Girl, Postponed

Sometimes things don't go to plan. And then they go a bit awry. And then they go completely off track, headfirst into a hedge. My last year at university undoubtedly falls into the latter category but with the added addition of a global pandemic. Guess we were all kidding ourselves when we said 2020 was going to be our year. Only last week I was reading in preparation for my online exams having submitted my dissertation several weeks earlier. Now I am, legally, deemed unwell enough to warrant being detained against my will in a place with very unwell people.

I'm not deluded enough (contrary to some doctor's belief) to think this came out of nowhere. Ultimately, mental health professionals will do whatever it takes to keep you safe and to stop you harming yourself, even if that means resorting to sectioning. And whilst I am angry and frustrated and resolute in having capacity, I also understand their predicament and primary objective. Mental illness is scary. Even when you have lived with it, fought with it, cried over it, and become familiar with it over the past decade. Even with all the knowledge and insight in the world, nothing quite prepares you for life on an acute psych ward.

My experience in hospital was based off of an eating disorder unit – a place which, despite the trauma of having to face the very thing you feared most three (or sometimes five) times a day, seems like Disneyland in comparison. The limited positives: tea and coffee are in abundance, you aren't screamed at by staff for pacing the corridors, and mercifully, the bathrooms are unlocked. There is even the luxury of sweetener and chewing gum (little things but considered gold dust in an EDU).

On the slightly less luxurious side, there are no comfy beds or door handles. In fact, consider handles of any kind to be off-limits. Add to that sharps, lighters, umbrellas (not really needed when you are, er, locked up), and sadly, my Glossier concealer has been banished due to the glass container. In contrast, life on an EDU was like being surrounded by a niche, somewhat frowned upon club where everything was So Normal if you just discounted the whole-food-bit. Generally, most people were coherent enough to hold a conversation, and whilst there were many tears and arguments (mostly at meal times), life went on, as it does.

On this ward, life does very much not go on. Time doesn't really have a meaning – if you miss meals you aren't given the very generous alternative between Fortisip or NG. If you want to stay in bed all day, that is acceptable. Equally, if you want to stand in the communal area and scream for hours on end, that also seems to be acceptable. Being surrounded by such unwell people is terrifying and also, terribly sad. You can throw normality out of the window (well you can't because they don't open), along with dignity, integrity, and any strand of sanity you thought you had before being admitted.

It seems painfully ironic that last week I was reading Girl, Interrupted as part of my American Fiction exam, and now my life has quite literally been interrupted – or more fittingly, postponed. Exams, summatives, freedom, decent coffee. Susanna's experiences in McLean Hospital, despite it being fifty-odd years ago, really aren't that far from my current reality. There are no trips to the ice-cream shop and sadly, orderlies don't sing Downtown with you in the early hours of the morning. But there is shouting, screaming, singing, crying. There is also fear, knowing that you have essentially been stripped of your autonomy and the only way out, is to actively prove that you are Well Enough to be back in the real world, graduating as a fully-fledged member of society. It is the only graduation I will be partaking in this year due to ceremonies being postponed until 2021 (thanks Covid).

Insanity is a fine line, and a rocky one. Step too close to the edge and you could find yourself trapped there forever, open to truth but shrouded from the world. But by standing there in suspension, hovering in limbo, you find that time passes, quickly. So, what is better? To stand and deliberate for an eternity, or to jump? Coming from someone deemed suicidal, it's probably best I don't answer this one. (Joking. Kinda).

"People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell them is, it’s easy. And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?"

The Butterfly Effect

Depression. A term thrown around like confetti and yet, an illness still so misunderstood. There is a tendency to compare mental illness to physical illness, with the vague hope it might help people understand if stated in layman's terms. The problem is, depression is not, and never will be, the same as a broken leg. You can’t wrap yourself in plaster and wait six weeks for your body to knit itself together again. Instead of your nearest and dearest rushing to brand their signature on your limb with a pink sharpie, people turn away; scared, shocked, out of their depth. You aren’t given crutches, there is no physio arranged for when you are better. Once ill and deemed ‘treatment-resistant,’ you are put in the chronic box.

