Sometimes everything just gets a bit too much, and all the things you're so determined that you want to do suddenly go out of the window before you can even grasp what's happening. I feel like lately, that's what's happened to my ability and confidence to blog, and it's horrible. It's an awful feeling wanting so much to do something productive and positive about the things that are hurting you, yet feeling physically and mentally unable to start in any capacity.

An awful lot has been going on and changing for me, and it's taken it's toll quite hard. I still feel horribly guilty and disappointed in myself for not completing the Mental Health Awareness Week challenge I set for myself, but sometimes these things just happen. You can't predict or change the way your mental health might turn on you or suddenly take a nose dive and it's a terrifyingly worrying thing to try and process and cope with, but i'm learning. And, even though in all honesty it's bitterly, exhaustingly and impossibly hard to do - if i'm going to convince the world that that it's absolutely okay for things to get too much sometimes, I desperately have to start trying to apply it to myself too.

SO, it's been a little while! BUT, i'm back!! (yay!) - and, in more super exciting and positive news, I wrote a blog post for Time to Change's latest #InYourCorner campaign last week, and it's now up all shiny and new on their website!
I know i've had a couple of blogs published before, and in the grand scheme of mental health activist experiences it sounds like a tiny step, but this is the first time ever that i've had a blog published on the official Time to Change website and the first time my parents have ever read one of my written pieces, so it's really exciting for me and if you'd like to take a peek i'd absolutely love you forever!

Have a read of '5 simple ways to support a mate with a mental health problem' here!

There's a follow-up blog post on the wonderful people who've supported me and been #InMyCorner coming soon too, but for now I really hope the post helps show just how easy it can be to support people you love when they're struggling - trying to support the people you love when things are rough can feel horribly scary and daunting, but it doesn't have to be about intense talks and huge gestures. No matter what might be going on, all you truly need to be in someones corner is love, patience and kindness. It's really that simple I promise. <3

In another little bit of exciting news, i've finally got round to fully setting up my Bloglovin account! So if you want to give me a little follow, you know what to do!


Love always,
Rachel x

Anyone who's super-keen/observant (and oh my gosh I'd be so honoured and fangirl-excited if anyone actually did!) might have noticed that yesterday I didn't do my daily blog post for Mental Health Awareness Week like I promised I would try to do. Yesterday was a bit difficult and stressful, but I absolutely intended to write a post - I felt more than anything like I had to, like I'd be a complete failure and be letting everyone and everything I try to stand for down if I didn't. At 11.20pm I was all still curled up fretting and overwhelmed and horribly over-tired in the corner of the sofa panicking about how I was possibly going to articulate a post, and then I realised maybe I could use a missed day to make a point - that it's okay to take time out and step back when your mental health needs it.

It doesn't always seem like a legitimate thing to feel, especially if you're like me and get horrifically restless and upset with yourself for not being so busy 24/7 that it devastates you, but everyday life even when you're doing apparently 'nothing' can be so incredibly draining and overwhelming. I absolutely adore seeing all the amazing things that are happening to people I know and love or care about pop up on Facebook and it makes me so overwhelmingly happy seeing people get the wonderful things they deserve and have worked so hard for, but being surrounded by the incredible things people you know are achieving all CONSTANTLY is also a horrible catalyst for overwhelming self doubt and comparison, even when it's the last thing in the world you want to feel (and if you're me, you then feel so selfish and horrible for catching yourself getting upset or envious that you literally want to punch yourself in the face for being so selfish). There's so so much pressure to be constantly available, constantly on top of everything, constantly working towards a new shiny goal that might maybe help me feel a little more 'validated' or like I'm not just falling horrifically and terrifyingly behind everyone else I know, even though of course I absolutely know that social media 'life' is hugely rose tinted and that no one else's life is as okay as it might seem either. Sometimes when your mind is being horrible, even knowing those things just doesn't make it better. It's so so hard to remember, but please trust me: you're not being selfish. You're not letting everyone down, no matter what your head tries to tell you -  you're doing what's best for YOU, right now, in this moment, and that's absolutely okay.

