown eating disorder. When my mom caught on to the fact someone was taking her very dangerous diet pills, I needed to find a new way to feel better about my weight...

...I knew that I couldn’t be anorexic, because I couldn’t control my ability to eat. I found myself scouring the cupboards mindlessly after school and before bed. One day after eating too much, I found myself standing over the toilet and shoving my fingers as far as they would go. I kept pushing, my eyes watering and eventually I vomited...

The first time I was able to purge, I felt an entire new reality; The ability to eat as much as I want and not have to deal with gaining way. I felt relief. I solution to my problems. I remember later in my 20s, I would justify my disease by telling myself my bulimia was simple maintenance, not a disorder...

...In the beginning I only purged when I binged. When I was bored or would be stressed out I would eat, and when I would eat, I would stress out. I felt tense all the time. Like a weight was pressing down on me at all times. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't focus. I found purging as a way to relieve my tension. Eventually I wasn’t just purging the times I was binging, but every time I was consuming food. Little did I know that this disorder would plague the rest of my adolescence and all of my 20’s...

...This was just the beginning of a disease that would wreak havoc on the rest of my life until I learned to fight back.