Despite supposedly being ‘high risk,’ you are left in the dark, ignored until you bring yourself to the surface again. Only then do people shake their heads, silently tutting at the mild inconvenience you are causing by taking up a hospital bed. Only then do the crisis team raise their heads, ask a few obligatory questions before deeming you sane enough to carry on suffering or unstable enough to require their input. This input being a phone call every now and again, perhaps a home visit if you are lucky.

There are no flowers or Get Well Soon cards. Everyone is tired of hearing it by now. How long has it been? Why aren’t you better yet? Your life isn’t that bad, what have you got to be depressed about? People like to search for reasons, find an answer to unanswerable questions. And then, when you finally go through with it: a ripple of shock. A tragedy, a waste. Nobody wants to hear it when you are alive, yet suddenly everyone has something to say when you are gone.

Depression is all-consuming: it drags you to the lowest place you ever thought imaginable and then tries to haul you even lower. It convinces you that you are damaged, alone, unworthy. It makes you elevate death because living seems unfathomable. It tells you that everyone would be better off without you. It brands you a burden, a disappointment, a waste of space. It severs everything you were once interested in, isolates you until loneliness is your only familiarity. It tells you to hurt yourself because nothing can be worse than the mental torment you currently feel. It makes a blade feel like comfort, pills feel like safety.

Imagine waking up on the darkest of days. You haven’t slept properly in weeks. You have fallen behind with trivial tasks: an overflowing inbox, letters that need posting, a house that needs cleaning. But you have also fallen behind on more important things: bills that need paying, a fridge that needs filling, family that need contacting. You know these things need doing, and yet you can’t bring yourself to do any of them. You ask yourself, what’s the point? What’s the point in any of it? What use is a tidy inbox and a full fridge when you don’t plan on being around long enough to utilise it? When every day is dark, when every thought is occupied by the sheer insignificance of daily functions, it becomes easy to fall. And to fall hard.

So what is the answer? A fuck load of physiotherapy and a bouquet of sunflowers? If only it was that easy. The truth: there is no magic cure. Medication can be hugely beneficial for some and completely ineffective for others. Therapy, if accessible, can be that light bulb moment and facilitate a slow but significant recovery. It can also churn over a lot of previous trauma and make things worse before they get better. Talking is pivotal, patience is vital.

Being told that killing yourself would be selfish, that people have it worse than you, only seeks to validate your complete lack of self-worth. It only enforces that you are a horrible/unworthy/evil person that is making a mountain of a molehill, and you should just get on with living because people are out there dying/grieving/suffering/all of the above. Even worse, if you are exasperating your situation with self-destructive behaviours, then you must be, of course, to blame. Drinking with depression? Starving yourself with a history of disordered eating? Overdosing but not taking enough pills to kill you? A cry for help or merely attention-seeking?

Perhaps there is another answer. How about the consideration of drinking to drown out impulsive urges? Skipping meals because you have no motivation to cook for yourself? Overdosing because, in that moment, you want to kill your thoughts momentarily. You want out, you want oblivion. But you are also highly aware of the repercussions. The effect your actions would have on people if you were to succeed. Far from selfish, those who are suicidal often consider their actions the most. Churning over and over how life would be for those left behind. Churning over and over how life would be if you were to continue living.

There is no easy answer. There is no six-week cure. There are only brighter days, moments of Better. To hold on to the hope that things have not been like this forever. One of my favourite quotes is by Matt Haig, a reminder that this state of feeling is temporary. A reminder that you are More:

“Depression is also smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky but - if that is the metaphor - you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can't exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.”

