13 reAsoNs why

The TV series 13 Reasons Why delves into the 13 reasons a young girl decides to, tragically, take her own life. For many years now, anorexia (sometimes abbreviated to AN or ANA, hence this blog's title) has been trying to take my life. I suppose I could share 13 reasons why anorexia wants to kill me but if I'm honest with myself, I don't think LUKA can find 13 reasons why she wants to die at the hands of her eating disorder. If I'm honest with myself again, there are another 13 reasons why... 13 reasons why I don't want anorexia to take my life.

My parents fear that I am going to die before they do. Fear is a word but when I see it written on the face of my mother, hoping that she can say or do something to change its devastating likelihood, it becomes much more than a word to me. It was one thing to hear and experience this evergrowing fear of my 50-year-old parents but when my 70-year-old grandparents began to express their terror of me outliving them, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. The only wish these people who I love extraordinarily have of me is that I live the life they imagined for me and that the misery this illness casts upon them and me ceases to exist. What if when any one of them leaves the world, their last memory of me is being the child/ grandaughter/ friend who never recovered from anorexia? But worse, I fear they'll think it meant I mustn't have really loved them. My reason is the reality of this fear. Because if you die and the people you love are left behind questioning your love for them, was there any point to your life at all?

The first time I truly realised the depth of sadness that anorexia imposed on me was when I had a belly laugh, the type of laugh that fills up your soul with genuine and complete goodness, joy and vitality, and I realised that I couldn't even recall the length of time since I'd last experienced that. It was the ecstasy of finally belly laughing that, in the moment, converted my high into a low. Tears filled my eyes noticing how much anorexia had blackened my lens of the world. This blackness prevented me from finding a reason to laugh. This blackness prevented me from having the energy to utilise the true wonder that is the human body's ability to vibrate because of utter happiness. This blackness prevented me from feeling like I deserved to be loud enough to make the noise a belly laugh exudes.

A telling characteristic of a good dog owner is that they know exactly how their dog feels about them... idolised and trusted. But I don't know how my dog feels about me. Archie is this sensitive, gentle, trepidacious soul. It takes enough of his strength and bravery to find security in places he's familiar with, let alone in places he's not. The unsafe medical situations that anorexia has put me in have also put my baby, Archie, in environments where he's felt unsafe. To support me, he's spent countless hours with me in lonely hospital wards filled with with all kinds of strange smells, unpredictable people and loud sounds. The added element of his essence is the empathy he bestows that allows him to sense his owners' fear, even in the absence of his own. For example, whilst dinner time might not scare Archie or my family, it scares me and his actions often reflect that, like not eating his dinner or pacing uneasily. Even if he risks the cost of losing himself along the way, he has never hesitated to creep nearer and nearer to my feet to tell me 'It's okay, Luka, I'm here for you, I've got you.'

I know my dog loves me but I also know he knows that the really bad thing in my head makes my mum feel really bad, my dad feel really bad and I feel really bad which in turn, makes my baby feel really bad. I don't want him to be so scared of being at a hospital that if my Dad isn't holding him, he starts to cry. I don't want him to be so scared that I'm not eating that he stops eating too. I don't want him to be so scared I won't wake up that he can't sleep through the night in the same room as me. And those are my reasons why.

I want to have my right to choose. Unfortunately in the mental health system, it seems that the default treatment is to immediately strip patients of their choices prior to an assessment or conversation that could be considered adequate to any degree. The relationship between the treating team and the client is uncollaborative at best and one-sided at worst. It's led me to become traumatised time and time again as I become beaten down by the powerlessness, silencing and rigid, generalised, non-personalised guidelines imposed upon me. The mental health system isn't going to change overnight and neither will the fact that I have anorexia. I'm led to weigh up what I have more control over. Is it changing an engrained and deeply flawed system or the path that puts me in it? If anorexia takes my life, I'll never get to weigh anything up again. If anorexia takes my life, it won't be the system killing me anymore, it will be me. If anorexia takes my life, I'll never have the right to any choice over anything, including being well enough to never end up in a choiceless system again.

I don't want my parents to be scared I'm going to die. All the time, I'm scared by all of the lies that anorexia convinces me are truths. And that fear I have reduces me to a world that seems bearable, a tiny little safe world. But the world my parents live in is vast, as is their capacity to love and care for me. So it is not to a small degree that they suffer, but rather a grand one. And as they observe me existing in my world, one becoming more finite by the day, their infinite world of a fishbowl that should be impossible to fill has a gradual inpour of water until it's at the brim, just above their necks, slowly drowning them, forcing them to hold their breaths. They're so scared that they don't talk to me. They're so scared that they come into my room every night when I'm asleep to watch that my chest is still rising. They're so scared that I hear them close the door behind them in the basement, screaming, crying, a piece of them dying with every thought and every teardrop. That silence, that sleeplessness, those noises are my reason why. Because I know all of it would be cunningly exacerbated if I died.

The person I've always felt I was, the person I still desire to be is someone I am not. That is someone patient and kind. But I can't be that. Anorexia takes those abilities from me. My irritability, inability to concentrate from starvation and my anxiety surrounding rigid timing have revoked my patience. The judgment I have of bodies/shape/weight, my complete depletion of enduring energy to listen, empathise and be warm and my overall depressive deamenour from constant negative self-thoughts and beliefs have revoked my kindness. I yearn to be myself, the self that was once entirely detached from anorexia.

