Sam’s Journey To Recovery From Anorexia Part 3

I have been through a lot of pain and heart break and have hardened my heart to love or anything. I find it really hard to forgive, love and trust people nowadays. See there are pros and cons to becoming strong and confident. I was on bed rest for 5–6 months and during those months I became close to my mam. She’s had to put up with a lot. She’s the one who’s had to give up her job, her life for me. She’s the one who had to deal with the three meals a day and three snacks making sure I don’t hide them or make myself sick after or exercise to reduce the weight. I’m not saying my dad’s had it easy because it’s been hard for him as well as the whole family. I mean who wants to see their sister starve themselves to death? I feel horrible thinking of what I put my family through. It was not fair or right but in a way it wasn’t my fault I just got overpowered by something. One day I hope to show my thanks to them because without them (especially my mam) I wouldn’t have been able to recover. They didn’t have much support from the Church. I know how they really feel and I think the Church let them down.

I started college again September 2013 and was there for two years. In January 2015 I applied to do Speech and Language Therapy at 5 different universities. I only got into Leeds Beckett University and I worked so hard during my first year. I made great friends and loved the course. I got a job working with a little boy who may have autism and has severe learning difficulties and lot of problems. In September 2016 I found out I failed my first year and I was absolutely devastated. I hated myself and thought I was a failure. I cried my eyes out and tried to hurt myself. It was so hard to get over. I had worked so hard all Summer to pass. But I realised it wasn’t all over and that I may have another chance. I then started my first year again and I wasn’t alone. I had a friend who had also failed the year. I made new friends and started to realise it wasn’t the end of the world. Speech and Language Therapy is an NHS course and the NHS said they wouldn’t pay for any repeat years even though you are meant to have four years funded at university. This meant I had to apply for more student finance and they took 3 months to decline my application leaving me with no money for rent or food. It was a huge struggle but I battled through and somehow a miracle happened and the university said they would pay all the rest of my rent and give me money towards my living costs. This is a true miracle because they stated the week before that they couldn’t give me any more than £300. During that time I battled with self-love and failure. I am extremely hard on myself and if I don’t exceed my goals I get angry with myself.

I always know life will get better. I always know that I can do and get over things. I always come bouncing back. Someone once said to me that I am a force to be reckoned with. This made me think… I actually have overcome so much in my life. It’s not easy learning to love yourself. To be able to actually look in the mirror and say I am happy with myself is an achievement. There is a song by Alessia Cara called, “Scars To Your Beautiful” and it hit me hard when I first heard it. It actually brought me to tears. The beginning starts off as “she just wants to be beautiful she goes unnoticed, she knows no limits she craves, attention she praises an image she prays to be sculpted by the sculptor”. I interpreted this as someone who wants to be beautiful, who wants to be seen by other people as beautiful and wants to be noticed. This person sees an image who he/she thinks is perfect and they want to be like this image. It’s hard because this image won’t be perfect. There is no definition of perfect. In another part of the song she sings “she has dreams to be an envy, so she’s starving you know, “cover girls eat nothing”, she says, “Beauty is pain and there’s beauty in everything”, “What’s a little bit of hunger?” “I could go a little while longer”, she fades away. This reminds me of when I starved myself because I wanted to be beautiful. My definition of beautiful was skinny and I strove to be that. I went a bit too far and nearly killed myself. It turned into self-hatred. I kept saying to myself hunger? What’s that? I can go a little while longer… see how long I could go without food. And then I faded away. I didn’t understand that beauty goes deeper than the surface. It’s not all about what you look like. It’s about who you are on the inside and that beauty shines greater than the outer beauty.

In January 2017 I found out I was pregnant. After thinking for years that I probably wouldn’t be able to have children it came as quite a shock but I knew I couldn’t get rid of it. Later I miscarried. It was torture. I woke up on Wednesday 18th January bleeding and in excruciating pain. I knew something was wrong. I made it to uni but only lasted an hour before I went to A&E. The nurse checked me over (by this point I couldn’t walk because the pain was unbearable). It was so hard. I knew that there was something wrong but the doctors wouldn’t listen. I sat in hospital waiting from 10 am to 7pm and found out nothing. I had to wait hours to see a doctor and when I asked him questions he told me that he couldn’t help me as he was only an A&E doctor. I was put in a wheelchair and on a drip. Two hours later I was transferred to another hospital where I was told that I would be looked over and given a scan to determine whether I was still pregnant. By the time I was seen to it was 6pm and they said they couldn’t do the scan as it was too late. They did an internal examination which hurt. I just wanted to go home. It upset me that I didn’t know what was happening. I was told to come back on the Friday and they would do the scan then. I went home and cried my eyes out. My body was in pain. I couldn’t cope with more pain or so I thought. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was so excited for this baby and I didn’t understand why it had to be me. I blamed myself. I went back on the Friday and they couldn’t see the baby in the scan but my hormone levels were still high so they said to come back on the Sunday to get more blood tests. I came back on the Sunday and it was confirmed that I had lost the baby. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to think or how to cope. It tore at me. It made me mad and angry, upset and cold. I could feel myself and my feelings become numb. I fought with them the following weeks/months. It was so hard to think about. Each week I’d think, “Oh I’d be this far along, the baby would be this size.” I blamed myself. When I saw a pregnant woman or a new baby I’d think “Why me?” The emotional pain was unbearable. I couldn’t stand the pain of feeling like complete rubbish again. Life is cruel but YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BOUNCE BACK!! You need to carry on. Don’t get me wrong you need time to grieve and give time to yourself but you need to look after yourself and slowly learn to deal with it. Nobody tells you how hard it is going to be, how painful it is to lose a baby and how much you will cry. I didn’t know that my body would still think it was pregnant 6 weeks after the miscarriage and when my first period came it felt like I was miscarrying all over again. Nobody tells you that you feel like a part of you is missing, that you blame yourself and hate yourself thinking it’s all your fault. You find it hard to get out of bed each morning, you find it hard to look at another pregnant woman because all you can think about is, “Why me? Why did I deserve to lose my baby?” Truth is there is no answer. It angers me that people don’t want to talk about it because it’s a ‘sensitive topic’. Yes it’s a sensitive topic but I found great comfort from talking about what happened and through that I found out that many other woman have suffered miscarriages in silence. It shouldn’t be like that. My youngest sister Anna made the biggest gesture anyone has ever done for me and made me a card with a baby beaker on one side and a note saying “Sorry about your baby. I wish that I could just turn back the clock so the baby could still be alive.” On the other side was another drawing of a baby’s beaker and another note saying “I hope that you find another baby in your belly someday. I could be an aunty.” This touched me. Her innocence, caring nature and curiosity helped me see the positives in such a negative time. A miscarriage no matter how far along is a loss, you will grieve the loss of your baby, the memories you would have had together, you will grieve because you never got to see how perfect your baby was. You will grieve just as much as you would grieve the loss of a relative or friend. I spent the first 6 months after the miscarriage not eating, blaming myself and wanting the pain to go away. The thoughts and feelings I had when I was seriously ill came back and it stung. I hated myself. One day I prayed, I sat in tears and prayed. I felt so lost and I couldn’t go on. That’s when it dawned on me that this situation would either make or break me. I didn’t want it to break me. I am strong, I’ve fought death and I won. Anything after that should be easy. I realised that not eating wouldn’t do anything, I needed to eat to live, I needed to carry on. The loss will always be painful BUT I know that it wasn’t my fault, I’m not worthless because of it and everything will be ok in the end.