My ED story. I'm writing this here as I want Teens to know how hard it is to live with an EATING DISORDER.

Wow!!! Has it been almost three years since I wrote anything here? Yep, looks that way! My son will be sixteen in March! Big change there as that was the age that I hit my first big down spiral and my Eating disorder took on a mind of its own, so to speak. That's when ED (as I call my eating disorder) started talking to me. I'd hear "Don't eat that or you'll get fat," or "You can't have that because you have already had your daily calorie intake for the day." I'd weight myself constantly and every time I looked in the mirror I would see this "fat" person. I started wearing bigger clothing so no one would notice my weight loss. I don't know how nobody really noticed until I got to college.
It was one of my boyfriends that noticed. I told him that the only way I would go to the hospital was if he and his best friend would take me. He was wrapped around my little finger. I had to drop out for the semester as I had missed so much by the time I got out of the hospital and wait for the next time it started back up. This was December 1998, February 1999, Business Administration started I had been taking Office Administration but when I went back to school in February I talked to the career counselor and told him I wanted to switch to Business. He let me, I was so much happier. My eating was still not the best but if I self talked before I ate or ate mechanically I could do it.
About a month later, I was on the bus on my way to my apartment and my heart jump out of my chest (not literally) when I seen my ex-boyfriend from my hometown. This was a Wednesday. Friday my friends and I had plans to go to the club that the University had under it. What a surprise I got when about 6 or 7 people ahead of me was my ex. At this point I still wasn't over him. We had left our relationship on good terms and the only reason why we had broken up was that he was moving due to university courses not offered in our hometown. I left my friends and said that I knew the two guys 6 or 7 people ahead and that I would be right back I was just going up to talk to them. Well, I kind of left my friends in a lurch and spent the night drinking and chatting it up with my ex and his friend. I also ended up back at his dorm room instead of mine.
After that, I ended up at his dorm more than mine more often than not. That was until May, he told me that he was going for his work term starting in June so I started to slowly distance myself. I guess I shouldn't have because he had lied. I started to see this other guy and anyways he always used protection and I had sex with him about one week before I seen my ex for the last time sexually anyways. He didn't have any protection left but he told me that he knew when to pulled out (girls - well guys too I'm going to tell you now this DOES NOT work.).
Three weeks later I was a week late and still waiting so I got a pregnancy test. It came back positive. I made a doctor's appointment and her's came back positive as well so I had to get a full blood panel. Let me tell you, for someone who is afraid of needles, I hated this and passed out on them. I'm not so bad anymore as I don't look when they are doing it but I was looking the whole time while they were doing this. I was terrified I was 20 and I was going to have a baby. I didn't know what to do. I was dating this other guy by now and we were starting to get serious I had only gone to my ex to talk because we had fought and well the talk ended being more than a talk. I knew from the dates that my doctor gave me that it wasn't my new guy that had gotten me pregnant. I waited a week before I phoned my ex. I told him that I need to talk to him and asked him to come over. Once he come over I asked him if we could go for a walk and well before I could tell him anything I had to stop because morning sickness hit me like a ton of bricks. I sat on the sidewalk throwing my guts up while he held back my hair.  Somehow he always seemed to do things like that. After I felt a little better, I moved because if I stayed there I sure would have gotten sick again just from the shear smell of the sourness from it. I stood up and  started to walk a little. I sighed and started the only way I could and told him I was pregnant. He then tells me he's not ready to be a father and asks me to get an abortion. I told him it against my religion to have one because at conception its already a baby. We talk a little more and then he leaves.
I was due February 22, 2000, I had a bouncing baby boy on March 7,2000. The first 3 months of my pregnancy were the worst because of the morning sickness. The next 3 months I convinced ED that I was eating for the baby and then the last 3 the baby kept his feet up in my rips and pressed and my bladder.
He is now almost 16, time goes by so fast and most of us doesn't realize that in a blink of an eye so much can change. I'm still battling my demons from the time I was 16 but any of you who are 16 now don't let that be you. EATING DISORDERS KILL!
There are so many complications from them that you can die from. Search it up on Google. I'm not putting it in here because I don't want this to be Pro-Ana or Pro-Mia. The warning signs of Eating disorders are on google too. They do kill, take it from me. I've lost some good friends to both Anorexia and Bulimia, neither disease is pretty. Anorexia ruined my life, it'll ruin yours too. The only good thing I got out of it is a son and a very loving and supportive husband.

Peace and Love,
Daria.

Much Needed Help for ME!!!

I've signed up for a retreat weekend at an eating disorder center as I've been struggling with Anorexia Nervosa since I was 19. I've been hospitalized countless times but just to get my weight back up to a healthy weight. I never had to deal with the emotional baggage that came with it. People think that eating disorders are all in our heads but that are only people who don't understand them. People with eating disorders use it as a way to cope.

