More than Just statistics

Many people will post a status, a blog, or a journal entry telling you they wear purple “because…” and then post a bunch of facts, but I will not. I choose to be open and tell you that I wear purple, because I have struggled with an eating disorder for all of 5 years. Knowing someone personally that is affected by a statistic means more to me than just a number and that is exactly what I am, more than a number. I am a human being, a friend, a daughter, a sister, an employee, a cat mom and to many people I am a good laugh. But for the last few years I ignored the important roles I play in the lives of others to be the victim of one of the deadliest diseases. My eating disorder gave me a way out. A way out of responsibilities, feelings and flashbacks. It gave me a feeling that I was superhuman by being able to live a productive life without nourishment. I believed for years that I was able to see results from working so hard. I was accomplishing something every day I lost an ounce. But with all of this, I also believed I deserved every bit of torture brought on by myself because I didn’t deserve anything more.

It started with a diet, typical for many whom are victims of anorexia or bulimia. I dieted in attempt to erase the memories of numerous sexual traumas that I could not for the sake of me stop reliving. For year’s I stood over a toilet and purged and after I would go for a run. It was a constant battle of questioning whether I had earned the next meal only to remind myself, I ran that far and purged that food because I was going to be skinny and in the larger scheme of things invisible, hopefully. Finally, I began just skipping meals all together and then purging on the days I did eat. I felt like I was always losing, but in a sick twisted way I was also winning. My weight was down and I was accepted into treatment because I was sick. Finally, I was doing so well at doing so bad, but let me re-iterate I was doing so well! Treatment was like a gold fucking medal! My EKG showed that my heart rate was slow and unlike a normal person I was proud of this news. Even though I was slowly dying, I was getting compliments from so many on my weight loss. I had a goal and I didn’t care how it was achieved.

I am writing this story with hopes to reach one person. I don’t have to over achieve, I just have to do my best. I write this because I hope to change the conversation, erase the stigma, and remind people that this is real and it is affecting thousands including me. I figure if you are reading this it’s because you are interested. Good, that too is an accomplishment. I am in recovery, but please don’t mistake that for better or fixed, because I am not. I may not intentionally lose weight, but I’m not at the point in my life where I can eat a sustainable amount of food a human really needs to function. I still freak out at restaurants and family dinners. I don’t believe I deserve nourishment. But finally, although I may not feel I deserve life I do deserve the chance to fight which is a big improvement from last year. I wish for those still struggling I had some advice on how to be able to just eat when you are hungry and without crying. I wish I could help you enjoy food and pick it out according to what you are craving and not by its caloric content. I don’t know how I did it, I just know I did. Treatments, groups, support systems etc.…all that played a small role in my recovery, but I did most of the work. A very good friend of mine once told me “you will keep doing what works for you, until it no longer works for you, and then you will find something else” and she was right. I found my cat, and he is what works for me now. He may not be there for me in the same way as humans are, but in an unspoken way he is singing to me and I am singing to myself my new favorite song by Rachael Platten:

“Hands, put your empty hands in mine

 And scars, show me all the scars you hide

 And hey, if your wings are broken

 Please take mine so yours can open too

 'Cause I'm gonna stand by you

Even if we're breaking down, we can find a way to break through

 Even if we can't find heaven, I'll walk through hell with you

Love, you're not alone, 'cause I'm gonna stand by you”

Besides Colton, I too have become my new best friend in life. “No one can love you the way you can love yourself” is a true statement. I’m learning to love me. And for those of you needing someone to love you until you can love yourself these lyrics are meant for you as well. I may not know you, but I’ll stand by you because that’s what humans do, not statistics.

©Kim Edwards

April 17, 2016

These are my Pieces

These are my pieces, they don’t quite align

Some of them his, some of them mine

“mommy I have to tell you something

Please don’t be mad.

The boy, he removed all my clothes

Yes mom, even my pants”

Memories and words my mom then said next

Got lost with the memories I somehow suppressed

The things I should have heard, up until this here day

Along with affection got long swept away

It was not at all purposeful, she did try her best

But according to stat’s the chances are less

That an event much like this wouldn’t occur again in my life

That I’d somehow attract more men that walked by

These are my pieces, they don’t quite align

Some of them his, some of them mine

Already short circuited, the first event I forgot

Until another man’s fingerprints acquired a spot

I no longer accepted the body I owned

My sexual experiences now way overgrown

Convicted, no never, I am serving the sentence

Although it’s ass backwards, I beg for repentance

Because these are my pieces, they somehow got lost

I didn’t fight back, I cried, I gave up

While thoughts flooded my mind, “this must be love”

I detached from the image as he lingered above

But like I said a while before

These are my pieces right here on the floor

And although trauma has caused my thoughts not to align

They will be put back together, it just might take time

Because these pieces

They are

My

Perfectly unperfected

God forsaken pieces.