Like I talked about in my last post, it's so so important to try and look after our own mental wellbeing, and sometimes - difficult and horribly selfish and frightening as it seems - that means it really is okay to step back from everything. I've never been able to fully take myself away from social media or completely isolate myself from going out for more than a couple of days, because my anxiety is relentlessly scary and overwhelming and just won't let me, but to be honest I think this people who do are ridiculously and amazingly brave. (HUGE shoutout here to my amazing TTC Champion and amazing friend James here, for inspiring this post with the bravery of his social media break and still being so unfailingly thoughtful and lovely despite all the shit he's going through on his own too. I admire you so much and I'm so so happy to have you back at least for a little bit!).
It takes an awful lot to recognise and make a decision which can still be so widely misconceived or misunderstood as self-deprecating, antisocial or counterproductive in the interests of your own wellbeing, and it's a hugely brave thing to do to commit to putting yourself first despite all the pressure from society and general life not to.

I didn't post yesterday in the end, because I wanted to make a point. I wanted to take my own advice for once that's it's okay to step back from things sometimes - we can't help make the world a better, kinder and better place for mental health if we don't try to look after ourselves and our own wellbeing first too. This is something I'm still finding horrifically hard to grasp, both in terms of trying to look after myself mentally and physically, but hopefully if we keep encouraging each other that it's okay to take better care of ourselves, I'll maybe one day be able to convince myself that it really is okay for me to do what's best for me first sometimes too.

Today has been a little bit of a whirlwind of stress and tiredness (yay for auditions with anxiety!!) so today's post is going to be a little one, but hopefully important all the same.

I've thought about this a bit today, and realised that so far both in yesterday's post and on my blog in general I speak primarily about mental health issues themselves, and the stigma, fears and general bizarreness that surrounds trying to deal with them whilst having to attempt being a 'normal' human being. I'm 100% okay about this, because of course we need to keep opening up conversations about mental illness, and as a Time to Change Young Champion it's my job apart from anything else!! However, I think it's hugely important too to recognise that Mental Health Awareness Week is about ALL mental health, all of us - not just mental illnesses or the bits we struggle with.

The most important thing to realise, in terms of helping shift attitudes towards mental illness too, is that we all have Mental Health. Every single one of us, no matter how much we might struggle with it or to what degree, have mental health that affects everything we do, every single day. The problem is that a) society isn't too cool about acknowledging that, and b), no one teaches us how to look after it. If you get a cold, most people know that the things that might help include honey and lemon, curling up under blankets, throat sweets, hot water bottles and sleep. If we sprain our ankles, we know to rest it, pack it with frozen peas until it goes numb and elevate it onto all available chairs/tables/dogs etc - but no one teaches us how to help look after ourselves when your mental health decides to take a little nosedive off a cliff, even though it might hurt and stop you from doing the things you love (and hate but kinda-have-to-do) just as much.

When I say that I'm 100% behind Mental Health education being compulsory on the school curriculum, I don't just mean that we should be taught about mental health conditions the same way we are taught about sensitive physical illnesses. We need to teach, nurture and enable ourselves to understand, recognise and be aware of our own mental wellbeing - the things that make us sad, the things that affect our ability to concentrate or feel joy as incandescently or the things that calm us down. We need to learn that the things we feel are valid, no matter how silly or tiny  or impossibly scary they might seem inside - and if we can learn how to practice self care and kindness when we need it, that'll be a huge step both for us and for helping understand and recognise the importance of our mental health too.

It's so impossibly hard to find ways to practice self care when we need it that don't feel like selfishness, because we're taught that putting ourselves first is wrong - but sometimes your own mental health and wellbeing just has to come first. I struggle with this desperately and it sends my anxiety and stress reeling and makes me feel like the absolute worst person in the world, but sometimes you have to try and be brave in understanding that the best thing in the world for you right now might be to sleep instead of going out, or have a bath instead of going for a run, or eating your own weight in pizza just because it's what you feel like right now. No matter what your mind or society tries to tell you, your feelings are valid, and you deserve to look after yourself. Really really.

The truth is that no matter how much mental illness might or might not affect you or those you love in your lifetime, we all have mental health, and it really is okay and so incredibly necessary to talk about it and care for it. Fingers crossed that shiny & brilliant little initiatives like Mental Health Awareness Week might be a little nudge to help us to need to recognise it, accept it as part of us, and one day learn that's it's okay to look after it too. 

