Guilty (Eating disorders - how are they caused?)

Member Name: MorganaDQ

Product:	Eating disorders - how are they caused?
Date:	04/07/02 (288 review reads)
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Imagine, if you will, a six year old child walking hand-in-hand with her twin brother through the bustling corridors of a leisure complex. The whole family are on their way to see a show, it's early evening, and they're all dressed in their nicest holiday clothes. The anticipation is almost electric as they near the theatre, and as she sees the blur of bodies rush past her, that six year old child looks down. In a split second, that same child breathes in and forces her stomach in. Because in that split second, the only thought to cross her mind was how fat she looked.

Now imagine, if you will, the same child wearing her prettiest sundress when the whole family go into the town the next day. Everything is right with the world - she loves these holidays and she loves the people she's with. It's mid afternoon and the sun's beating down on them all. So, they do the only thing they can think of. They go for ice cream - the biggest they can find. The innocent little six year old looks down again. She sees her stomach, and she thinks it looks bigger than it did last night. She goes along with her family and gets her ice cream, and she wants it, she truly wants it. But despite the big smiles and the wave to the camera as dad takes a picture, all she does is feel guilty that she's eating. And not just that, but that she's eating in front of other people.

That child was six years old. She hadn't ever read a glossy magazine with super-thin models and dieting advice. She'd never looked at other little six year old girls and wished she was skinny like them. But still, somehow, an obsession was born that day on holiday.

Being part of a large family can be the best thing in the world. Growing up with a brother who's the same age, knowing you'll always have someone to support, and for support, when you start that first day at a new school, is a wonderful feeling. But it has its price. r>
Being the youngest (even when you're a twin) can be especially difficult when you have an older sister who resents you because she's not the only "daddy's little girl" anymore. Having an older brother who adores you and would defend you until the twelfth of never is wonderful, until that brother leaves home when you're just eleven years old, to live at the other end of the country. Having a twin brother you can share everything with, even have your own little language for a time, is the best thing in the world, but you cease to be an individual anymore.

Growing up in that environent, I know, some people would have killed for. It can sound extremely selfish when someone who's lived through their life with the love and support that family has given them, suddenly starts to remark at how badly it's affected them. But there's always more than meets the eye. There are always more issues to deal with. There have to be, otherwise the six year old child would never have felt guilty about eating an ice cream because she thought she was 'fat'.

It can invoke a lot of anger, to read that the only thing that triggers eating disorders is physical abuse and supermodel images. Rubbish. Anything that affects your feeling of self worth will trigger an eating disorder. Being constantly compared to your older sister who, apparently, is perfect in every way, is not an easy thing for a young child to cope with, especially when that same sister resents you so much just for existing in the first place.

Sure, it sounds like a lot of families, and not every other 'baby' of the family ends up so messed up because of it, but you can never know how something will affect a child. Something so innocent as patting their stomach and remarking about 'puppy fat' in front of family and friends can have a negative effect on some children, especially when it's repeated time and time again. How
can a mother really try to put a child onto a diet because of the apparent puppy fat lasting longer than she expected, and then not expect an adverse effect on that very child?

Even as I type this I'm thinking how silly it all sounds, how pathetic it must appear to everyone reading it, but it doesn't change anything. Was that little girl physically abused? No, not at all. Was she unloved? Goodness no, she was always given more love than she ever thought she deserved. Was she neglected? Not in the slightest, every need was taken care of. And that's why it all sounds so ridiculous. That's why she's always stayed quiet through her bouts of depression and self-harming, throughout her adolescence and adulthood. Even I can accept that to some, it would appear as attention-seeking silliness. But nothing that causes a person to harm themselves, however they choose to do it, is silly.

What that little girl went through for so many years was never intended. Were her parents to know just how badly it affected her, they'd be beside themselves with guilt. How can she, as an adult, go to her mother and say "this is what you did to me, and this is the result"? She can't. She can't because it would tear her apart to see her parents hurt so much. So it stays hidden. And the deeper it gets buried, the worse the effects become.

Glossy magazines were never to blame, here. Had they been the problem, she could have closed them and pushed them away. That, at least, would have been an option. But to be made to feel useless, worthless, inferior, stupid, and so much more, unintentionally, by the very people who gave her life and raised her, is something that can't just be pushed aside. If it were only so simple, she'd have done it many years ago.

To look back over her school reports is telling, yet no one else seemed to have noticed. Gradually over the years she became more and more sub
dued in class. She went from being a grade A student at age 12, to dropping out of one 'A' Level class halfway through, failing another, and barely scraping a pass in a third. She managed to reach University, but always felt out of place amongst the 'brainy' people. She wouldn't ask questions if she didn't understand something, and if she was asked a question in class, she would blush and mutter an excuse for not knowing. Heaven forbid she answer and get it wrong. That would simply compound what her family already thought - that she didn't know anything and was useless.

Eating disorders are, more often than not, known as being just Bulimia and Anorexia Nervosa. To many people there is no in between, you're one or the other, and if you're neither, you're nothing at all. I'm not sure there woud be a name for what that little girl, now a grown woman, suffers from. She's never talked to a professional about it, and she has no intention of doing so. At least, not yet. But it doesn't stop the problem being there.

