I HAVE ANOREXIA (Life Gets Better)

This week is Eating Disorder Awareness week, something that’s really, really close to my heart.I’ve said this a few times before.Maybe you’ve seen magazines, or articles, or interviews where I’ve briefly spoken about why this particular topic is so important to me, but I’ve never really properly sat down and had a proper talk about it.Partially because I’ve been too scared to. I was scared of what people might think, of how people might begin to see me.Partially because I wasn’t comfortable in myself.But, now I’m ready. Because something I’ve always believed, is that all negative experiences have to happen for a reason. And I believe that my experience happened so I can help people.So that other people don’t have to go through what I did, how I felt…So, this is my story.My name’s Chloe Hayden, and I have anorexia.  I’ve always struggled with food, something that isn’t uncommon for autistic kids.From just about the day I was born, my diet consisted of potatoes, pasta, rice…. Seeing a theme, yet?Anything with no mixed textures, no added ingredients, plain, bland and white.It was easy that way. There was nothing scary, nothing new, nothing overwhelming.It was simple, and manageable. I was in control.In a world where I struggled daily to understand what was happening, I could count on the security blanket of set food items. My security blanket was only secure for so long though, because as I grew up, so did other parts of myself that I wasn’t so secure about.Come high school, things were changing. And change is never something I’ve been great at coping with.High school is so, so hard for anyone. Neuro-typical or autistic.There’s changes in teachers, and classes, and hormones are running wild. 12-year-old girls are absolutely terrifying…. something that I later learned was due to their own insecurity with changes.I was a little, lost mouse inside of the biggest barn of my life.The only difference was that the other little mice surrounding me weren’t so little.They were big, and they were curvy, and they were getting boobs and giggling about boys and getting their periods and tripping me over and pushing me and mocking me because while they had grown out of their love of children’s movies, and teddy bears, and wanting to hold their parents hands all the way up to the school doors….I hadn’t. And that’s when I came to the conclusion of something that seemed so, so obvious at the time.Well, if I don’t grow womanly features…. If I don’t get boobs, and hips, and periods, then I can stay a little girl.Then it wouldn’t matter that I like Disney movies, and cuddles with my parents, and still sleep with teddy bears. And that’s when my comfort blanket of food fell away all together, and my new comfort blanket became the idea of being skinny. Of not eating. Of not growing boobs, and hips, and womanly features.Because God Damnit, I was not going to be a woman.No way.That’s how my teenage life started... Which looking back, how sad is that?Thirteen year olds are meant to care about boys and outfits and best-friends-not-keeping-pinky-promises.Not their weight. Not body image.With each passing school-day where I saw more and more of what I believed I was ‘supposed’ to be, I dropped more and more weight to try and delay it.It was killing me. When I was thirteen, I was pulled from school.I was torn away from the negativity and the hatred and the ‘this is what you have to be’ and ‘this is how you have to look’.I was placed back into a gentle environment, where I was nurtured and cared for and loved for who I was.And slowly, very slowly, I began to eat again.Small portions. ‘Like a little bird’, my parents would say.And I think, looking back, my food sizing wasn’t the only bird-like thing about me.I was caged. Trapped inside a cage of my own fears, and controls, and need for restriction.Or maybe, better yet, it was like my wings had been clipped.Because even though I wasn’t aware of it, I had been grounded for my entire teenage life.  I thought I had recovered, that this ‘silly little eating disorder’ was gone for good… I thought that my protective covering of white, bland foods was okay. It was safe.I wasn’t hurting anyone.(except myself).

. . .