So this may or may not have been a silly idea to try and juggle with auditions and applications and everything that's going on right now, BUT, it's now May (aka Mental Health Awareness Month) and this week is extra extra special because it's Mental Health Awareness Week 2017!! SO, to help celebrate and mark the occasion, i've decided to try and do a blog post every day this week speaking out about mental health, and why it's so important that we keep talking about it. (As illustrated, for the purposes of this first post, solely by Frozen gifs. Enjoy x)

I think i've blocked out a lot of what happened when I was in hospital when I was younger, but I do remember lying in my bed on the children's ward, all numb and tired from crying over my NG tube pain, and my mum or maybe one of the nurses saying to me that one day, i'd be able to use all this pain for good. She promised.
I didn't really believe it at the time, but that little thought and fire stayed in me and as I got better (and then worse, and then a bit better, and then catastrophically worse etc etc), it's become a fighting force within me and glowed stronger and stronger - some kind of adamant, furious determination that yes my mental illnesses could steal my childhood and my life from me, but there was no way in hell I was going to let all the things I was fighting through stop me from using my experiences to speak out and maybe help someone else. The problem was that I always clung onto the little bit of determination that id be able to do something good 'when I got better', or 'one day' - but nearly 10 years down the line, I was realising fearfully more and more every day that I don't know that that day will ever come. I don't remember my life without mental illness, and in all honesty i'm not sure that I ever see myself living free from it in the future either - so slowly I was realising at the back of my mind that 'one day' was never going to come, or if it did, it might be too late - I was going to have to start trying to turn my experiences into something positive NOW. Whilst they were still attacking me every day. And that's freaking terrifying.

The little push I needed to start came from a guy who is now one of my favourite people in the whole world and possibly one of the most inspirational, talented, and unfailingly lovely people on the planet - and I met him for the first time in the hallway of a small theatre. For those of you who don't know him yet - James Rhodes (this guy!!) is a classical pianist in the coolest, most brave and rockstar-esque way imaginable. He's not only insanely talented, but intersperses his pieces with brilliant, honest, funny and sensitive commentary about his own struggles with mental health and the bizarre, comic and fascinating woes of the composers whose work he features. ANYWAY, after seeing him perform at the Arts Theatre in London on a fluke, I went to one of his further gigs where he was doing a meet and greet afterwards (it was a much tinier venue!). In a nervous bundle of gabble, I said something to him which probably made absolutely no sense about how amazing it was hearing him speak out and how much it resonated with me, because as it turned out we had been in psychiatric hospitals at roughly the same time, and how I was basically just overwhelmed with admiration for him and a lot of other fangirl-y embarrassing stuff like that (probably). James, being utterly lovely, treated me like i'd just said one of the most eloquent and genuine sentences in the english language, gave me a hug, and then looked straight at me and told me in the calmest, loveliest voice to never stop talking.

And that was the 'real' real beginning.

 Talking about the things that hurt you is hard. That little moment with James that encouraged me to start saying fuck it and trying to unashamedly and truthfully speak out about my experiences with mental health was right at the beginning of my 2nd year of uni. The next week, I went to my university's DAMSA (Disabled and Mental Health Students Association) group on a whim, randomly stood up and ran for a place on their committee, and got it. I started trying to go even when my MH was shit, and helped run their Time to Talk day event that year ft many many cakes and brownies (which was how I met Time to Change!!) - By 3rd year i'd become their secretary, run my own Time to Talk day event for the University, started my first mental health blog (www.theoverthinkingblog.wordpress.com) and started sharing campaigns on social media. I still wasn't exclusively stating that I DID suffer from the mental illnesses I was trying to better on Facebook and Twitter, but I wasn't denying it or shying away from it either, and even something that little is a big step when you're sending posts out to a world of people you actually know. It's a hugely vulnerable feeling, but it's empowering too.