©Kim Edwards

September 4, 2016

The Stranger I know too Well

His eyes were so unique; I had forgotten we had already been acquainted. He mulled me over inch by inch, I could feel every stitch of my recovery unravel before me. It was almost as if he was only using my brown glass stained eyes to tare apart my soul. Instead of questioning his intentions my curiosity only peeked with a burning desire to like myself again. I glided away with the utmost yet dangerous certainty that I was stronger than my eating disorder and I could just as easily leave it behind.  But already I had fallen into the depths of his wandering hateful eyes. As soon as I gave him a second glance he had trapped me. I allowed myself to think it was just a ghost of an extremely intolerable past, but he was everywhere, he was everything, he was all I had because no one else could truly understand me, the way that he did.

It was nothing but a dream

It was merely just a chance

To believe I had a chance at love    

My second wedding dance

It was simply just a crack

A patch of life that’s rough

I brushed it off I forgave it

And then I got back up

But a different person for I had broke

And I did not know that I had

I had fallen again into my disorders embrace

It was merely just by chance

My eating disorder had caught me off guard just like every therapist and eating disorder treatment had told me it would. “As soon as you become comfortable and you stop following meal plans” or “it’s when you decide to be spontaneous that your eating disorder will surprise you”. I was the narcissistic son of a bitch that thought I was stronger than my disease, no thanks to the overpowering second half of my DNA, I hate to say it, but gosh damn it the therapist were right and all my dreams had left. That is such black and white thinking, I know, but really sometimes enough is enough and it just seems safer to give up on dreams to follow the one you initially started with, lose a few pounds. Just a couple pounds, enough to fit into those old jeans; why spend extra money on new clothes when you have perfectly good old ones. This is what my dad refers to as being Froogle. I thought to myself just a couple inches off the sides so my skin doesn’t feel bunched up when I roll over at night. Just enough weight so that when I am rushing through the store I can easily weave through the crowds like an airy ballet dancer. I refer to this as artistic precision. Really though, it ain’t no skin off my back, just muscle or is it? Perhaps its everything. Yea its everything because it is NEVER just enough!

God carefully sewed together this imperfect masterpiece that is me. Somewhere below the skin, muscle, cartilage, bone, underneath every inch of every microscopic fiber that is made so simply yet individualistically there is a girl who doesn’t give a fuck what she looks like. I so desperately hope to find her. I knew my eating disorder thoughts were so irrational for a while until I fell into its loop and somehow was able to rationalize everything. It started with me writing my food down in a journal to make sure I was eating enough only to realize I was unsure and embarrassed for caring about myself. That was followed by a bad day that ended with my disease reminding me it was right there to hold my hand and guide me down the old wood floor that erratically splinters as it guides you to the John or Lou. I am standing in front of the toilet and I don’t even have to fight the urge because images of my damaged body are cascading into the recycled water. I throw up on them and think Fuck you! I flush, and as I walk out the door I cry with shame. In my mind, I now hear “yes fuck us, we’re fucked!”

Hi Kim I missed you

I’m so glad you let me in

I was hoping for the chance

To dance this dance again

My favorite part is when you thought

You were safe to enjoy your life

As if we hadn’t shared precious moments

As a husband and a wife

I’m glad though, that I can be here for you

So glad you just don’t know

I promise this time I’ll keep you close

Kim, I will never let you go!

©Kim Edwards

Rape Validated My Eating Disorder

My eating disorder did not just come out of nowhere. As much as people would like to think that I simply decided one day that I wanted to be skinny, I’m here to set the record straight as that is certainly not what happened. The hardest part about this disorder is that due to commorbidity there are so many components to it; Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, OCD, PTSD. I have a need to cope with all of my illnesses and anorexia just seems to be recycled over and over along with a laundry list of other self harm behaviors. People tell me “Stop with this “I’m fat shit, you are not fat and you never will be, but what you are is self - absorbed”. These people do not understand that my desire to be thin is a product of a much greater issue. Thinness represents a sense of invisibility that I can’t seem to accomplish with these curves and long muscular legs. My eating disorder serves me in many ways. One way in which it does is by loving me while certainpeople around me lack understanding and therefore having no desire to support me, not knowing that by doing this they are only validating the thought that caused this disorder in the first place. “I’m unworthy, damaged and it would be easiest for not only me, but everyone else if I just became invisible.”

The thought that I need to be invisible seems to be the most common of themes coming from my mouth in every group. In body- image we discuss why being thin is so important. In Psychotherapy, we discuss why we feel we deserve to damage our bodies in the ways we have been. And during skills groups we talk about other ways to cope with the feelings and my answer and reaction to it all is that I am disgusting, I don’t deserve to eat, or to be seen because of having been raped. By continuing my eating disorder, I am finally taking back control and helping prevent the undeniable attraction that predators have for me. Weight to me signifies the pounds of filth my body has gathered from random strangers, it also causes my curves to dissipate without me having to wear baggy clothes, because of course I want my fellow sisters to approve of my fashion sense and the work that I so carefully put into it.

