Sounds dramatic? Well, it's the reality that I live from day to day, and it's also the reality of life for many, many other people around the world. As many as several percent of women are believed to suffer from eating disorders of various kinds, and they are killers. Anorexia nervosa has the highest death rate of any illness classed as "psychiatric".
People often ask me how and why I became anorexic in the first place. In some ways that's a very easy question to answer: I was severely mistreated in childhood, and anorexia is one of the emotional scars from that that I have carried throughout my life. I was a victim of physical, emotional and sexual abuse from an early age, and turned to self-starvation as a way to numb out unbearable reality. My mother was anorexic, the disease eventually claiming her life, and I suppose that I saw her using that coping mechanism and adopted it for myself. I do not blame her in any way for this; in fact there is now a great deal of evidence that some people are strongly genetically predisposed to developing anorexia, particularly those who develop the disease early in life and remain severely anorexic for many years.
I remember having intense feelings of self-hatred and wanting to disappear (very common amongst anorectics) by the age of five; at nine years of age I was actually diagnosed as anorexic, having limited my weight and stature to those of a much younger child by my refusal to eat. I started to fall behind in my education, with innumerable long absences from school because of the illness. To add insult to injury, I was sexually molested by two teachers at school; starvation became a way of avoiding the school environment that I found so frightening after that.
I was trapped in a dysfunctional family. My father was abusive towards both me and my mother; his mistreatment of me had led to the initial development of my anorexia, and his reaction to my self-starvation was equally abusive: he would lock me in the garage or the workroom with a plate of food, and tell me that I wasn't coming out until I had eaten it. Of course this simply ensured that I had no inclination to eat, and eventually he would let me out, the food uneaten, and administer a beating for "defying him". My mother, on the other hand, was kind and loving but struggled badly with her own anorexia, a series of hospitalisations and absences from the home being the result, leaving me even more at the mercy of my father.
I started at high school, aged twelve, with the weight of a five-year-old. Tiny and clearly sick, I was avoided by my peers and became very withdrawn. I threw myself with determination into my schoolwork, as I felt that it was all I had left, caught up with my contemporaries despite continuing absences due to illness, and began to excel in my work. I discovered a perfectionist streak and worked obsessively, starving myself all the while.
When the other children, of both sexes, began to go through the physical changes of growing up, I remained tiny and childlike. Puberty more-or-less passed me by as my body simply didn't have the nutrition to grow and develop; and in many ways I remained a child until much later. This came as a comfort to me: having been abused I was (and in fact still am) terrified of sexuality; the developing figures of the other girls left me terrified that I too would soon be thrown into an adult world of impending womanhood, relationships and sexuality that I was ill-prepared to cope with.
My intolerable home life continued; I felt thoroughly trapped between a home I tried to keep away from wherever possible, and a school life with no friends. My studies, my interest in science and medicine, and a worsening case of anorexia were all I had. I began to spend long periods out and about on my own; walking or running miles through the night, returning home after my parents were asleep, keeping myself awake most of the night with my schoolwork.
Somehow I managed to find some kind of equilibrium in which I survived, though at very low weight and in a precarious state of health. I even managed to complete my high-school education and gain a place at university. Working all the hours I could manage to save up the money to pay my way through university because my father decided that educating me was a waste of money, I discovered a degree of freedom for the first time, and was able to leave the family home. This leaving was precipitated by traumatic events: aggression from my father when I decided to abandon the religion in which I had been brought up and decided that I was bisexual, a prelude to eventually settling on a lesbian identity. Kind friends took me in and cared for me for several months until I was able to find a place of my own and get myself into a slightly stabler emotional state.
At university I entered the only real remission I have ever had from my anorexia. Escaping from the dreaded environments of school and home I started to blossom as a person, made friends, and started to eat a little more normally. My body half-remembered the adolescent development that it had failed to do, so I suddenly grew tall at a surprisingly late age, though I never gained enough weight to develop any sort of adult figure. Once I had turned 20, I even started dating, rather timidly, which unfortunately led to some none-too-satisfactory relationships in adulthood.