Being accepted to be a Time to Change Young Champion is an absolute dream, and one of the best things that could ever possibly have happened to me. Giving my first testimony after all the stress and tears of trying to write it was an amazing feeling - it felt like I was finally doing the thing i'd hoped all along I might be able to one day do - to use my own experiences to help change other people's experiences understanding of mental health for the better. This blog is another part of my 'speaking out' journey, and it's taken me an awfully long time to try and convince myself that I can have a blog where I write both about mental health and about my life in general when my mental health issues just happen to be there too - but i'm finding my way (I think!). Mental Health Awareness Week is a hugely important, inspiring and fiercely brilliant thing which shines a hugely deserved spotlight on all the charities, campaigners, bloggers, companies and people who are trying so hard every day to change the way we think about, perceive and treat mental health issues, but the truth is it should be the same every week. I still doubt myself hugely, and sometimes everything I try to do still feels hopeless and unbelievably shit, but at it's heart speaking out is terrifying, addictive, electric and astonishingly powerful, and the more we do it, the better we can help positively change the future of our mental health for everyone.

The truth is with mental illness that sometimes you can take all your meds, try to think positively about your situation and do absolutely everything you've been told to do, and everything will still just feel completely and utterly awful.

It's a truly rubbish, horrible, debilitating feeling. And the silliest part of it is that your brain then goes into complete overdrive to make you feel as bad as humanely possible about the fact you're struggling in the first place. Ive tried so hard to do things right. I've tried to take care of myself, I've tried to do everything the doctors have asked me to do, so why? Why am I being so ridiculously, infuriatingly useless and selfish when there are millions of people worse off than me? Why can't I cope better, like everyone else? Why am I so awful? Why am I crying over a sock? What the hell is wrong with me???

The other really scary, impossible part about dealing with this feeling, is that sometimes (and frighteningly often), there's just just no warning at all. You just wake up at 4am, and you want to die. You're surrounded by people, coping, and suddenly everything blurs and feels completely alien. My newest favourite analogy for this bit is that bit in Doctor Strange where Ancient One punches Strange's astral form out of his physical form. You're sort of 'there' but you aren't you and you're also completely not there at all. Dissociation is weird  (and sometimes annoyingly difficult to deal with) as fuck. Even if you realise what's happened, you're kind of just staring at yourself blankly, or banging on a soundproof glass door. (I told you right? it's WEIRD). 

The difficult thing is, when this happens - when those days where everything is too much hit, on the weeks and weeks where all you can do is sleep but you're never really sleeping at all, when you try to read and the words wiggle up and down and blur into alien squiggles in front of your eyes, you kind of 'have' to keep going.

I'm 22. I'm not a little girl any more, or 17 anymore, much as I might feel it inside. I'm scared and vulnerable, but I'm also 'grown up'. I have to be responsible for looking after myself, for my mum's benefit, my family's benefit, if nothing else. I cannot put myself back in hospital when my mum is worried sick over my Gran being ill. I cannot retreat into myself and starve myself when I've committed to shows and projects and campaigns that rely completely on me being physically well enough to sustain them without breaking. My body and mind wants to stop everything, but I have to keep going with everything I've got. So what can I do?

The truth is, when things get really really bad, sometimes the suggestions that come under ways to practice self-care just aren't realistic. When everything is completely awful and you're physically struggling to get out of bed because everything about your body feels so heavy and broken, sometimes yoga, or a run, or calling a friend, just isn't going to happen. I've made a little list of 10 (and a bit) things you can try to do (or adapt to what you feel you maybe can try and do), when everything is impossible. These things basically dragged me through my degree by some miracle even when I wanted to disappear. No matter how rubbish things are or how claustrophobic and impossible they get, I hope they might be able to help you too. 

1) Remember that there is no 'right' way to practice self care

The most important thing to remember in all of this is that really really really, you can't 'fail' at self care. No matter what your head tries to tell you, there is no right or wrong way to practice self care, and truthfully it'll be different for everyone, and different even just on different days. Sometimes bedtime yoga and herbal tea to help you sleep is going to help, but sometimes if you're exhausted and all you want is pizza, curling up in a blanket and ordering dominoes is going to help you lots lots more. The point of self care is to listen to what your body and mind needs right here right now, and to be as kind as you can be to yourself in that situation. If that means running until you can't anymore, or curling up with a cup of green tea & honey, or meditating on the things you're grateful for, that's okay. If that means a long cry, spooning your dog and a whole packet of Jaffa cakes, that's okay too. 