Middle Ground

So, I am dusting off the cobwebs and getting back in the blogging game. It’s strange being able to write freely again after an intense, caffeine fuelled term of revision breakdowns and exams. I now have time in abundance which is liberating but also terrifying when you're a stickler for routine and thrive off structure. Although I resented the 8am starts in Starbucks, followed by repetitive afternoon revision sessions in Café Nero, the monotony was strangely reassuring. Now the sun rises at 4am and I’m left with the entire day to do whatever I want: great in prospect but daunting in reality. I’m back home after having finally completed my first year at University, finishing with a first which was very unexpected but relieving – perhaps providing the reassurance that I’m not entirely useless at my degree. The fact I’ve completed first year is an achievement in itself: having to take medical leave last year, I seriously considered leaving altogether. I felt out-of-place in a city bursting with social events and societies, wanting to retreat into my safe-but-entirely-limiting-shell and of course, sucumbing to anorexia was the easiest choice.  I was given the ultimatum: leave completely and probably end up back in hospital, or sort my shit out and repeat the year. Unsurprisingly, I chose the latter, unwilling to give up something I had worked so hard for. Yet as October approached, I felt sick at the thought of returning to Durham. The same routine, the same unhealthy associations with a place that was meant to be my fresh start. My friends were in second year whilst I was in the same lecture theatre but surrounded by new faces. Everything was the same but different. I was different: I had gained weight, deemed healthy enough to continue with higher education yet my old-disordered-uni-life was lying dormant, ready to welcome me back like an old friend. I walked and controlled and told myself that Things Were Better Now So I Must Be Better. 

I had to make the decision to actively feed myself, something which is agonisingly difficult when intuitive eating feels like an alien concept. There were no reminders from hospital staff or family, no consequences from skipping a meal. You can function, prosper even, academically and socially, if you just convince yourself that That Is Enough. Nobody has time for breakfast anyway, lunch is an awkward time and it would be better to work through that pesky 12-1 window. You go to dinner invitations because you wouldn’t want to miss out on fun, but you plaster on a smile and eat your carefully measured plate of food, satisfied that you are Living The Dream. Functioning anorexia seems a hell of a lot easier than full-blown restriction so you settle, happy that you are In Such A Better Place Now.

It’s only when you step out of this bubble, watch your friends enjoy food and alcohol, scoff down a packet of Oreos simply because they fancied them or grab chips after a night out whilst you eat the bag of chickpeas you have allowed yourself to soak up that vodka diet coke, do you realise how far from ‘normal’ it all is. Unlike first year where I actively welcomed back the gruelling starvation routine, I had fallen back into the safety of anorexia without even realising it.  I envied them, craving spontaneity but terrified of the repercussions. Spontaneity meant straying from my neat regime of timetables and measured portions of porridge. It meant discarding the rule book of Not Eating After Six, drinking the shots bought for me rather than palming them off on my already drunk friends, going out for a meal, and not automatically picking the Supergrain salad.  It meant rewiring my entire brain, finding normality in a world that seemed completely abnormal. The hardest part was people assuming I was Over This By Now. It is tiresome for others, but most of all yourself. You go down the same godforsaken road time and time again, despite knowing the outcome but utterly blinded by the fabricated familiarity. Better to be stuck than suspended. The assumption that people can recover out of frustration is inaccurate – it is this exact repetition that is most grounding. When everything else has changed, anorexia remains steadfast, unforgiving but ultimate. 

This is why recovery cannot and will never be linear. My therapist once asked me what ‘recovered’ meant to me. “Better,” I replied. “Living a normal life without ever restricting.” I craved finality, the whole putting-the-past-behind-me – of course thinking in extremes like always. Now eight years in, I'm aware this is unrealistic. Drawing a line and declaring a truce with anorexia is the ideal scenario but deep down, I know that truce will never be adhered to. One of us, most likely me, will crawl closer and closer to the line, hovering on the cusp of my Old Self – the self I associate with Control and Achievement. Even if not actively reaching for it, anorexia would somehow find a way to sneak over the line, taking my hand and dragging me back down the familiar path of shrinking safety. The inevitable rekindling is something I tried so hard to deny in my Ideal View Of Recovery. Ideal Recovery was Health and Happiness, Smiles and Spontaneity. There was no room for relapse in this vision, that simply defeated the point. Just as recovery was rebuked in Relapse Mode, skulking back to old routines when reaching the Perfect Point meant failure. And failure, of course, was not an option. It’s only now I realise how similar the two worlds are. Both require finality and achievement. I have to achieve at either shrinking or growing. I can’t afford a single slip up or that will throw the whole process off-kilter. That’s a lot of pressure. It also means that by achieving one, I fail at the other. Essentially, there is no winning.