"Anorexia is not about weight or food

Believe it or not, anorexia isn't really about food and weight—at least not at its core. Eating disorders are much more complicated than that. The food and weight-related issues are symptoms of something deeper: things like depression, loneliness, insecurity, pressure to be perfect, or feeling out of control. Things that no amount of dieting or weight loss can cure.

©Helpguide.org. All rights reserved. This site is for information only and NOT a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment."

I first developed Anorexia when I moved away from home to go to college. I would walk the bus route first but after i got to know the city better I found shorter routes to school but I carried my most heaviest books so that I had more weight in my backpack and was sweating by the time I got back to my apartment as I knew that would help me lose weight. Then I cut back on my food intake and exercised more then I joined a hip hop dance class. During one class,after I had lost about 35 pounds, I fainted. This was some where near the beginning of November. I woke up in the hospital with an I.V tube connected to me 2 days later. There was a doctor there to explain to me what had happened and a dietitian to go over meal plans while I was in the hospital. It took me 6 weeks to get back up to a healthy weight. I was 125 pounds when I started losing weight. I had to be 110 pounds before they would let me leave the hospital. I got weighed every Tuesday and Thursday back on from the scale which is called a BLIND WEIGHT.

Signs of Anorexia

• Dramatic weight loss – Rapid, drastic weight loss with no medical cause.
• Feeling fat, despite being underweight – You may feel overweight in general or just “too fat” in certain places such as the stomach, hips, or thighs.
• Fixation on body image – Obsessed with weight, body shape, or clothing size. Frequent weigh-ins and concern over tiny fluctuations in weight.
• Harshly critical of appearance – Spending a lot of time in front of the mirror checking for flaws. There’s always something to criticize. You’re never thin enough.
• Denial that you’re too thin – You may deny that your low body weight is a problem, while trying to conceal it (drinking a lot of water before being weighed, wearing baggy or oversized clothes).

©Helpguide.org. All rights reserved. This site is for information only and NOT a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment.

I've been struggling with it again recently. I have been seeing a Psychiatric Nurse for almost a year now and I've been seeing a dietitian for over a year. I have had a Psychiatrist since I moved to Saskatchewan with my son when I was 26 and he was 3. Wow, how time flies! He's so almost grown now! I don't think teenagers these days realize how serious eating disorders are but I'm speaking from experience. I've been fighting with mine for over a decade and I don't want my son to end up with one so I'm going for help to break the cycle. I'm going for help before he develops one. This is NOT something to mess with, this is LIFE AND DEATH and I'M CHOOSING LIFE!

I hope whoever decides to read this gets the message that eating disorders kill. I'm just getting out before mine kills me. Life is worth living and I want to be there to see my son graduate from High School. I want to see him get married and I want to be able to hold my grandkids and watch them grow. SO I'm CHOOSING TO LIVE AND THAT MEANS I HAVE TO CHANGE MY EATING HABITS AND MY THINKING. It all starts in 4 weeks.

Bullying - Pink Shirt Day - February 29, 2012

I thought because Pink Shirt Day is February 29th in Canada for Bullying I'd write about bullying as I was bullied as a child.  My name is uncommon where I grew up and that is what I was bullied about.

Bullying - What Can Be Done?

 Bullying hasn't changed much over the years.  The only change that I have observed these days is that it has gained another avenue; the computer.  Bullies use name-calling, hitting, ignoring, and writing nasty things as ways of bullying.  This leaves the person being bullied feeling uncomfortable or scared and sometimes even sad.  People think that bullying only makes us stronger but it hurts us, it beats down our self esteem.  Bullying is repeated, intentional, aggressive behavior toward someone more vulnerable than the bully.

I moved four times while going to school, twice in the same grade.  I was halfway through grade three when we moved from our farm to the city so I went from a class of 15 to a class of 36.  I was the subject of bullying as I was the NEW kid and I also had very dry skin.  The kids made up this game of "I had fleas".  It was a game of tag where I was always "it" and whoever I touched got "my fleas" and was "it" with me until everyone had them.  I didn't feel like I was getting bullied until our teacher asked the class who was playing the game and asked the class to stop playing.

From that day forward, I played alone on the playground and was made fun of all the time until some of the girls started to ask me what I liked and found out I wasn't any different than them.  I just grew up in a different province.  I wanted to be a fairy princess when I grew up, I listened to Celine Dion and I LOVED playing with marbles.  I had two younger sisters who bugged the *ell out of me and another sibling on the way.  I was hoping for a boy so when he was older, we could beat the other two up.  They were quite a bit younger and SMALLER than me and with a boy, he'd grow to be bigger than the girls.