2) Try to make your bed

I know. This means getting out of bed - but trust me, even if it's only for a couple of seconds, it's worth it, especially if you've been living in your bed for hours or days. If you can, try to strip your bed and throw all your bedding and PJs in the washing machine with a big scoop of softener. (I know this sounds like the hugest, most impossible task in the world, and in all honesty I have on multiple occasions ended up too exhausted to put the sheets back on, and curled up in a cocoon of my clean, warm bedding on the floor instead, but that's okay too). It might not help fix anything, but it'll maybe help you feel a little tiny better and more human when you climb back into clean, fluffy sheets. 

If washing your bedding is just too unbelievably impossible, try to brush the crumbs off your mattress, shake out your duvet, fluff your pillow. It'll help too I promise.

3) Try to take a shower 

Again, I know, this sometimes seems like such an impossible thing, but the power of a shower to wash off everything that's happening and make you feel a tiny bit more like a human being is invaluable. Sit on the floor if you need too, let the water run over your face (hot or cold), try to wash your hair with proper conditioner, shave if that's something that you prefer to do, use a nice smelling body wash if you have one (don't worry about applying it properly if you're too exhausted, just the smell and idea of washing away everything will help). If showering is too much, wipe over yourself with baby wipes, under your arms, your legs, gently wipe the sleep away from your eyes. Brush or tie up your hair. Try to put on clean pyjamas or clothes that you feel comfortable in. 

4) Water

I'm awful at this when things are bad, partly because of my ED history I think (I hate feeling 'gluggy' or full, of anything) -  but it's so important. Nothing feels as awful as being dizzy & perpetually dehydrated as well as a mess inside. Try to drink a glass of water if you can, maybe warm if that's easier to swallow, and keep one by you to help remind you. (Don't drink the one that's been sitting out on your desk for a week, you deserve better than dust water). If going to the kitchen to get one is too much, or you're too exhausted to keep refilling and things, try to get one of those big 2 litre bottles and keep it in your room next to your bed. This'll help to keep yourself drinking enough and looking after your body's needs without having to face anything or anyone else when things get too hard.

5) Food

This is hard. It's hard when you don't struggle with food as an entity in its own, and I'm ridiculously bad at dealing with this so I feel a little hypocritical and embarrassed saying it, but the truth is our bodies NEED food, even when the only thing you can do is breathe. Cooking proper food can be totally impossible when things get messy, but if you can, try to make sure you keep quick little things and like toast and porridge or soup around (my go-to is always marmite toast and cut up apple). Try make yourself something warm and comforting, even if you spend the rest of the time eating cereal out of the packet. It's stressful and hard I know, but you'll feel better and your body will be super grateful for proper nourishment. I also find sometimes that it's kind of helpful trying to eat tiny things at vaguely proper-ish times, just because it helps break up the day a bit when everything else is so blurry and same-y. You deserve it I promise.

6) Watch something familiar

This is a bit of a cliche one too, but it's safe and it's familiar and those are always good things to surround yourself with when everything is shitty. Some days realistically I can't even actually watch anything - it doesn't penetrate the bubble of numbness I'm in or make me laugh or cry like it should, but especially if you're on your own sometimes the background noise is enough (this helps pass time too). My go to in this scenario is always always friends or Tangled, something easy and that you know so well you don't even have to think about. It might not feel like it's helping, but a bit like music (classical music is amazing therapy too), sometimes it just helps you not to feel so alone.

7) Pets

Pets are the best therapy in the world when they're in the right mood, and sometimes when they're not too. I'm hugely lucky in that I have a goofy dog who loves attention and two cats who happily just sit and purr even from a distance, but sometimes they just are not having it. If you don't have pets or your pet isn't in a 'fussy' mood, try and look at baby animal videos or videos or if you feel up to it, take yourself to your local pet shop and look at all the critters there instead. I highly recommend baby pangolins and otters.

8) Family/Friends

I'm awful at this. No matter how much I try, my automatic and unbearably horrible response to things getting bad is that I just shut off from everyone and everything. I hate myself bitterly for it and it's scary and so frustrating I could cry, but my head just shuts down. The truth is, this is when you need people around you the most, even if you want more than anything to be alone. If it's all too much, try and keep photos of your loved ones on your phone and save texts from your parents siblings and mates etc to look at when you're sad and far away, and maybe try to send one text a day. People care about you, no matter what you do. Even if it's just 2 seconds for a hug, or braving going outside to go for black coffee with your mum (which I've done lots), let people care about you. It's bitterly hard, but the people who love you most really will love you whatever happens. 

