From Prefect To Perfect

My disordered eating started from as young as 9 and my eating disorder began when I was in high school. It is sad to think about the amount of memories I've missed out on, due to my fear of food, considering it has been plaguing me for over half of my lifetime. School brought with it its own challenges. Those familiar with anorexia know that one of its largest demographics resides within high-achievers, often developing alongside academic pressure. The second component of this blog post is how it felt to go from being bright my entire life and receiving the glorification that came with being intelligent, hard-working and aspirational to suddenly, losing all of the hopes and dreams my family had for me. I chased my way to becoming prefect and I did but now high school is over and I'm stuck chasing perfect.

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Highschoolers are supposed to grow in every direction in every way. High schoolers are supposed to grow intellectually. High schoolers are supposed to get taller. High schoolers are supposed to hit puberty.

My eating disorder stole the stars that were aligned for me.

Anorexia malnourished me, reducing me to starvation, obsessional thinking and the primitive caveman brain. A lot of class time was spent thinking about my weight, calories, food and exercise. As a result, focusing during lessons and as I completed homework became incredibly difficult. Moreso since I left school, I have noticed just how hard it is for me to remember basic instructions, form proper sentences, participate in conversations and retain new information. I'll never forget the day I completed one of my final HSC exams because afterwards when talking about it with my friends and teacher, I realised that I'd missed studying an entire topic for that year. I felt like how you imagine those people in the movies feel when they've been in a coma for 10 years and they wake up in a new decade. That was a pivotal day for me as I thought to myself: 'Wow, this isn't a game anymore. This is messing with my life.' That's psychologically but physically? Whilst all of my friends discussed their periods I was left wondering when mine would ever come. When I turned 16, my mum got worried. But when I turned 18, I knew for certain that it wasn't just late puberty, it was never puberty. I do feel as though I missed out on that aspect of my life, especially for the years that I was at an all-girls high school when it was discussed more. I wasn't able to bond with any of my friends, I wasn't able to have ice cream and Netflix days when it was heavy with my mum and

I never felt the beauty that is womanhood.

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Something I always say, Dolls, is that you don't realise how much our lives are centred on food until you develop an eating disorder. Especially in my senior years, there were so many special events that I felt I was on the outside glass looking in because I couldn't share the present to the extent that everybody else could. I couldn't enjoy parties, school camps, black-tie events, graduation parties, Secret Santas and formals because they involved unmeasured and non-portioned alcohol, lunch, dinner, hampers, canapes and lolly bags. For me, all of those events involved anxiety. I had to eat beforehand, afterwards, or when I was most unwell, nothing. It's difficult to enjoy things to their full extent when before you even get there, you know that your eating disorder is an automatic guarantee that you'll be missing out more than everyone else in one way or another.

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My Mum always made my education a priority, despite how our financial situation was, which often wasn't great. She taught me the privilege I had of being a woman in a first-world country and that education was to be perceived as an opportunity, not a chore. I always wanted to make my mum and my grandparents (who, financially, helped support my education) proud. I tried very hard in school, involving myself in a lot of co-curricular activities, studying consistently and being punctual with my exams, assignments and homework. Mostly I loved school because it made my Mum so proud and it felt rewarding when I tried hard and received acknowledgment from my teachers. When my family asked after me, it was always answered with reports of my brightness in school. Then one day, it stopped being about how smart I was and became about how sick I was. This wasn't just something I recognised, my mum and Dad did too. They often remarked how they missed the days when my name meant something exciting not concerning.

This only perpetuated the fact that other's sympathy became my feeling of failure.

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I confess everything to you, Dolls, but my reasoning for not wanting to attend university is a story for another time. I can confess to you now that writing fulfils me beyond words. However, I don't have the brain capacity, I don't have the physical ability and I don't have the emotional resilience to attend university even if I wanted to. And I'd be lying if I didn't share how much it stings to know that something that was always a possibility is not possible anymore, for right now.

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