I love writing. There have been moments and days where it saved me from derailing. Writing started as a passion but soon became something much more, a cathartic outlet that's navigated me through the impossible, hopeless and devastating periods of my life that I didn't think I would come out the other side of.

Without it I can't process, I can't understand, I can't evolve, I can't gain perspective, I can't feel. But, Dolls, this truth is a tragic irony because it's when I need to write the most that I lose my ability to do so. The more I struggle with anorexia, the more starved my brain becomes of the nutrients required to be rational, let alone creative. I know this is true because my motivation stalls, I begin struggling to form my ideas coherently and eloquently and begin uploading blogs less frequently. All these factors combined prevent me from being the best writer I could be. A major component of the endurance of my eating disorder is my belief that anorexia is the only thing I've ever been good at in a controlled, expected, predictable fashion. Since starting this blog, for the first time in my life, I've felt that I am good, really good, at something other than that. My reason is that I don't want to be a good writer, I want to be a great one. My reason is if I die now, I'll have never believed that I was better at something other than anorexia.

When I was a little girl, I didn't have the model of a couple with a perfect marriage so I didn't dream of meeting Prince Charming or excitedly plan my wedding day like many of my friends. It was mostly like this until I became an adult but unfortunately, by then, I had also become sick. Throughout the few romances I've experienced, I came to understand that anorexia limited their ability to develop and flourish. My brain space is consumed with thoughts of restriction, timing, compensation, my body, self-doubt and self-hatred. How can I devote myself to another human when anorexia has devoted itself so deeply to me? And how can I accept that I deserve to receive love from another human when anorexia tells me it is all that I deserve? When you're told you can't have something, you want it more. And now that I can see how difficult it will be for me to have a signficiant relationship, I can't help but fantasise about the premise of falling in love, meeting Prince Charming and my wedding day. My reason is so that my fantasies will become true.

Fear is something I've had to face for so long that I can't remember a day I didn't have it. 

♡ I fear so much that I can't think. 

♡ I fear so much that I prefer to die, slowly, in comfort than to live beyond it.

♡ I fear so much that I feel my organs burning and stinging like a billion fire ants rummaging every crevice from tip to toe.

I spend my life in fight or flight mode. I find simple conversations painful, I see judgment where there is none, and I experience sorrow when the joy of love surrounds me. My reason is to attain peace and serenity. I know what it would feel like because I've dreamt of it. I'd describe it to be like catching a perfect butterfly in the palms of my hands, relishing in the grace of its delicate wings fluttering against my fingertips, kissing me with its majesty, its effortless beauty.

Joining in is something that used to feel so mindless and when I reflect on those simple times, all I wish is that I could've understood how lucky I was to be able to do the things I could do... sharing, saying 'yes', being me and being free. Oh, how I wish it because then I could've closed my eyes and savoured it. My reason is to find that ability once again so that I 'sing like the birds, not worrying about who hears or what they think', who and they being the monster in my mind called anorexia.

I can't imagine how it would feel to look in the mirror and see someone beautiful gazing in the reflection. I can't imagine the possibility of me being innately beautiful. For I am only beautiful to the extent of being liquid poured into anorexia's mould. I hate so much about my appearance all of the time. My assessment of it is entirely critical and completely absent of acceptance. My reason is that one day I want to believe I am enough as I am, in an infinite mould that is mine, oh, mine.

I feel that I am selfish. I have so much reason to fight, yet ultimately, every time I choose anorexia. To an extent, I have a severe and enduring chronic illness but to another, I have desires in line with trust, love and connection. As I choose anorexia, I destroy those three things brutally, severely, and shockingly for both myself and the people who love me.

When I lend my love to anorexia, all that's gained is evil. When I lend my love to anorexia, my mother gains the feeling of stupidity for yet again hoping and believing that this time it will be different. When I lend my love to anorexia, my father gains the resurfacing of harrowing nightmares where he loses his little girl because she's cast starvation upon herself. When I lend my love to anorexia, I gain the guilt of knowing that I can choose to end the losing game and yet, still, selfishly, I take my turns.

Whether or not I survive anorexia is one thing but it's another to ask thyself to what extent is a life beautiful if it is one spent purely surviving? Survival is an integral component in the evolution of humankind but so is intelligence. The power of human intellect has led to incredible inventions over the previous centuries that allow us now, in the present day, opportunities to live more luxurious lives than the cavemen could've ever dreamed of... Travel, 5-star fine dining and live music. Whilst survival is still a part of this updated, present-day equation, it plays, the smallest role it ever has. Though if you have anorexia, it reverses time, spinning back the dial, and taking away the opportunities for fun, spontaneity, and creativity in the process. It reduces its culprits to a life centred only on staying alive. My reason is that I yearn to have the sustained sustenance that would provide me with the strength, will and energy to get to live a life humans now can.

When I initially thought of this blog topic, I honestly thought it would be an insermountable task to come up with 13 reasons why I wanted to outlive anorexia. But then I thought to myself, that's exactly why I need to write this... To show you that there are always enough reasons why. Because anorexia doesn't just lie, Dolls, the sad reality is that anorexia kills.

Kisses,

COS x