Everyone has an addiction. Whether it is cigarettes, shopping, tanbeds or sex. Mine was food. Well, more the repulsion towards food. This is my confession: I used to be anorexic. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. I would describe my past anorexia as an bratty little sister called “Ana”, who  never stopped teasing me or calling me ugly and fat. I think it takes a big shift in a person’s life for that person to become anorexic. For me, it was the rejection of a parent. I felt that it was my fault that I did not get the love and affection that I seeked, and I somehow reasoned that if I was prettier or thinner I would get that nod of approval. My self-confidence hit rock-bottom and my weight did too not so long after. What  is I am telling is a string of confessions of what my illness made me do and feel. It made me feel a strong sense of self-loath, where every ounce of fat around my legs and arms felt like a sharp thorn. I would look in the mirror and instead of seeing myself, I saw a fat and meaningless creature staring back.  I felt suicidal and non-worthy and did not see the need or want to continue living. I wanted to disappear into thin air, so I starved myself to get closer to my goal of not filling any physical space. I could no longer recognise myself; the energetic and lively girl that I was before slowly degraded into this pale and exhausted phantom. Whenever my friends asked if I wanted to come over for a movie night or party, I said no from the fear of giving in to temptation of food and drink. I shut myself from life. When you have anorexia, you have a chronic fear of putting on weight. It is a strong omnipresent and animalistic fear, and it was eating me from the inside. Whenever people asked how I was, I automatically put on a robotic mask and answered “I’m good!”, where I would rather scream out “I don’t want to live! I can’t fight anymore!” Each day was a battle between my mind and my body. My body screamed desperately for food, while my mind was a concrete box of self-deprevation that refused to fall for “weakness”. I felt tired all the time and was woozy 3-4 times a day, while my mind was  consumed by the calories that I was not allowed to intake. Everytime I put food in my mouth I felt like I was betraying myself and my  “rightish” belief and each mouthfull felt like a slap.
My mum became increasingly worried as she witnessed how big my clothes became everyday, and whenever she raised this issue with me, I would snap back at her. I was in denial and said it was ok for me to have an apple for breakfast, I was just being “healthy”. What I left out was that I felt like a failure, so I measured my success according to how little I weighed. The thinner I got, the more successful I felt. I made out my restricted diet as a holy crusade, trying to convince myself that it was all to become healthier. It in fact, was doing the exact opposite. I developed anemia, my nails became brittle and my periods stopped. The worst thing though, was that the glisten in my eyes was gone. A fire within me was extinguished and all that was left was a empty body of a small boy. My friends commenting on my weight loss and I brushed it off with a lie that I was stressed about the final exams. After this, I hid my tiny frame in baggy clothes to avoid attracting attention to myself. When my mum found out that my periods had stopped, she took me to our doctor. After a series of medical questions, he asked me to step on the weighing scale. You could tell the shock from his face; I weighed just 37 kilos. I too was in disbelief I thought I weighed twice that. I was sent to the eating disability clinic, where I was sat down and informed by a specialist that if I continued the way I did, I did not have long to live. He gave me two choices; to eat or get admitted to the clinic.  I was in shock and thought to myself “You can die from this!” I was referred to a dietician who made a special diet plan and each month I had to come in to get weighed. I was put on a fattening diet and I was disgusted. When I looked at the muffin on front of me and I thought to myself,  “I can’t believe I’m eating this when I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am”. It was like my mind was saying one thing while my hands was saying another. For every weighing session, I wore layers of sweaters and tights and big boots, thinking that this might give the illusion that I gained more weight than I really did. It still was not enough and the doctor was giving me stern looks and I was afraid that the next stop would be the clinic. I didn’t believe that I was extremely underweight and thought  my friends and family were overreacting. It was not until I tried a pair of underwear in a changing room that I saw what everyone was seeing. I saw the body of a 12-year old boy. My ribs were protruding, my once 32C breasts had shrunken to the state of small lumps and my arms were like sticks. I looked at this stranger in the mirror and I asked myself, “Is this me?”

Overcoming anorexia was the most strenuous time of my life. It took me two years for my weight to be in the normal range again, and three more years to openly talk about it. This is my cold war. It took its time, but in the end I was winning. I managed to shut up my brat sister long enough to have a slice of cake without guilt. Then I got comments on how well I looked with few extra pounds and something automatically switched something within me that made me think “Stop eating!”. It was a repeating cycle of opposite actions. That’s the thing with eating disorder, it never stops. There is no “The End”. There are just good and bad days. In a good day, I feel confident and comfortable in my own skin. On a bad day, I feel ugly, greedy and weak whenever I am full. On a bad day,  I hear that small voice that is looking over my shoulder and wagging her finger at me for eating crisps. That voice is never fully gone. It dumbs you down and makes you think idiotic thoughts. I was a smart, intelligent, funny and talented young girl and I wasted a whole year of my life to count calories. That makes no sense, but back then my life was so consumed by the huge need to control and that need, ironically, was the only thing that made sense to me.

There you have my confessions. I’ve been to hell back and forth and do not wish to return. Beating anorexia is never about just eating a lot of chocolate bars and that would be the end of it. It never is; to recover from it, it requires a shift away from a distortion of reality. It takes a new way of thinking and a new found self-love, instead of self-loathing. I have come a long way, but I still have a bit to go. I can have really bad days, but I will never go back to my past habits, because I am happier with what I see in the mirror now, than what I saw five years ago.