After graduating, I embarked on a demanding career. My employer required me to relocate right across the country, and as a result I soon lost touch with almost all the friends I had made. Hundreds of miles from anyone I knew, I again retreated into my tried-and-trusted coping mechanism of starving myself and over-exercising. Just as I had thrown myself into my schoolwork in my teens, I threw my heart and soul into my career, and enjoyed several years of success and relative prosperity. But I was never able to break my addiction to starvation, and my health remained poor. By my late twenties things were going badly wrong with my body: osteoporosis, arthritis, digestive problems, failing immune system, atonic colon from laxative abuse, and more besides.
My attendance at work plummeted as my health deteriorated into my early thirties, and soon it became obvious that I would soon be unable to continue in my chosen career. Frustration with myself over this pushed me into a yet more severe anorexic relapse, completing a vicious circle from which I was never to escape. I "burned out" both physically and emotionally, and quit my career.
Once again, I was 'adopted' by friends in another part of the country, which proved to be a lifeline for me in some ways, though far from being a solution. Too sick to work and still feeling very emotionally isolated, I did little besides starving myself and over-exercising. My weight dropped even further, and my health continued to deteriorate.
Around this time, the best thing that ever happened to me in life occurred: I met Heather, my present partner. For the first time in my life I had someone who I felt genuinely understood me and loved me as I am. It was a whirlwind romance: six weeks after first meeting, I moved across the country yet again and moved in with Heather. Life seemed far better than ever before: Heather knew about my anorexia, of course, and that it would limit my life expectancy quite significantly, but she accepted that as part of me. We shared a commitment ceremony, binding us together for life, a little over three months after first meeting.
Life looked good: happier than I had ever been before, I resolved to make a determined effort to recover from my anorexia, which was now well into its third decade. I followed my meal plan for once, tried to keep my exercise within reasonable limits, and went back to college to retrain for a new and less-demanding job that I felt I could still do given the damage I'd suffered.
But this recovery didn't last. I was haunted by memories of the traumas I had suffered in childhood, and soon relapsed with a vengeance into my usual pattern of starving them into relative numbness and over-exercising. Heather, and the new friends I had made since moving again, became concerned about me, but I played down the problems: I had been anorexic for well over twenty years, and could live in a kind of uneasy balance with my illness, I believed. No such luck: the anorexia became more and more pervasive, and I rapidly spiralled down to a new lowest-ever weight as an adult.
My health deteriorated fast. I went back into treatment, yet again, realising that things were getting out of control. My digestive problems rapidly worsened, limiting the range and quantity of food that I could physically tolerate. I virtually stopped eating, but could not break the exercise habit. My use of laxatives, which had become more and more problematical over the last fifteen years, went completely out of control.
The final straw came when I learned of my mother's death from anorexia. Already very ill myself, I was consumed with (inappropriate) guilt that I had never succeeded in my attempts at saving her from my father's clutches. I went over the edge and stopped eating beyond microscopic quantities of fruit or salad; to this day I have not eaten a meal since I received that phone call.
My physical state worsened very rapidly. I dropped out of college. My doctor wanted me treated as an inpatient again, but it turned out that the local Health Authority were very reluctant to fund any form of treatment owing to my long history of anorexia, and a general failure to take eating disorders seriously. My digestive system went into collapse and I became unable, rather than just unwilling, to process any food. Two months after I stopped eating I was hospitalised in the local mental institution -- an unmitigated disaster, from which I very soon discharged myself. I was described as "untreatable and terminal", and it seemed that the healthcare system was abandoning me to die. I was told that I was expected to die in May or June of 1998.
Heather, my friends, and my doctor still believed that I was worth saving, though. They fought to gain the funding from the health service to send me to a specialist eating disorders unit. This took another two months, by which time I was very close to death, having survived rather longer than predicted. I was called into hospital within an hour of the funding being approved, with a great sense of panic and urgency. There followed a lengthy hospitalisation, at the beginning of which I was not expected to survive. Because of my digestive system failure, I could not be refed in the normal way, so I was dosed up with medication to stimulate the minimal digestive function I still possessed, and fed on synthetic liquid nutrition delivered very slowly via nasogastric tube. Over a couple of months I regained a few pounds and my health stabilised, though all attempts to see if I could once again digest normal foods failed. I switched to a synthetic liquid diet taken by mouth, backed up with numerous medications. My weight had levelled off, still well in the emaciated range, since my intake even of synthetics was so limited by my gastroparesis (digestive failure) and I was felt to be unable to make further psychological progress after so many years of severe anorexia and so much previous treatment. I obtained an agreed discharge from hospital, returned home and continued treatment as an outpatient.
