7 DAYS OF THE HARDEST PART.

Dolls, this week's exclusive blog post is as though I'm leaving my heart out in the open for you, for it is so raw, honest, and vulnerable. I explore the hardest part of my everyday life, for 7 days of the week, as a young 23-year-old woman living with anorexia nervosa.

Monday

Today, I spoke openly and honestly with my parents about numbers... All the triggering numbers, the ones I find most difficult to discuss: calorie and weight goals and realities. This conversation was challenging. However, it was necessary considering the secrecy involved in the overdue silence with the external world outside the parameters of my own mind. This conversation was about shining a light on a tormenting black hole called 'anorexia'. 'The hardest part' doesn't always mean 'the unwanted part'. And I am glad that I endured the hard conversation because on the other side, there existed love, family and hope.

Tuesday

For a couple of months now, I have confided in my parents a very personal detail... my weight. And today, my mum looked at me, solemnly, and told me that for my current weight, I should be dead. To understate drastically, that was a very hard thing to hear. When she said that to me, I felt lost in my little bubble of anorexia, finally taking in the information that I am very sick. It hit me like a bus: a big, scary, black bus that breaks people's little hearts and rips them to shreds. That's the reality of anorexia... it is monumental, leaving with it an aftermath that only the wicked and evil should have to face. But it does it to good people, Dolls. It's doing it to my Mum, it's doing it to my dad, and it's doing it to everybody who cares about and loves me.

Wednesday

Today I had a blood test. This was the hardest part of my day because I'm incredibly afraid of blood tests. Since I've been diagnosed with anorexia, I've easily had over 1,000 blood tests, which is enough needles to drive anyone to a fear of them. I hate everything about getting a blood test: the fact that the blood collectors can never get blood from my tiny, frail veins that frequently collapse, the feeling of the needle taking blood from my vein, and the size and look of the needle itself. I can only get blood tests now with my eyes closed and me squeezing, specifically, my dad’s hands as tightly as I can. This blood test today was especially painful, despite the blood collector being extra lovely, understanding and caring. So it truly ruined my day and caused me to feel as though anorexia was making another part of my life difficult.

Thursday

Today I went to my local GP to fill out an end-of-life plan with my family. It was as harrowing as it sounds, but worse, much worse. What 23-year-old has to fill out one of these plans? Well, we asked my doctor if she’d ever done one of these before with someone of my age, and her speed in responding ‘no’ said everything I needed to know and more. This wasn’t just the hardest part of my day; this was one of the hardest moments of my life, and certainly, the hardest part of my mother’s.

Friday

The hardest part of today was my mum telling me it scared her to look at me. When my mum used to look at me, I knew implicitly that to her, I was the prettiest girl in the world. And now, she doesn't want to recognise me anymore, not the skin and bones that stand before her. That kills me.

Saturday

My parents begged me to go eat, and I refused. It made them desperate and angry, leaving me to feel the way I always do, like a burden, except worse. Because now I wasn't just left feeling like a burden, I was left feeling like I was hated. And that broke my heart. Because I am used to feeling loved, needed, and wanted. Anorexia did that to me... nobody else but anorexia.

Sunday

Anorexia will break you, and it will break everybody around you; whether they care about you or not is not the point. Watching a person take their own life is something to frown down upon, to shock a person to their core, and to leave a person feeling so helpless that they won't know how to carry themselves or walk straight anymore. So, whilst for this day, there is no specific hardest moment, I leave before you an accumulation of moments and memories over hours, days, and years in which anorexia has broken hearts and buried itself in the rubble of the broken buildings of the bombs it’s placed for explosion. The moment that there is, is the one when I realised that this is enough. I am done. Anorexia, you have used me and abused me as your puppet since I was 9 years old. And now, you have broken me so profusely and recurrently that I don’t want an ounce of you anymore, not a little bit, not the tiniest bit of all. And in the moments in the foreseeable future where I am sure you will trick me into thinking that I do want you, you have the strength of my friends and family to be louder than your voice and remember just how bad you truly were. There’s no deceiving me anymore. I’m done with you.

'7 DAYS OF THE HARDEST PART' is one of the strongest blog articles I’ve ever composed, and I couldn’t be prouder of myself for sharing with the world that things are about to change, for the immeasurable, fucking superfrasgalisticlly stupdenously exciting future.

Kisses,

COS x