 In September of 2016, I faced more changes.I had recently turned 18, something that scared the living day lights out of me, for the same reasons that high school did.Unwritten expectations.The worry of ‘growing up’, or not being able to love all of those childish things that I was still so attached to.I was always teetering on the edge. Not quite falling off the cliff, but always swaying there, ready to fall.The fall came in September. Quite literally. Horse riding is something that had always been a ‘safe space’ for me, no matter how dangerous it may actually be.With my horses, I’m just ‘Chloe’.I’m not the ‘autistic kid’.I’m not the ‘kid with the eating disorder’.I’m not the ‘adult-who-still-refers-to-herself-as-a-kid’.I’m just Chloe. And then my safe space ended up with the most emotional and physical trauma my body had ever encountered.After being kicked by a 600 kilo horse on a training day, I was rushed to the hospital with third degree burns, bruising and blood across my entire groin and my thigh.I had a ruptured bladder, internal bleeding, and infections throughout my body.There, while my body was physically shattered…. So was my mental health. If being around horses was considered my ultimate high, being around hospitals is my ultimate low. And this particular situation was worse than I could have ever imagined.As a ‘freshly-eighteen-year-old-girl’, it was the first time of my life that I was considered an ‘adult’ for medical purposes.And something that adults are ‘supposed’ to be able to do, is be in hospital by themselves. Disabilities and trauma isn’t counted for. That was the second time that I realised that growing up well and truly sucked.That was when I came to the conclusion that this whole ‘growing up’ business wasn’t for me.And that was the final time that I told myself that I was going to put a stop to it. I couldn’t control the fact that I was growing up.But I could control the way that my body reacted to it.I could stop getting my periods, I could keep my body small, and sickly, and ‘childish’. I might chronologically be an adult, but I was always a good pretender.And I told myself that I could pretend my way to being a child again.Pretend the scary world away. So again, I stopped eating.Not just my ‘not-safe’ foods. But everythingWhere I used to eat huge bowls of pasta or potatoes, I now would refuse to even left a scrap of lettuce pass my lips without counting the calories.I cried if I smelled toast, or pasta, or anything that wasn’t green tea and water.In my head, this was okay. I was fine.If anything, I thought this was good.I stopped getting my period, something that made me unbelievably excited.I was fitting into children’s clothes… and not just the ones in the 7-14 range.I was so, so caught up in this mess inside of my head, inside of the control that I felt, that I didn’t even see that I was fainting regularly… Or that I couldn’t walk for more than a few minutes without the need to sit down.I couldn’t see that I couldn’t ride anymore… That my one refuge had ended up becoming a chore.I was so caught in my ‘thin, frail’ frame and my sense of control that I couldn’t see that although I wasskinny, I also had yellow teeth, and my hair was falling out in clumps, and my finger nails were falling off, and my skin would give The Simpsons a run for their money with the colour of it.I had the shakes constantly, and would blame cold temperatures on 25 degree days.I was forced to put a halt on my horse riding, on my acting, on going to university.I was forced to put a halt on my life.But… I was in control.I felt in control. How little I knew- that at that point of my life, I was more out of control than I had ever been before. People on the spectrum feel a desperate need to be in control.It’s why we need routine, and boundaries, and restrictions.We need it. We crave it.In a world that is so confusing to us for so many different reasons, sometimes the only thing we feel like we’re capable of handing is ourselves.For a lot of people, the food we put in our mouths and the shape of our bodies is the way that we regain that sense of control and stability.  So, I know that a big question now is ‘how?’‘How’ do you regain that control? How do you put that need of boundaries onto something that isn’t harmful?And the God Honest answer?It’s hard… it’s really, really hard.But you know what’s so much harder?Waking up every day in shakes, and falling to the ground while your terrified siblings watch on, and wonder why their big sister is having a seizure on the floor.Giving up the hobbies that you love more than anything in the whole world- because you’re so frail and weak that they could now kill you.Having mental breakdowns, and sobbing like the three-year-old that you wished you were at family dinners because God-Forbid someone cook your three pieces of broccoli and half a carrot in oil rather than boiling them. And I know… I know it’s hard.But I promise you, it gets easier.I promise you, that each time that you hear that little voice telling you that you’re fat, that you’re worthless, that you don’t deserve to be here, and that you respond with a ‘shut up’, the voices get quieter.And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that everything’s A-Okay. That I’m totally cool. That I love myself, and that I’m self confident, and live every moment of my life feeling on top of the world.Because I don’t. And I’m not.Because I still have to wake up every morning, and fight with that stupid, stupid voice inside of my head that tells me ‘you don’t deserve breakfast today’, and ‘do you really need that piece of chocolate?’But every time you tell that little voice to get lost, you win another battle.This body of mine needs calories, and nutrients, and food to live.This body of mine needs to be strong, and muscular, and fit and healthy, so I can ride horses, and play with my dogs, and swim in the river in summer, and kick up leaves in the autumn (because you know what? I’m an adult. And playing in leaves is just fine).  There is nothing empowering about less of you.Starving yourself isn’t going to kill those demons.It’s just going to kill you.    You have suffered enough, it’s time that you won.