Throwing up my middle finger and giving men what I thought was the evil eye proved to be of no deterrent as most of them either got angry and hurt me with their words or threatened me. Now every time I think I have the courage to stand up for myself I shrink back into the same headspace I was in when I was raped saying to myself “I am no good, just give up the fight”. The last man I trusted took notice of the scars on my arms, he asked me why I would do that to myself. I explained to him that I had been hurt in the past and fed the idea during both my childhood and adulthood that by men I was not worth anything. This message was a result of outrageous actions men took against my body, and all without permission or acceptance. I thought he understood and perhaps even had some empathy, you know, because he was my friend. Just as soon as I crawled over him facing the window to go to sleep he woke me up with a kiss. I thought to myself, that was fine. I was drunk and impaired and at that moment making out was okay. But we didn’t stay at first base, he actually decided he was going to be MVP and run to 2^nd and 3^rd and I, still unsure if that was what I wanted laid still in consideration of how far this game should go. “Do you have a condom?” he asked. “No, I don’t, but I don’t want to have sex.” As I am writing this now my mind is flooding with memories of things I forgot before when giving my statement. It’s unsettling, knowing that something that happened to your body can be erased in an instant as a means of protection, but yet it backfires because you don’t remember all the details to tell the investigator. For me at least, that’s how it goes down. Anyway, I rolled over to the other side ready to go to sleep when he wrapped his arms around my stomach and chest and attempted to insert his penis inside of me. My roommates were home and just as quickly as he had run to home base, my mind had run to shame and guilt, therefore I refused to scream for help. But for the second time in my life I fought. “Stop” I then shuddered his name in fear “Please stop, I don’t want to have sex!” I cried and he ignored me. All I could do was hold my legs together as tight as possible with hopes he wouldn’t protrude through my almighty barricade. But it hurt, he tore me, not just physically but mentally, I was no longer whole.

That’s when my agoraphobia was at its worst. Struggling with multiple diagnosis already this just magnified each one on a whole new level and nobody could reach me. I was never hungry and I began weighing in every day. It didn't just stop there. I was also cutting my breast and thighs so they would be a turn off to the next man whome ever removed my clothes. Since I was already not eating there was no point in going to the store. Luckily, at the very least I was able to make the walk to my doctors and counselors offices, but that was the extent of my adventures for 3 weeks. I became a hobbit in my own house. I left my room to pee and refill my glass with wine. I drank and slept and drank and slept until there was no more money for alcohol. I was left with seroquil and a tainted bed filled the unbenign memories.

My job seemed to provide me with some relief, well until I purposely overdosed on accident. If that’s not an oxymoron I don’t know what is. What I am saying is I drank a lot and took extra sleeping pills in attempt to knock myself out for the next 18 hours with hopes of escaping flashbacks and such, but ended up actually harming myself in the process and landing in the ICU. Oops. I ended up in the psych ward which was loud and over stimulating. I went from being locked in my bedroom sporadically peeking out the window to make sure he wasn’t there to being locked up with a bunch of other people with mental health issues. I was afraid of everyone. The screaming from other patients caused a chain reaction within myself. First I would freeze where i was, then sit down,  and then curl up in a ball crying and rocking back and forth. The rocking had been a new-found comfort the last few weeks. It was my go to when I became distraught which was not often, but always spontaneous. My friends didn’t understand it and it worried them. To be quite honest it worried me a little as well. How would  I possibly make it in the real world? I mean I couldn’t stay in my room forever. The staff at the hospital continuously told me “you have to eat, it’s part of life” and when I still refused they began using food as a bargaining tool. They obviously didn’t get it, I didn’t believe I deserved food. “So, let me get this straight, you want me to eat something I don’t deserve in order to use the computer which I also don’t deserve?” Funny.

I wasn’t allowed to go home despite not being suicidal. The hospital felt I needed additional support for my eating disorder and although they were right, they could lead a girl to treatment, but you can’t make her eat. Every day after program I would come back to the apartments and purge my food. On the weekends I would work the night shift at hospice and then come home and sleep the day away. Between all of those symptoms I wasn’t gaining any weight. I also was refusing to participate in groups and hiding food whenever I got the chance. No progress was being made because I was far from ready. In my mind, even to this day every bite I take is like fighting with the devil. I am back in treatment and this time all on my accord. At each meal I am taking a step towards a life I don’t believe I deserve, simply because of that tiny whisper in my ear telling me that perhaps when my brain is nourished, I might for once believe that I am enough. For now, I have accepted the idea that I may struggle with all these negative beliefs, but for the sake of faith I will mechanically eat and participate fully on this slow walk to recovery even though each mental illness I suffer from keeps me safe from the world which is always unknown. The rape that occurred only validates the lack of self -worth I already had, but many have told me that it’s up to me to change my thoughts and that I have a choice whether or not to believe them. Much easier said than done. But just a little tip for those reading this, eating disorders are not clear as glass, they go way beneath the surface, and as much as food may be serving a purpose for you, not eating is serving a purpose for someone else. Just chew on it. No pun intended.

©Kimberly Edwards