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Outsiders merely see the physical effects of the debilitating disease in her head.

Jacinta Smith.

 

 

 

My best friend has lived with anorexia for the worst part of six years. Outsiders merely see the physical effects of the debilitating disease in her head. And not the monsters lurking in her mind, like strangers in dark alleyways.

The past two years have been the worst for her. Her weight dropped to an alarmingly low number, for her Amazonian height of 177 centimetres.

Her brain so starved she now has irreversible damage. The veins in her body escape so far out of her tanned skin; it is as if they are gasping for air.

Her face is sucked into her skull, as if someone has vacuumed it in. Her once chubby cheeks no longer create dimples when she smiles.

What is perplexing is how a woman surrounded by so much love – a close family and a huge circle of friends – can have so many personal demons? Mental illness is a heart breaking thing to watch a loved one endure, and it’s so hard to know how to support them.

She has a devil in one ear and an angel in the other, except someone gave the devil a megaphone.

***

What I feel so compelled to write about, is something that happened which made me question what the hell is wrong with the world. In January this year, my friend and I were sitting outside at a café in Brighton. A well dressed woman in her 50s or 60s with her husband walked up to our table and bent down to my friend with a big smile on her face, and jokingly said ‘I’ve got to know what drugs you are on to be so thin, you are glowing’.

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Excuse my French, but what the actual f*ck.

My friend is beautiful; but let’s just shoo the elephant out of the room. She is anorexic, frail and killing herself slowly, not to mention experiencing the unhappiest of days. No one should aspire to be like that, particularly a woman who could quite possibly have children of her own.

“There is immense pressure placed upon everyone in society. It is felt and received in different ways for each person.”

My friend laughed awkwardly and eloquently said, ‘I hope there is no drug that does this to a person’.

Alas, this daft woman continued, ‘Oh well, you look great darling, I just had to ask, enjoy the sunshine’.

Flabbergasting.

‘And here I am, a week out of a psych ward, sitting on my jumper in a café because my arse is so bony it hurts to even sit down.’

Was that just one stupid woman? I know many reading this will think that, because you most likely have a brain.

But can I just tell you how many people have said how they love my friend’s skinny arms; how they wish they were as thin as her, or wish they had the discipline to be that thin. No one should ever wish that upon themselves.

Yet countless people have said this. Educated people, people who aren’t depressed, but have a warped sense of self.

Possibly because they haven’t been there when she has been let out of hospital for a weekend away with friends, and seen how others have had to shower and dress their best friend. Had her fall into their arms when she needs a hug because she is so broken, or see the look on people’s faces when she lightly chews her food then spits it into a napkin.

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There is immense pressure placed upon everyone in society. It is felt and received in different ways for each person. We live in each other’s pockets, quite literally with smart phones and social access to social media.

You scroll through your Instagram feed and you’ll see someone’s green smoothie, another supermodel posting a video at the gym, someone in Hawaii with their boyfriend, you’ll see you ex boyfriend follow some pretty girl and you’ll immediately start to question yourself. Because you’re sitting there at work behind your desk, feeling like you can’t compete with that.

We’ve forgotten to worry about loving ourselves amidst obsessing with wanting people to love us.

Consciously or subconsciously we live our lives vicariously through thousands of other people, whose lives we have romanticised and idealised. And quite frankly this is inescapable.

We control too much of the person we want to be.  We break ourselves in the process of trying make ourselves. And in the case of my dear friend, her eating disorder was a coping mechanism to control some part of her life. She thought being skinner would give her more happiness, but she lost weight for all the wrong reasons. And it turned into a disease.

They say you shouldn’t get into a relationship until you love yourself. The same can be said for everything to do with your life. Don’t think that losing weight will make you any happier. Don’t think that going on a holiday to Queensland will make all your problems disappear. Implementing short-term ‘answers’ to a problem that’s epicentre is in your mind, won’t work.

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Trying to love the person you are is without a doubt the hardest thing to do, I can vouch for that.

But there has got to come a point where we wake up one day and decide we don’t want to be our own worst enemy. Where we learn to live instead of preparing to, and do something every day that makes us happy.

“Trying to love the person you are is without a doubt the hardest thing to do, I can vouch for that.”

All said and done I’m not naïve, I know that anorexia is a far more complex problem than simply not loving yourself the way you should.

But what I do know, is that there are people without eating disorders that have a shadow cast over their ability to self love, and have that clarity. Who have an unhealthy idea of what it means to be happy.

Like the woman that came up to us at the café.

One of the cruellest things so many of us do to ourselves day in day out, is pretend to care about ourselves more than we actually do.

I’ll always be an advocate for all that I’ve spoken about, but even I fail sometimes to practise what I preach.

I’ve never felt more compelled to write about this subject more than now. My best friend has lived with the debilitating illness that is anorexia for the best part of six years.

For support, help and further information about eating disorders please contact The Butterfly Foundation on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or visit their website at www.thebutterflyfoundation.org.au. 

Jacinta Smith: Writer, journalist, publicist, red-head, quite tall (I’m that tall person blocking your view at concerts-on behalf of all of us I’m deeply sorry, who am I kidding, I don’t care), crazy dog lady, tea addict, goofy, mermaid, sarcastic, secret lover of going to the movies alone(had to write that because I can’t say it out loud),  I like books I think of them as furniture (Oh and I read them a bit too) and, on a more serious note, a crusader for the abolition of human trafficking.

Have you ever been close to someone with anorexia? How did you make sure you were supportive?