She Is Me
Hi everyone, my name is Ashlee. At 14 I was diagnosed with anorexia and I can proudly say that whilst recovery is a lifelong process, I have reached a point in which it is now effectively non-existent in my daily life. And so I am going to share with you my journey, but first I want to start by sharing with you a bit from my younger self: prior to my eating disorder.
I remember being in primary school and celebrating the days when dad packed my lunchbox because that meant more sweeter foods. I remember a family holiday to America, standing by the beach and enjoying an ice cream. The only concern crossing my mind had been, what the best strategy to eat the ice-cream was so that it wouldn’t end up melted on the pavement. I remember a time when it had been a competition between my brother and I as to who would get to eat the last slice of cake, my best argument being: whoever cooks gets to eat the last piece (this was always me, as I was the baker of the household). This was all before my anorexia. This was at a time when health and fitness had never crossed my mind. A time where “diet” and “workouts” were foreign words. So when did those words become so familiar? When did the girl who loved to bake stop eating what she would bake for the rest of her family. Who suddenly couldn’t even enter an ice-cream shop without anxiety. The girl who had always looked forward to the food in her lunchbox, grew to dread every time the school bell rang for lunch break.
The day I was diagnosed with anorexia, a lot of questions were answered. Why do I feel this way? Why do I have no energy? Why can I not stop thinking about food? Why do people keep asking me if I’m ok? I’m fine!
Well I wasn’t fine. And it slapped me in the face so hard I couldn’t ignore it.
When I had left for school that morning (I was year 8), hospital had been the last place I expected to spend the night; let alone the next month. I hadn’t expected it because – from my perspective – I was perfectly healthy.
There had been physical symptoms of my bodies suffering: fatigue, brain fog, muscles aches and a body so cold my hands and feet were constantly blue. These symptoms should have been a sign to me that something in my body wasn’t right. In fact, I had known something wasn’t right; but I had never imagined my eating habits and exercise to be related. In my mind, I had a clear perception of what I believed it looked like to be “healthy” and I was doing everything I could to ensure I met that perception. So I couldn’t fathom a correlation between my idea of health and the physical symptoms that had brought me into the doctor’s that day. What I hadn’t realised is that my perception of what it was to be “healthy” was completely unhealthy and was slowly killing me.
My anorexia grew out of a lack of knowledge about health and out of a vulnerability to the toxic promotion of health within the health industry. I had longed to be “fitter” and “healthier” without knowing what that really looked like. I went all in. I took the all or nothing approach. And what had – at first – been my own choices, quickly became the only way I knew how to live. The behaviours that slowly killed my body, my personality and my happiness soon had felt normal: even logical.
Looking back, I think my eating disorder developed through a combination of factors, including my misunderstanding of what health looked like and my vulnerability to messages about health and fitness. Because of this, admission to hospital seemed like it would provide the education and motivation I needed to recover. Yet it was not that simple. There became a point where logic no longer existed and my mind had become governed by rules and regulations that had felt unbreakable.
Although I was medically stable enough to leave hospital, mentally I still had a long way to go. My mind had still been controlled by the rules and regulations written by my eating disorder. This ultimately led to my relapse two years later. Whilst in hospital I had been able to distract myself from the eating disorder voice, allowing for my physical recovery. However, when in environments without my supportive parents or my colouring books and word searches, I had been unable to distract from the voices in my head and had been unable to manage the thoughts and emotions that came alongside these voices.
It wasn’t until my parents took me to see a specialist doctor in Brisbane and booked me in with a therapist online, that I started to make a real shift towards recovery. The doctor had focused on my physical health by uncovering what nutrients my body had been lacking post my anorexia. She had focused on how these nutrient deficiencies were impacting my brain chemistry and my ability to mentally recover from the eating disorder.
Meanwhile, my therapist had worked with me on not just distracting from the eating disorder thoughts, but rather facing and addressing them. The skills, coping strategies and importance of nourishment (mind, body and soul) I learnt from these specialist doctors, set me up for a long-lasting recovery in the future. I still use these strategies to this day when navigating life events and big changes. Whether that be travelling the world on my gap year or moving out of home for university, these strategies have allowed me to do so – not always 100% smoothly (that is recovery) – but from a place where I can proudly say I am recovered from my eating disorder.
Now, I look forward to eating the foods I enjoy. Now, I enter an ice-cream shop with the only thought in my mind being whether to get pistachio or chocolate flavour: or both. Now, I bake for friends and family and I share every last bite with them; because that is the joy of baking. My journey wasn’t always easy, at times it was ugly, it was challenging, it was a long and hard struggle. But it was worth every difficult moment, because the girl I once was now has her spark back, her laugh, her big cheesy smile, her ambition and her relentless determination. And she has also grown as a result of her journey. She is empathetic, strong-minded and strong-willed. She is me. Ashlee.
Thank you for taking the time to read about my story. I hope it shows that healing and recovery can look different for everyone, and that no matter where you are in your journey, there is hope.