9) Sleep

My sleeping pattern is a notorious mess even when things are more 'okay'. I can't get to sleep, or I wake up, or I can't wake up at all, but I'm always always frighteningly exhausted. Sometimes you just get those days where you can't do anything but sleep, and that's okay. You're not being lazy, promise. Your body needs rest and sometimes the best and most caring thing you can do is let yourself sleep. If you can, trying to get a vague sleep pattern in place is good even if you aren't sleeping, again just to regulate time a bit I guess - I find that sleeping with a hot water bottle or microwave hottie helps even when it's not hugely cold outside, just because the warmth is comforting to curl up with. Trying to rest somewhere other than your bed when you aren't sleeping can sometimes help a bit too, just so that you have a bit of a change of scene. It sounds silly and pointless, but sometimes breaking up associations with your bed a bit will help too.

10) Remember how far you've come

You're here. You're still breathing, and even if that's the only thing you've done today, don't let anyone make you feel guilty about it, ever ever. You've survived every single one of your worst days so far, and you know what's even more amazing than that? You can do it again.
Never ever feel bad about trying to be kind to yourself when you need it, no matter what that might mean for you in that moment. Take yourself for a walk if you can (this helps break associations too) and notice tiny things to keep you distracted, or open your window a tiny bit if going outside is too much to bear, just to let some air in. Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, even if you only cradle it a little bit for warmth and comfort. Remember all the times you've felt like this before, and all the lovely or important or tiny memorable things that have happened since. Try to think of a Disney film or book or favourite thing about winter for every letter of the alphabet (but don't worry about skipping a letter if it's too hard). Know that you're safe and valued and loved. You're fierce, brilliant and astoundingly brave just for existing, and I have so much faith in you. You do deserve to feel happy and looked after, and I'm so infinitely proud of you. 

Xx

This is only going to be a little teeny post, because it's late and to be honest i'm still super nervous and paranoid about the fact that when things have been so messy and hard my ability to blog has just gone to absolute pieces - but I felt like it was really important to acknowledge even in the smallest way how important today/this week is. So here!

Today marks the beginning of Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2017, aka a super-important week aiming to raise awareness of this horrible, debilitating and relentless illness and break the frightening amounts of silence and stigma that surround it.
I haven't always spoken as much about my difficulties with eating disorders quite as much as I have about depression and anxiety etc. This is partly I think maybe because I was so young when everything first went horribly wrong, to the extent that in all honesty I don't remember my life before having an eating disorder - but to be truly honest it's also partly due to the amount of stigma-orientated hate and frustration I still have against myself in my own mind. I will try and talk a little bit more about my own story this week, which is terrifying, but I've made a promise to myself to try and be brave - for the sake of maybe helping others if nothing else - but for now I just want to talk a little bit about why it's so important to break the stigma surrounding eating disorders, and maybe what we can do about it this week and hopefully beyond too.

When people talk about depression, they often talk about how one of the most crippling difficulties with it and with other mental illnesses is how invisible they are, and in some cases how seemingly easy they are to hide. I know i've done this too - the whole metaphor with how you can't tell someone with a broken leg to 'just walk'. The horribly difficult thing when it comes to eating disorders is that sometimes you can see it, and that's the 'acceptable' default image of an eating disorder diagnosis that dominates our entire society, including the GPs and medical health 'professionals' we need to access the most.
The truth is, you can't always see an eating disorder, and for that reason they are one of the most deadly, isolating, corrosive and destructive mental illnesses we're facing; 1 in 10 of those suffering from an eating disorder will be killed by it. Eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes, races, genders, sexualities and classes, strike without any warning at all, are relentlessly cruel, and bitterly isolating. And because we as a society still only really accept one 'kind' of eating disorder - the emaciated white teenage girl - the silence and secrecy around these illnesses in an increasingly diverse society is more stubborn and frightening than ever before. (NB, there are plenty of ED sufferers who do fit this type too, and their pain is just as valid and frightening- it's just that right now I want to talk a bit about the countless others who don't too).