When a child of ten years old makes it common practice to take food from the cupboards and fridge secretly, to sneak upstairs to her bedroom and hide it away, and then when she was sure the coast was clear and she wouldn't be disturbed, to eat it as fast as she could, it's wrong. No adult should ever feel the need to do that, never mind a child so young. But no one noticed for the longest time, and if they did they said nothing. After a few years the occassional comments of big mice stealing food became commonplace. She can distinctly recall walking home from school one day, eating a packet of crisps from her pocket (always hidden - the food could never be in sight to anyone else, and even herself seeing it was painful), and when she realised her mum and dad were approaching in the car she made sure she swallowed what was remaining in her mouth, chewed or not (the memory o
f the pain as corner of crisps scratched down her throat will remain with her for as long as she wakes). Of course, they'd seen she was eating, but they didn't mind. They asked what it was, but she told them it was nothing. It was an outright lie, but she felt so utterly ashamed that she couldn't admit it to her own parents.

But, despite the increasing amount of food going missing, the weight she was steadily putting on, no one tried to find the root of the problem. No one took her to one side and said they were worried. It simply didn't cross their minds to do it. So on she went, feeling useless, fat, ugly, worthless, pathetic. And the more she felt, the more she binged. But, the more she binged, the worse she felt. The circle was never-ending, and it was destroying her.

She never tried to make herself sick, she never took diarrhetics, but she increasingly binge-ate to the point of sickness. At university she wasn't the most popular person, but it's no wonder when she felt so worthless. How was anyone else going to like her if she didn't even like herself? When she returned home after leavng university she had bad debt, but it wasn't due to alcohol and parties. It was food. She even had a microwave in her bedroom at one stage, because it meant she could go straight up to her room with her shopping bags, and not have to worry about anyone seeing a thing. She could very easily spend more than £250 a week on food, and no one need ever know. And she did.

But then, while she was away studying, she also found a wonderful novel. She'd bought it thinking it would scare her into doing something. It was a first person account of a woman suffering with extreme anorexia. It was a startling novel, and it was very much the eye-opener, but never in the way she'd expected. All she could see was that this amazing piece of writing had given her another option. She could stop binge eating, but onl
y if she stopped eating altogether.

And so a cycle was born. Drink plenty of coffee to stave off hunger, eat very little, very infrequently, and feel proud that she could have such amazing self-discipline. But it never lasted for very long, and it ultimately ended in another journey to the supermarket with her debit card. She always reverted back to binging in secret, because it was the only way she knew to cope.

Back then, had somebody tried to help her, she'd have simply hidden away, felt even more ashamed that someone had noticed what she was doing, and she'd have gotten worse. The fact that no one ever acknowledged what she was doing was simply comforting to her that she was hiding it well, and so she continued.

No one can describe the feeling that goes with binge eating to a degree that someone who doesn't do it will truly understand. Even buying the food in the first place, planning out what she'll eat and in what order, browsing the supermarket shelves for that one magic item that will make it all go away, even that is part of the actual act. It's the preparation, the planning, the anticipation, the adrenalin rush when she reaches the till to pay for it all. But what's also always there is guilt. Such a tremendous guilt that she's succumbing to it again. But feeling guilty isn't enough to stop it happening. All the while she's choosing the food, buying it, hiding it, arranging it out in front of her behind a locked door, sometimes having it hidden while she eats it (because what's out of sight doesn't have any calories or fat), throwing wrappers mindlessly away, wiping crumbs from her front, every tiny little stage has that little girl feeling so guilty it brings tears to her eyes. But it never, ever stops her from doing it, because ultimately, this is her comfort blanket. This is what gets her through the day.

She has some control over it now. She has a husband who l
oves her and friends who are helping to rebuild her feeling of self-worth. She treats it now as an addiction, because she can find no other way. Every day she wakes up, she goes to the bathroom mirror, and she tells herself that, just for today, she won't succumb and buy the crisps, chocolate, cakes, pasties, puddings, biscuits, or anything else. Just for today she'll eat breakfast, lunch and dinner like anyone else. Just for today she won't cringe when she looks at herself in the mirror. Just for today she'll hold her head high and she'll look people in the eye. She'll find the strength she needs from within her, because if she doesn't, she knows she'll become ill. She knows the health risks, and she knows she doesn't want to suffer them. She also knows she wants, more than anything, to truly love herself. She knows that can't be gained from having a smaller body, but she also knows it's just one of the steps towards reaching that goal she craves so much.

Sometimes she'll relapse for a few days and binge eat then starve herself, but not to the degree she used to, and not as often. Sometimes she'll see her reflection in the mirror or a shop doorway and feel repulsed with what looks back at her. Sometimes she'll retreat into herself and simply want to curl up in a corner and hide away for days at a time. But there's still hope for her, because she wants to beat it. More than ever, she wants to be free of the obsession, and she has people who, despite not realising it, are helping her through each and every day.

One day, the little girl will win.

One day, the little girl will even look down as she walks through a crowded street, and she'll not try to pull her stomach in because she looks too fat.

One day.