We moved again six weeks after my brother was born and six weeks before the school year was over.  Back to my home province and hometown.  I was happy, my old friends, my old school and my old classmates is what I wanted after the year I had in grade three.  I had passed grade three but my mom and dad had decided to keep me in grade three again because when we got home, which had a shorter school year, I was behind.  They only had two weeks of school left.  I had only started to learn how to do handwriting when we had left.  Everyone back home had been handwriting for two months already so I was behind in that aspect but that was the only way I was behind and the only reason I was kept behind.

The only way I was ever bullied was verbally (name-calling, teasing).  The only reason I was bullied was because of my name.  It's different and nobody in the town I grew up in had it.  Its that unique to that area.  I began to hate my name because the kids were making fun of me for it.  I lost count of how many times I asked my parents to change it as a child.

When I was fifteen, I moved in with my father and grandmother.  I had known at a very young age that my dad was my step-dad but he raised me and he is my dad and always will be because I only spent four years with my father and grandmother.  I was bullied at the school there too, but it wasn't because of my name.  It was because I liked to write in my spare time.  One recess, I had left one of my stories out on my desk  while I went to the washroom before class started and one of my classmates had got hold of it and when I got back to the classroom, he started to make fun of me for it.  I was so embarrassed, I left the classroom in tears and went and hid in one of the two girls washrooms in the school.  One of the girls from the classroom, who just happened to be really nice came to check on me minutes later and we sat down on a bench there because it was the change rooms up my the gym.  She talked to me and calmed me down and told me to ignore him.  He was just jealous because he couldn't write as well as that without a topic to write about.  She made me feel better and I never let him get to me again when it came to my writing.  I always got better marks than him in Language Arts all through High School because not only did I do my assignments but I wrote stories all the time so my writing was always better than his.

I was also bullied at home by my grandmother.  I look a lot like my mom and my grandmother didn't like my mom for some reason or another.  She never told me why.  While my mom was dating my father my grandmother would call my mom "purple tooth" (my grandmother told me this).  My mom had a dead front tooth back then and that is why it was purple, it is now a false tooth and has been a false tooth as long as I can remember.  Whenever my grandmother was mad at me she would call my "old mare" (just like your mother), "Cow" and she would also ignore me when I talked to her.  She wouldn't talk to me either and she would turn her back when she was walking by me.  She wouldn't look at me at all.  This hurt more than getting bullied at school because it was coming from family.  I never let her see that it got to me though.  The first time I did because I didn't know what to expect but after that I never did.

Some Ways To Combat Verbal Bullying Are:

• Ignore the bully and walk away.
• Hold the anger.
• Don't get physical
• Practice confidence.
• Take charge of your life.
• Talk about it.
• And find your (TRUE) friends.

I hope this has been informative and has shown you that bullying really does hurt.  It hurt me while growing up.  Am I a better person for it?  I don't know but I do know one thing, when I see and hear about other kids or my own child being bullied I jump at the chance to stop it because I know of the impact it will have on their lives later in life.

Encouragement!

Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 12:48 PM
subject
BCWI Response

Dear Daria,
Thanks so much for the message at Build Creative Writing Ideas! I understand how hard it must be to write about something so painful. Personally, I've had luck putting parts of my books on my website and I've even made a few sales as a result.
But it doesn't seem like your sales are the issue here. It's a matter of getting this dang thing out of your system and writing the first draft as fast as possible so that you don't even have time to let your fear catch up. I think if putting up this first chapter and sharing it with your friends and readers will help you to feel more comfortable telling the rest of your story, you should do it!
Good luck and let me know how everything goes.
Sincerely,
Bryan
--
Creatively stuck? ::: http://www.build-creative-writing-ideas.com
Like Nerdy Superheroes? ::: http://www.bryancohen.com




I've never had so many encouraging words from someone other than family or friends before.  Receiving this email from Bryan made my day and has me back writing my book like there is no tomorrow.  I write from 9-10am while I'm at my light therapy, take a short walk home.  Write from 11am-12pm, have my lunch, go outside on my step for a smoke and a lesuirely read from my Kobo.  Come inside, check my email, go onto Byran Cohen's website and read his latest post, and then wait for my son to get home from school.

Once my son is home, we do his homework if he has any, he goes down in the basement for a half hour to practice his clarient, while I prepare supper unless its steak or pork chops then it's up to my fiancee when he gets home from work.  At 7, we have supper, and after that my son has free time until 8:30.  Once he is in bed I write for another hour some nights if I feel the creative juices flowing but most days I just get two hours of writing time in.

A housewife's work is never done, we have laundry and rooms in the house to clean before we go to bed every night.  Before school every morning we have lunches to pack and agendas to sign and make sure they have everything in their backpacks they need for school.