A bit of history!

...oh I really can't tell you when it started, or where it started....and God only knows why it started...but I, I have had a relationship with this thing I call ED for a long time now. Its been more the months, years for sure...probably decades if you must know. ED is not a man, or an animal or even a car. ED is the nickname I call my illness, like so many of us with an Eating Disorder do. (Some others with anorexia will call it ANA). I am both Anorexic and Bulimic ...diagnosed asEDNOS..or Eating Disorder, NOT Otherwise Specified.

I suppose  it all began years and years ago sometime in my youth. I just decided i didn't like food. I was always labelled  as a picky eater. There were more foods I didn't like then I did. And when there was a great deal of stress in my life I would simply stop eating. No big deal, it was just the way i was...the way i dealt with life. My therapist now refers to it as "an unhealthy relationship with food"...

When i was 17 ans 18 I went to college, hated it, and dropped out and moved home to work for a year. It was an incredibly tough year as I had issues getting along with my father. He and I had similar personalities and I always felt I wasn't good enough for him. Because of this I was stressed. That was the first time I got too "skinny". I dropped 30 or so lbs by taking laxitives (yes I know they don't really work...blah blah..), and eating one very small meal if anything a day six days a week. Now, this would be a good time to delve deep into my past and give you all kinds of reasons that i may have an eating disorder...my dad teased me, actually us all about our weight, (mom and all three of his girls,) while I was the only one that was not a bit on the overweight size...yet it was me that got screwed up...sick. Or I could blame the fact that I went on my very first diet when I was just 12 to lose 5 whole pounds because i couldnt wait to fit in with my mom and sisters who had been on diets as long as i could remember. Like a young boys first hunting trip I went to TOPS in the church basement that week, had my first weigh in, was so excited to finally be "fat" enough to be on a diet. But honestly... all that is the past. I need to look to the future. Yes the past may have had an effect on why i am the way I am presently...but dwelling on it isn't going to fix it. I need to focus on the future and in part that is why I have decided to write this blog. I find writitng to be theraputic and cheap therapy at that.... I am hoping to connect with some others out there with anorexia, as well as possible educate some that don't have the illness about what it is like to live with it. It has been an interesting few years...and I think I will write about all that I have been through.

One thing I want to start off with is that I had a tough time deciding whether to post my picture. I am not ashamed of my illness, but what I have struggled with is, that as people know about it, they tend to look at me as my illness and even when I am as sick as I get, I am still so much more then the lady with the eating disorder. Although sometimes this makes it difficult I decided I am almost 43 years old i needed to suck it up, deal with the negative and hope that by posting my face it would bring a reality aspect to my blog.

Next time I will start to write about how we figured out I was more then a picky eater...