I am an anorexic. I have been anorexic for eight years. I guess you could say that right now I am a functioning anorexic. At my corpse like 37 Kilo’s my eating disorder was pretty obvious, but now, at 46 kilo’s, I am seemingly physically healthy but a psychological corpse. A numb medicated mind.

Sylvia Plath wrote: I would rather be dead than fat. Dead and perfect like Nefertiti. This is what I wanted and death is almost what I got. For me, dying a corroded carcass of flesh and bone would have been better then living a life covered in filthy flesh. Kate Moss said: Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. The taste of nothingness feels like heaven...it is the taste of self-restraint and the taste of perfection.

Food still consumes my every waking thought. Everything I eat is a calculated move on my part. I know what I am putting into my body. I know the calories, the fat content. And I know that if I go over my calorie limit today I won’t be eating as much tomorrow. But at least now, I am eating.

The Beginning

I have tried many a time to pinpoint the exact moment that ‘Ana’, as I call her, took over. There is no one moment that I can pick out, but rather a series of events that set my self hate into motion – a self hate that would eventually express itself through bones.

Primary school was tough and I was weak. Maybe it is just because I was a sensitive soul, but when I look back at that time all I genuinely remember is insults and backhanded compliments from kids and friends.

I had curly hair. I was told it was ugly. I blow dryed it until my scalp burned. One piece refused to go dead straight. I shaved it off. It was cold. I had a red nose. I was called Rudolph. The next day I wore base for the first time. I was nine years old. These seemingly insignificant insults glued me together. And just like my makeup, the insults kept piling on.

Breaking Point

In high school I realised I was an artistic soul. I took up art and drama and excelled in English. I also became interested in music – hard rock and heavy metal. The girls I was friends with deemed this love of ‘weird’ and ‘satanic’ music too strange and quickly told me to find new friends. I was completely alone.

Eventually, in grade eight, I found people who appreciated me and my ‘strangeness’. I began to fit in. I was popular, had genuinely good friends and I was no longer hiding behind my hair. Now I was being seen. And to me, being seen meant being judged. I had to look perfect. I had to look beautiful. I had to look thin. I had to starve.

In some way I think I made a conscious choice to become scarily skinny. Thinking I could control my starvation I delved into a world of self-hate and self-annihilation. It started off with limiting my food intake and as the weight started to drop off the compliments started pouring in - I was hooked. I became addicted to starvation. At 5”3, at the age of 16, I weighed 37 kilos.

Anorexic Manipulation

The only way to describe anorexia is to imagine you are trapped in a four-walled room. No windows, no doors, no light – nothing. It’s just you sitting on a cold concrete floor. The room is too narrow to lie in and too low to stand in. You are trapped. You are desperate to get out, but desperate to stay in.

Because of this desperation I began indulging in self-destructive and self-indulgent acts that would make anyone question my sanity. I became a genius at manipulation.

Every morning I would wake up and crush cereal into a bowl, add a pinch of milk and make it look as if I had already eaten. I took my lunch to school and threw it out. And when it came to dinner, my dogs would get my food and I would get the scraps.

The Media

Why did I reach such destruction, why did I worship it so intensely and why do so many women crave the delectable taste of starvation and self annihilation?

The media seems to be the obvious answer. It has bombarded us with images of stick-thin women draped in the latest fashion and worshipped by men and women alike. These are the images that set the standard for beauty in this day and age.

Look at the celebrities that have become the fashion and beauty icons of this generation. There is Victoria Beckham, a woman who is barely a woman at all. Her ribs protrude through her bone tight dresses and her hip bones pierce her skinny jeans. And this is a woman we want to dress like, want to look like, want to emulate in every way.

Now the taboo that was once anorexia nervosa is so glamorised by this skinny celebrity worshipping generation that if one suffers from it there is almost pride in their eyes.

The Media, Ana and Me

When there were times that I wanted to give up and let go of ‘Ana’ she always found a way of rousing me to keep her around. I would page through fashion magazines and stare at the bones of the magnificent models while ‘Ana’ teased me and told me that I would never be as beautiful and as thin as they were. I would prove her wrong!

I tore those pictures out, stuck them in my journals, stared at them for hours on end and inspired myself to reach their perfection. The media began to play a huge role in my life and those models and actresses became my ‘thinspiration’. I browsed the internet searching for images of my stick thin icons and then I stumbled upon something that caught my eye: Pro Anorexia. I had to explore this.

Pro Anorexia

Pro Anorexic websites claim not to want to convert people to the anorexic lifestyle, but rather ‘support’ those who suffer by giving them tips and tricks to lose weight and keep the weight off. These websites and subcultures take young insecure girls and guys, twist and contort their perceptions and invite them into a world of death. I should know. I say with shame that I lived in the virtual world of pro anorexia.

And not because I was pro anorexic. I was just so desperate to hang onto my own anorexia that I used these websites as a tool for inspiration. These websites are decorated with images of stick thin girls, quotes on starvation and songs about eating disorders. This does something to the sufferer. Makes them feel a part of something bigger, something secret, something their own.

The secrecy and the mystery – it is your own little world and something that is all your own. In this virtual world you are now superior to the common man. It may sound good and glamorous, but it is far from that. While one’s body fades away, one’s mind collapses, butchering the sufferers own self-image. I stopped logging onto these websites when I realised that girls as young as ten years old were a part of it. That says a lot about this generation and its perceptions.

Curves or Bones

It is fascinating how society’s perception of the female form has changed. Botticelli and Rubens, master painters of the renaissance era, captured the curvaceous female form on canvas. These women with child bearing hips, round bellies and plump faces were the object of every grown mans desire.

The 50’s were also a time of the celebration of curves. Marilyn Monroe (who would be considered ‘plus size’ in this generation) is still thought to be the sexiest woman of all time. This proves that men love curves and the child bearing female form.

Maybe then it is women who love the waif look and we are the ones who believe skinny is perfection. And because of our competitive nature we don’t lose weight to satisfy a man’s desire, we lose weight to satisfy our own desire – wanting to be envied by other women. But at what price?

Anorexia Nervosa: The facts

How far are we willing to go to achieve this pseudo perfection? Women take laxatives to rid their body of calories, some bulimics purge their food until they are vomiting out nothing but stomach acid (this releases endorphins that give you an addictive high – trust me, I know from experience) and some even cut at their flesh to expose the bones they long to see. All this to feel beautiful.

These are the facts. Twenty percent of people with a serious eating disorder, who do not seek treatment, die. In treatment, only 60% recover while 20% make a partial recovery (these would be the functioning anorexics, as of right now, this is where I stand) and the rest will live and die riddled with the illness.

Kidney and liver disease, irregular heart beat, depression – this is what you will live the rest of your life with and this is how you will die.

Generation Starvation

Anorexia nervosa is an addiction that eats away at your subconscious and leaves you incapable of functioning. Your every thought is consumed by your weight, you live every second in constant fear of the scale and in constant horror of the temptation that is food.  Anorexia, as clichéd and trite as it may sound, is a demon that resides inside a skeletal frame that was once recognised as human.

As much as a person can sit and preach the severe self-obliteration of the illness, an anorexic will gladly go to the grave with a smile on their corroded face. There is a Latin proverb that says: What nourishes me destroys me. This is the quote of a generation of females addicted to achieving flawlessness.

Like I said, I can sit here and preach, but how much of a difference would it really make? What nourishes me destroys me. The bottom line is that some women will live by this quote – and they will die by this quote. And die happily.