My mind works in lines and notes..on postcards

On the day before Valentine’s Day, I went with a fellow girl from the SpunOut community to do a voxpox around Shop Street in Galway, Ireland. It was a Valentine edition about what couples had planned for the most romantic 24 hours of the year and their take on it. We made sure we were prepared; Mp3 player? Check. Microphone? Check. Digital camera? Check. Couples? Emm….It turns out that we were not prepared for the divide between the single/couple ratio. We did see groups of girls and guys but what we did not see was a lot of them holding hands. We were like some wildlife reporters, scouting around for a rare species of mammals in their natural habitants; “There! I’ve spotted them! Go before they get away!” Once we’ve asked them what they had planned, they were shy and had the expression that said “No idea” on their faces. Particular the men. The ones we asked can be casted in 2 groups: one group where they liked the occassion and thought that it was a nice day, and another group that (sulkily) admitted that the day was a big money-eating commercial headache. Particular during these hard econmic times. V does not go well with R apparently. Once asked though, all men and women agreed that Valentine’s Day was overrated and over the top.  I can base a conclusion, aside one boy who considered meeting up with his girlfriend in a club suitable for Valentine date, everyone in our voxpox had a pretty normal and healthy attitude towards the V Day. Including the single people. For example, there was this group of girls consisting two blondes, one brunette and one redhead who planned to hold a relaxed cocktail party, followed by a night out in town (very Sex and the City). Somehow I think that they were not single for long the following night. That day I saw how filled Galway was of advertisements of splendour declarations of love and €10 roses, and yet had very little romance, so I don’t blame that group of men for thinking that Valentine’s Day was a money-wasting occassion. Yet I am not a complete romantic-inept cynic and believe that V Day should stay on the calender. Because we all need a bit of optimisim and grand gestures once in a while. Particular in these hard economic times.

A black dress with a big bow on the front. Drew this illustration months before Drew Barrymore wore hers at the premiere for “He’s just not that into you”. Me psychic?

I was going through my local newspaper when I came across a Valentine’s Day event that will be held in one of Galway’s most popular nightclubs. This was called the “Traffic Light Ball”. The advertisement had a kiddish-looking drawing of a traffic light which initially caught my eyes.  As I read on I understood the concept of this ball; you get to wear a sticker, with the choice of 3 colours according to your social status. If you have boy/girlfriend, you get the red sticker with a hand, which you see on most stop signs. If you are “single and free as a bird” you get the green sticker with a heart on it. Finally if you don’t fit into any of the two categories, you wear a yellow sticker with a big question mark on it. Yes, I appreciate the concept. It is a playful idea for getting a glance of other people’s love lives, but what about all the other aspects of their lives? Aren’t your personalities as a friend, family-member or colleague equally important as when you are a lover? Should people not wear red, green or yellow stickers to give information about them as individuals? Then people would know what they were getting themselves into if they choose to “cross over” to get to you. The red sticker can signal “Stop! I have no sense of humour. I push away people who try to get too close!” If you are relaxed and self-assured you can put on the green sticker “Come on over, my friend. I want to get to know you better. Let’s go for a drink.” Then if you are just a little bit confused or lost, you can wear the yellow sticker as if to signal “Errr…I don’t really know who I am or where I am going. I will probably zone out during conversations and can snap at you for no reason.” At times, this colour system would be so handy. There have been countless times where I started having conversations with people at private parties under false pretenses, as they seemed to be fun and worthwhile getting to know. Then the five longest minutes of my life passed by. In each situation, I would realise that this person is not even remotely on the same wavelength as me, or even on the same planet. This is what I call a social “the -morning-after” minute. After each one, I would think to myself “Why on earth did I converse with this deluded person?” It would have been so convenient if that person had worn a red sticker, and I would pretend that I was discussing the Gaza crisis with the voices inside my head. Imagine how great it would be if you could walk into a job interview and the interviewer was wearing a sticker to say whether he or she was an ambitious  leader or  a sociopath.

Having said this of course, the social sticker system could do wonders for the dating world too. Wouldn’t it be so easy if we could all just look at everyone’s stickers and judge if we should spend the energy and money and risk our hearts for that one potential love interest. Rather than to do all those things and find out that it doesn’t work out and end up disappointed and angry. So easy. But then,we think: Who wants easy? Who doesn’t want to discover something new? There are very few things in life, that can compare to the moment that you realise that someone’s favourite 90’s tv show is also “Felicity”. It is so much more rewarding to get a glimpse of a person’s unique sense of humour after walking around the same street sign together for 4 hours.  A lot of personal risk is involved in getting to know a person as a friend or a lover, and while it is not as easy as knowing the answer straightaway by taking a look at someone’s personal stickers, it feels much more rewarding to finally get the right one in the end.                   

(via kari-shma)

kari-shma:

todayslyrics:

kt tunstall - black horse & the cherry tree

Me defying gravity in my design.

Own design of wool jacket.

My leather jacket that I made. Inspiration: Men’s jacket fashion meets women’s fashion lines.