(TW - this bit contains details of ED behaviours)
I have been hospitalised for my eating disorder twice, once just after my 11th birthday, and again when I was 12. But this doesn't accurately or truthfully measure the amount i've struggled with it. You can't count the severity of someone's illness by the amount of times they've been hospitalised, or their lowest weight. Two hospitalizations almost 10 years ago now doesn't show you the other terrifying times my weight dropped, but not enough to be 'worthy' of help. It doesn't show you the countless lunchtimes I spent aged 16 nibbling half an apple and a cereal bar, and hating myself for the rest of the afternoon over the sugar in those 100 carefully calculated calories. It doesn't show my daily routine aged 17 of crying, confused out in the rain at lunchtime over the calories in gum and nursing diet coke, because that's what society had assured me that 'real' anorexics did, so why wasn't it enough and why couldn't I just fucking do it properly? It doesn't show the amount of times I burst into tears in the middle of the cereal aisle at uni, or the first time I resorted to making myself sick for eating a 'normal' amount, or the fact that the whole of the last 3 years has been a cycle of starving a bit, panicking because I don't have 'time' to be ill anymore, disappearing at uni to make myself sick, gaining weight slightly and losing everything else trying to cope with it. I'm a stable-ish weight at the moment, and a semi-healthy one, and it's catastrophically frightening, sickening and exhausting. I don't 'look' ill, so I hide everything and constantly and jeeringly doubt myself that I even am, or that I ever have been. I can't 'recover' right, and I can't please my eating disorder right. I am a colossal failure in every conceivable fucking way.

The truth is that in second year (the last time my weight dipped enough to worry anyone), I only 'got better' because I had to. My parents were about to take the chance to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe away from me and my uni life was completely on the edge because I just wasn't coping in any way. I was about to lose the one thing I love doing, and the one thing that makes me vaguely a person in my own eyes, and all the independence and everything that came with it. (Also, crippling amounts of fear and guilt at the amount of 'wasted' money if I had to drop out of my degree). It wasn't an option. I'm not a little girl anymore, I don't have time to be sick, I can't I can't I can't.

But even at a healthy-ish weight, or the way I am, the difficulties haven't stopped. In fact the truth is that sometimes when you're in 'recovery', or you don't 'look' anorexic, is when things get the most terrifyingly tiring, mocking, hopeless and hard. I am not currently in specialised treatment, because there was a complete mess with my files when I moved home from uni (a whooooooleeeee other story…), but the doctor I do have dismisses anything I dare to whisper to her about my mental health almost laughably. My body image is crippling. One moment i'm making myself sick because of a single flapjack, the next I'm panicking about the damage to my body and having things taken away from me, or hurting my family, or I get attacks of extreme hunger and all the starving i've done goes completely to shit. (My mum's mum is ill at the moment, so though my family are lovely and have been amazing throughout all this mess, at the moment if I show any hint of being unhappy such a huge guilt trip ensues that I can't bear it). I look healthy, but I faint or get chest pains randomly all the time, my metabolism is beyond fucked, my period has been monumentally messed up for as long as I can remember, and eating puts me in pain daily. I still don't see food, I see numbers. Things have been horrifically worse for me and I know that more than anything, but X years on they aren't right either, and it's frightening.

I promised that this was going to be a short post and it's turned into a little bit of a messy ramble instead, but I hope it makes some sort of sense. In short, Eating Disorders Awareness Week is crucial because this horrible illness is still so desperately stigmatised, simplified and misunderstood at every level. Even in recovery, we don't talk enough about the invisible dangers that haunt sufferers both physically and mentally day in and out. Heart problems, brittle bones and infertility all wield their own silent vengeance regardless of how much you recover, or how much you weigh. Eating disorders don't just eat away at physical weight, they eat away at everything you are inside and out. It's time we set the record straight for sufferers, for professionals and for everyone, and hopefully we'll help save lives from the pain of this horrible illness as a result.

Support Beat-ED's EDAW17 Campaign here: https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-us/eating-disorder-awareness-week
(I'm also supporting B-eat by wearing silly socks ever day this week for their #sockingit to Eating Disorders campaign, so expect lots of sock fun soon too!) x