The Whole Story - Eating Disorder, Depression, Addiction

V3ggieL0vinGinger

It has been a long time since I have been truly happy. I smile; say I’m happy, keep moving forward. I do such a good job convincing everyone that I almost fool myself into thinking everything is okay. For a long time I really did believe that. That is until it all fell apart.

The first time I experienced depression I was eleven years old. Christmas had just ended and I was hit with the same feeling of being let down that most children are hit with after such an event – but it was stronger than normal. I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t want to do anything, and I was anxious, afraid. I had this recurring fear where I lost my family and I was left completely alone. Things got better; I moved forward and went back to school when the holidays were over, seemingly happy.

When I was fifteen years old the depression attacked me again. It was even stronger. I confined myself to my room where I would spend hours in bed browsing meaningless websites and wasting my time. I didn’t see any friends over those Christmas holidays or contact any for that matter. Somewhere during that two week break my subconscious decided I needed to come up with a way to manage the depression. I did – anorexia nervosa.

I completely stopped eating one day. I made a goal for myself; I just wanted to lose ten pounds. Ten pounds would make me happy, I told myself. I severely cut calories and spent hours on the cardio machines at the gym. I reached my ten pound goal within weeks but it wasn’t enough. Just ten more pounds, I would say to myself. Every goal weight became my “before picture”. I couldn’t stop. Watching the scale go down every day gave me this feeling of complete control. I felt like I finally had a handle on things.

When people began making concerned comments about my weight, I took them as confirmation that I was indeed in control. I eventually got very sick and was forced to make some changes to my lifestyle. At the time I fought those changes with every ounce of my being but looking back, those changes saved my life and I am so grateful. The depression became less as I recovered from anorexia and it seemed as if I was happy again.

I found the sport of bodybuilding during my recovery and it brought a new light into my life. I had this control over my life just like I had experienced earlier but it was positive. I felt amazing and my body image shifted from extremely negative to a mostly self-loving image. As I prepped for my bodybuilding competition I rejoiced in the fact that the eating disorder and depression were gone for good. I was free!

I fell off the wagon shortly after the competition. I came out of it without a coach to guide me and it didn’t take long for my diet to change from mostly clean meals to whatever the heck I felt like eating. I gained close to twenty pounds in only a couple months. My positive body image was no longer prevalent and I looked at myself in the mirror with distain.

I started drinking again about a month after and I never stopped. I drank my way through Europe for a month. It seemed like I was having fun and I convinced myself that’s all it was. It was a lot more than that though. I was using alcohol to cover up how much I was hurting inside. When I was drinking as early as ten o’clock in the morning consecutively I realized things needed to change. I stopped drinking cold turkey.

My boyfriend and his group of friends really liked to drink and party and it was hard for me to hang around with them without a drink in my hand. It wasn’t long until I had made some connections and could easily obtain illegal drugs. They were fun at first, but what I didn’t know was that first taste would have me hooked. Not two weeks later, my life was run by little bags of white powder. I knew the depression was back but I had a way to hide it and it felt good. I snorted; smoked, swallowed my pain and it almost seemed as if it wasn’t there at all.

I spent all of the money I earned on illegal drugs and I spent all of my free time partying or just getting high alone. It got to the point where I couldn’t make it through work without getting high. I was afraid of what I was becoming but I masked the fear with more substances. It worked for a while.

One night, a good friend of mine and I decided to do LSD. It had never been my drug of choice but he was into it and at that point in my life I would do just about anything. I took about 3 times as much as I had ever had before. I drove us to a party. The events following that are hard to remember but I was a complete mess the next day. That morning, my boyfriend, the love of my life, broke up with me. He said that I wasn’t the girl he fell in love with and he was right, I didn’t even know who I was anymore. After an attempt at suicide I ended up in the psyche ward at the hospital for a few days.

I met with psychologists, doctors, psychiatrists and councillors during my stay at the hospital. After three years fighting depression, I finally got a diagnosis; severe depression. I take two pretty green and white pills every morning now and go to a few different offices a week to pour out my feelings and talk about the future and reveal the past. I have been clean for eight weeks today. I would be lying if I said that I don’t crave those things that I once used to cover my depression daily; the eating disorders, the alcohol, the drugs; but I fight the cravings and move forward with my life. One step at a time.

The message I want to leave with you is that no matter what you struggle with in your life, it is vitally important that you FIGHT. You have the strength to overcome any obstacle, you just have to want to overcome it. I could have easily have just let go and the pain would have consumed me. I would be a broken shell of a girl right now. I fought and that is why I can finally say with absolute confidence that I am truly happy.

EDFIGHTINGDAISY

I got the whole lot to...I haven't got time to reply probly , its nice to know I'm not alone and I will later