That then means finding the allusive ‘middle ground.’ Despite initially thinking this was a bit of a cop-out, it’s also a welcomed relief to not constantly be darting between black and white. Middle Ground means a happy medium, a begrudged but dormant ceasefire between Relapse and Recovered. It allows me to be ‘in recovery’ but have bad days, go to the gym but rest on my days off. It’s a continuous, ongoing process – one that is slightly less impressive than waving the recovered flag but equally, a hell of a lot more preferable than remaining a revolving door patient. It’s realising that nothing changes if nothing changes but allowing the changes to happen naturally rather than forcing them. It’s being ok with stillness and silence. It’s accepting imperfection and inadequacy. It’s laughing and crying. It’s recovering and living. 

A Letter To My Eating Disorder

Dear Anorexia,

It feels strange to address you in such formal terms - after all, we are old friends. You have been there for me when nobody else has, made me strive for perfection and filled me with a sense of purpose. Because of you; I was able to cope when the turmoil became too much, numbing emotion and rejection with your watchful guidance. Only - you didn't stop there. Your grasp tightened, my view narrowed. You became my dictator rather than a friend, dominating every single aspect of my life. For seven years, I have been rooted in this stagnant cycle of lies - a bony, bereft existence, caught in your gnarled grasp and brainwashed into your warped way of thinking. You made me lie to the people I love, isolate myself until friends drifted away, leaving me with only you to turn to for comfort. You stripped me of all self worth, confidence, ambition, prospect. Turned my dreams into wild fantasies and ruined endless opportunities.

I can count on one hand: sobbing soliloquies written in hospital journals, medical reports filed in dog-eared folders, mundane moments spaced between bone caged crumbs. Stuck in a child's body with deteriorating osteoporosis, denied of womanhood and the chance of ever starting my own family. You made me think I was special. Uttering convincing words, encouraging notions of restraint and sophistication - but there is nothing superior about self starvation. The agonising pain of hunger that tears through you at night, the hollow eye sockets and throbbing head - all prototypes of the same sick game. You left me blinded, desensitised, weak. Even death didn't fill me with fear, I saw it as a strange sense of accomplishment. No, I didn't want to die, but you made me not want to live. 

Seven empty years. Insipid days that dripped into each other, robbed of an adolescence. I missed out on drunken parties, next morning regrets, messy girl's holidays, breakup dramas. None of that even registered as important when the only thing that mattered was watching the number drip lower and lower whilst fooling everyone around me. Instead, I smoked cigarettes as appetite suppressants, drank mugs of black coffee and sat alone in clinic waiting rooms whilst the world went by. You landed me in hospital, made me spend the supposedly best summer of my life crying in hallways and downing bottles of sickly supplement in a frantic attempt to escape. I met other tortured ghosts who scuttled through the days with adverted gaze, yearning for the same sunken skulls and porcelain clean skin. You made me lie my way out, fooled me into thinking I wasn't sick enough, not deserved enough to get help.

But now I see the blunt reality, the truth that you sheltered me from for so long. There is no end goal, no golden promise. You will never make me happy. While I am still stuck in your twisted clutches, I can't live the life I so desperately want to live. I refuse to let you take any more of my years. I will no longer let you dictate where I go, who I see, what I do and what I eat. I won't let you ruin university just as you tarnished the rest of my education. I am MORE than you. I'm also a girl who drinks her cappuccino froth with a spoon. I write poetry in hardback journals. I love to bake. I adore everything Parisian. I'm passionate about veganism and animal rights. I like to read about wildflowers. I'm fascinated by history. I'm a feminist. I'm a daughter.

I want to live in the grey area. After years of darting between white and black; starvation and depression, extreme highs and excruciating lows, I want to settle in the hazy middle ground. I want to cry and laugh in the same breath, to eat fruit and chips in the same day, to go to bed at 4am but still get up early and eat breakfast. I want a life WITHOUT you in it. So anorexia, you can take your twisted rules, your pathetic demands, your skewed lies - you are no longer welcome. It's time to try something different. It's time to find myself again.