Even during that hospitalisation, there had been numerous warning signs that my health was permanently very badly impaired. I spent the first month confined to a wheelchair due to heart problems, my liver and kidney function was compromised, my osteoporosis had run riot during my period of starvation, leaving my bones extremely weak and causing constant pain. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and extensive muscle wasting. My memory and cognition failed to return to normal when I was refed, and a brain scan revealed extensive and irreversible brain damage. The final warning sign, which went largely unheeded at the time, was that my minuscule remaining digestive function was still deteriorating, limiting my intake of synthetics and requiring ever greater doses of motility-boosting medications.
When I returned home in September 1998, things looked better for a while: although I was still at a very low weight and dependent on synthetic liquid nutrition and dozens of medications, my weight was stable and my state of health seemed survivable. I returned to college to continue my retraining, in the hope of returning to work eventually in a new job.
Not much over a month after my discharge from hospital, my health took another major downturn. My digestive system progressively failed, steadily reducing the amount of synthetic nutrition I could take in. I rapidly lost all the weight I had regained in hospital, and then some more. I abandoned my college course and was certified as permanently unable to work on health grounds. I was also told that my condition was terminal. Major body systems started failing again and I became very weak. By early 1999 I was back in a wheelchair, on a permanent basis this time, and in a very bad state.
Today, I am physically a wreck, and live my life in profound regret for what I have lost, what I have thrown away in my relentless pursuit of self-starvation. My bones are ruined from osteoporosis: my standing posture is now bent over to almost 3 inches shorter than I used to be, several of my long bones are visibly bent, and I am in constant pain from my bones. I also have osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. These three conditions combine together to keep me wheelchair-bound, dependent on Evie and Heather to care for me 24 hours a day, and in considerable pain, requiring massive doses of strong opiates to make it bearable. I am confined to bed for a lot of the time, and cannot sleep properly.
At the time of writing I am still on a synthetic liquid diet (at a wholly inadequate level of nutritional intake, and rapidly starving) and fifty-odd doses of various medications a day. My little remaining digestive function is now rapidly failing, and I expect shortly to be transferred onto intravenous nutrition to extend my life a little further. The doctors tell me I am expected to live another six to nine months at best.
For several years now I have had colonic atony. This means that I don't pass solids at all without daily doses of rectally-administered stimulant laxatives and can easily suffer from impaction, which can be dangerous. This is totally dignity-destroying. It's a consequence of laxative abuse and starvation combined.
I have extensive muscle wasting, so I am extremely weak. My heart is equally deteriorated, and will undoubtedly just quit before long; that will be the most likely final cause of death. My liver, kidneys and many other organs are irreversibly damaged: yet another source of constant pain, a need for numerous medications and frequent blood tests and hospital visits. I have also suffered extensive brain damage: I am mentally lucid for only a few hours a day, have lost much of my intelligence, and my ability to form new short or long-term memories is destroyed -- I can remember my medical training from 15 years ago without trouble, but I cannot remember what I was doing five minutes ago, or a conversation I had yesterday. I am immunocompromised and am forever going to the doctor with some infection or another, for yet another course of antibiotics.
On a more superficial level, my physical appearance is pretty awful. Much of my hair has fallen out, I am covered in lanugo, bones stick out everywhere and I am covered with pressure sores as a result of protruding bones. I cannot buy clothes to fit me, because no-one makes clothes for people with the measurements of a nine-year-old but a height of almost 5'10".
In all, I have lost almost everything I had in life. My quality of life is now extremely poor, and I am dying. All for what? Being thin? What can possibly be so great about being thin to make it worth all that?
I have written my story down here in the hope that other people, perhaps newly falling into an eating disorder, will read it and realise what they are risking. It is my greatest hope in life that by being honest and open about my own wasted life, I may be able to save someone else from going the way that I have gone.