64 Things You Won't Find on WebMD About Living With Anorexia Nervosa

1. Eating from the bin (because the only food you’re “worthy” of is food that would otherwise be thrown out).
2. A constantly bruised and scabbed tailbone (because your paper-thin skin provides less than adequate padding).
3. The raw shame of being pushed in a wheelchair by your 63-year-old mum.
4. Wanting to die because your boyfriend may have (or may not have) put the “wrong” peanut butter on your food.
5. Uncomfortable anger when people unexpectedly interrupt you eating (the precious morsels of food you’ve allowed yourself to eat that day).
6. A lot of time slumped and defeated on floors.
7. Regularly finding unidentifiable balls of screwed up mouldy food scraps hidden around your room, in your bags and the pockets of your clothes.
8. Seeing your little sisters face after you’ve tried jumping from the moving car.
9. One-million-and-one conditions on what you can eat, when you can eat, how much you can eat, who you can eat with, how long you can eat for that the thought of eating becomes exhausting and actually doing it overwhelmingly impossible.
10. Finding perverse pleasure in seeing other people eat.
11. Hating seeing other people eat.
12. Waiting for the nightly piercing screeches of the woman you share a room with in the mental health ward.
13. Pathetic gratitude for the smallest morsel of kindness.
14. Obsessive comparison with what others eat (and an ever-present buzz of anxiety that they’re not eating “enough”).
15. Endless repertoires of increasingly bizarre and elaborate rituals before you can allow yourself to eat.
16. The ever-present compulsion to move.
17. Perpetually planning.
18. Hours of scuttling through supermarket isles pulling things off shelves and putting them back until you leave with nothing.
19. Sex when you feel like you might pass out from lack of food.
20. Dying for a moment of “time out” but knowing you will never get it.
21. Always the bruises from too many needles trying to draw blood from exhausted veins.
22. Resenting yourself for not doing the things you determinedly promise others (and yourself) you’ll do.
23. The constant desire to “escape”.
24. Desperate plans of how you can kill yourself because your mum eats the “wrong” sandwich (not an over exaggeration).
25. Stealing food.
26. Perpetually hoping someone will “make” you eat.
27. Perpetually hoping no one ever offers you food.
28. Finding the dried blood under your fingernails and the wounds where you’ve unconsciously dug into your flesh while you ate.
29. Lots of hours in silent waiting rooms adorned with gaudy fake flowers and thick curtains that block out all light, happiness and hope.
30. Craving love and affection but having no time or place for it in your exhausting 24/7 schedule of rules.
31. Graphic nightmares.
32. Reading cookbooks for “fun”.
33. Wretchedly scoffing stashed food under the covers of a hospital bed.
34. The constant guilt of letting people down and not being “enough”.
35. The realisation and full acceptance that death would be better.
36. Trying to stop your immediate reaction to smash the plate of food you’re handed and either run or gouge your eyeballs out.
37. Countless hours of pre-meal self-delivered pep talks.
38. Repeatedly removing food (spitting into tissues and down sleeves) from your bowl only to put it back into your bowl (and remove it again and put it back again) in a cycle of unfathomable humiliation.
39. Scheduling your days according to rigid mealtimes.
40. Endless threats of punishment if you don’t “just eat”.
41. Binging on vegetables because you’ve run out of things you’re “allowed” to eat.
42. A lot of time running.
43. The callous words of the nurses talking about you.
44. Asking your boyfriend in all seriousness if you can just give more head rather than eat (cum’s high in protein and sugar right?)
45. Endless excruciating hours of waiting starving for people to be there to see you eat only to not be able to eat in front of them.
46. Crying silently to not wake them.
47. 24/7 supervision (yes that includes when you poo).
48. Feeling your heart break when you hear the last door separating you from an outside world you fully believe you will never see again click locked behind you.
49. Never feeling warm.
50. Not understanding why anything is happening and why you can’t be “normal”.
51. The surreal frustration of wanting to eat but knowing eating is not an option.
52. Constantly apologising for being an “inconvenience” (aka existing).
53. Watching clumps of your hair fall away in the shower and wondering why you don’t care more.
54. Dying for permission to eat.
55. Force feeding yourself through the tears and snot.
56. Fear of being alone.
57. Fear of being with others.
58. Strictly under no circumstances laying down until 30minutes after you’ve eaten.
59. Uncontrollably shouting nasty words to get out of eating.
60. Myriad cold hands and instruments poking and prodding your body as though performing a scientific experiment on the slightly interesting exoskeleton of an already dead insect.
61. Crashing your car because it became the only “safe” place to eat and the kiwi fruit rolled away.
62. The ever-present sense of being trapped.
63. Immediate shame when you laugh or enjoy something because that’s not what an “anorectic” should do.
64. There are no days off.

A boundless thank you and appreciation to Immy for allowing me to use her powerful sketch as the cover photo for this post. A picture speaks a thousand words and this one a great deal more.