“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2017

So goes the saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Yet, not all things can be avoided. Some things are beyond our control – nature’s one hell of a force. Some things are above our control – let’s be honest, we’re only one ickle percentage of a really, really big world, and major change takes unity. Some things are out of our control – try as you will, sometimes science and DNA and all that messy biological/chemical stuff is just out of human hands. 

I didn’t choose my eating disorder. It is the biggest lie of control I have ever heard…it is the biggest lie of control I have ever told myself. Prevention. I could have moved state in my attempt to outrun the silent hurricane that is an ED. As anorexia’s tunnel vision blinded me to anything beyond the illness, I could have vowed to have the greenest carbon footprint going – heck, I could have vowed to be so green I practically floated (oh the irony). I could have studied biology and chemistry, thrown in some physics for good-measure and became my own topic of experimentation, but the “logic” of an eating disorder escapes even the most academic of explanations. I could have hidden in my room and never ventured into the big, wide world of unknowns and potential dangers, and I could have promised to dedicate my life to finding answers, forever sheltered from the culture that may scald me.

I didn’t.

And you see, doing so wouldn’t have “saved me”.  I did one heck of a lot of running (not across America, as such), and I’m an avid recycler/walker. I lived a life of veg for so long I risked turning green. And yet, chances are, my eating disorder would have searched high and low and found even the best of hiding places. I couldn’t outrun my own head. I didn’t study the sciences, and I won’t pretend to be a genetical-genius, but I’ve done enough Googling (of scientific journals as well as motivational posts) to know that pre-disposition and brain matter and neurological make-up DOES play a part. I smiled brightly and wore “functioning” oh-so-well, and hey, I never, ever searched for perfection in glossy magazines. With illness, whether physical or mental, sometimes prevention isn’t a clean cut option - however much we wish it were that simple.

A lot of people have tried to cure me. Some have pretended to have all the answers. Some have explicitly claimed to have none. I’m not sure to what extent my descent to illness could have been “prevented”, as such, because in many ways, it was out of my control. And its lies of being the most profound means of control I’d ever perfect were just that: manipulative, deceptive, captivating, suffocating, painfully believable lies. What I do believe, very strongly, is that the extent of the time that anorexia stole with ruthless, unquenchable thirst, could have been prevented.

I didn’t choose my eating disorder. But I did/do, to an extent, choose to get better. It’s a choice I make nearly every second of every day. I live for those brief moments in which my thought path is not entirely consumed by numbers and numbness. Those moments are both fleeting and idealistic, hopeless and hopeful. It’s the startled wake up from a nightmare in which I’m eating X or Y, and the painful reality of being stood at the counter of my favourite coffee shop, armed with a loyalty card and the exact change, and the order that has slipped so easily from my mouth before I even realise I’ve messed up, stumbled at the first hurdle: failed. Again. It's keeping on keeping on...with an illness that's sole desire is to ensure you do the complete opposite. 

It took a solid 4 years from me first trying to access the help I so desperately needed and wanted, to receiving said help. In which time, I deteriorated more, lost more time. In which time, anorexia won. I wasn’t looking for a cure. I wasn’t looking for prevention. Nobody could wave the magic wand and cure me – and I genuinely believe that, although I slipped through many a net, I fell into a few pairs of hands that would have healed me, had magic been at their disposal! I wanted help. And what WAS preventable is the extent to which I had to fall before receiving that help…

A school counsellor who I had to remind my name each week

A handful of teachers who used my poor mental health as a threat

2 named care co-ordinators (before they decided it wasn’t worth giving me another as I was leaving the area in 7 months’ time…)

A specialist eating disorder psychologist, who genuinely was on my side…but retired before anything was arranged

A counsellor who told me off for being “too smiley”

A GP who told me she’d phone every 7 days to “check I was still alive”…phoned twice and never again

A Crisis Team whose promises fell flat time and time again - a dangerous game

The manager of a CMHT who told me I should “do some research into areas with a good ED service and then consider moving there” – this comment remains a personal favourite…the lunacy/idealism makes me smile, because what else is there to say/do?!

A GP who saved my life

A GP who picked up from the previous and promised she’d fight for help – she has and is

A dietician and a whole load of leaflets

Some tutors who made my degree possible

A specialist consultant who told me I was "choosing a career as an anorexic"

A counsellor who reassured me it wasn’t my fault that services were so lacking

More assessments than I could count

More waiting rooms than coffees with friends

More hours in appointments than uni contact hours

More nurses than I can name

More blood tests and butterfly needles than my poor veins would allow

More prescriptions than I care to remember

More appointments and NHS time than I care to admit

An eating disorders ward that started the healing, gave me hope, and let me start letting myself live

A specialist OP team who are determined to keep me afloat, even, and especially, when my eating disorder has other plans

This list could, and does, go on, but you get the idea. The point I’m making, amid all my metaphors, is very simple: I don’t believe anyone could have prevented anorexia from cruelly entering my life. I have never wished for anyone to “cure” me. I have wished a thousand times over to “cure” others, and thus I know how oversimplified such a wish is. However, early intervention – early, SPECIALIST intervention – could have prevented anorexia from stealing years of my life. Early specialist intervention could have prevented anorexia from wrapping me in chains and swallowing the key. It’s that simple. It matters. I know I’m not alone, and that breaks my heart - this is happening up and down the country, indiscriminately. Please, I'm begging you, don't play into an eating disorder's manipulative hands. Some things are above our control, illness being one of them, but together we’re a force to be reckoned with; channel that force into accessible treatment and maybe, just maybe, such a life-controlling illness will be halted in its stamped – I, for one, have little left to lose.

SockItSelfie <3