Well, hi. So I was asked by monkeyslut95 to post my story to do with my eating disorder and whatnot, which was fuelled by this post I made about how One Direction helped my friend, Emily, and I with our eating disorders and, yeah, I’m gonna post it now.

It will be long and full of self-hatred/insights on my life and all that cock and bull. I’ll put a line of bolded stars for when One Direction come into all of it if you want to skip over all the angst and just get straight to that. I don’t care. This is also going under a Read More. This is only my story as Emily hasn’t been online, so… yeah. I don’t know, this is sort of awkward.

The whole bulimia thing started around February, March in 2011. I can’t really pinpoint an exact date but, wow, it’s almost been a year. I can’t actually believe that right now. Fuck. It’s taken me this long to want to stop, that’s unbelievable. I’m just going to try not to think about that.

I’ve always had self-esteem problems, mostly to do with my weight. I didn’t do exercise and ate a lot of crappy food, so I wasn’t the fittest person. Looking back now, I wasn’t the fattest either but, in my eyes, I looked obese. I was surrounded by so many thin girls, like a majority of my best friends and my older sister, so it was hard to not feel down about yourself. I had thought about not eating before, starving myself and all that, and even tried once. I lasted almost 48 hours before I caved in and binged like there was no tomorrow. Most teenage girls can relate, obviously, so I’m not a special snowflake—asides from those few lucky girls who have their heads screwed on and are confident with how they look, the bulk of us have detested our own bodies before.

The bulimia didn’t really start because I thought I was fat. On the first day I did it, it was because I didn’t like how much food I had eaten in such a small space of time. I wanted to get rid of it. The only way I knew how was to force myself to vomit it all back up, which I did. It wasn’t pleasant. It hurt. I was crying and my throat was sore and I felt horrible. But, in the end, it all came back up and, in a twisted sort of way, I felt better about myself.

It wasn’t frequent in the first month or two. Once a week, maybe twice—I still hated my body, but not enough to want to vomit up every bit of food. I mentioned it to my friend, who encouraged it as long as it made me happy. It’s fucked up, yes, but I was content at the time that she was allowing me to do it, so I continued. I didn’t really want to tell people, didn’t want it to go around the school and reach my family (who still don’t know, and I forever plan to keep it that way), though I did mention it to two girls in my home room once. They were worried, concerned and told me the entire day that what I was doing was wrong. After that day, they didn’t try to talk to me about it again. I guess they think I got over it. Oops.

Around April-ish, a couple months after it started, I started talking to this guy. I know this is an Eating Disorder post, not an Aysha’s Relationships post, but basically I had been talking to this guy on Facebook who was a mate of mine’s mate and he was sweet. He told me a lot of things about himself and his families, things you tell someone you’re really close to. I wanted to tell him about my bulimia but didn’t want to say it over Facebook as anyone could just go into his Facebook and read it, right. So I saw him in person at the shops and we sat down in the park across the road underneath a tree, a very picturesque Hollywood-style date, I guess. We were talking, having a laugh, when I told him I had an eating disorder. I don’t know why but I didn’t specify which one. It doesn’t matter because regardless of whether or not I specified it, this guy that I had been talking to for weeks and who I thought I shared something with looked down at my stomach—which was uncovered as my shirt had rode up sometime during conversation—and said:

“But don’t you have to be thin to have an eating disorder?”

And I just fucking lost it. I ran away from him, crying, and I bussed my way home and I was just so upset. I tore up some magazines of mine and accidentally smashed a glass and deleted him and his mate and I was just so angry. I don’t care how much I hated myself and my body and how I had convinced myself that anyone telling me I was thin was blatantly lying, but the last thing you fucking do when someone reveals to you that they may possibly have an eating disorder is to insinuate that they’re fat.

It was honestly the first night I made myself vomit numerous times. Three times, if I recall correctly. One before dinner, twice after. It was mostly bile by the end of it but I just wanted it all up. I fucking hated him and myself and I couldn’t even look at myself. Never felt so disgusting in my whole life. With that, I did some stuff that night I regret. I’d rather not go into detail about it but let’s just say it gratefully didn’t leave scars.

What he said was basically the catalyst to the rest of my bulimia. For the next few months, I just went downhill.

Sometimes I vomited up to four times a day. I’d do it with family present (I would go out in the backyard and do it). I’d do it at school. I’d do it after eating low-calorie yoghurt that I only had one mouthful of. Possibly the worst time I did it was while I was at work, where I excused myself and vomited up in the toilets and had a little cry. They thought I was sick because I hadn’t eaten and made me eat a cheeseburger, but I just vomited that up also.

I started wearing jumpers and hoodies a lot around this time, which was maybe late May? It was something a lot of girls do. You know, wear jumpers to hide yourself. Because I won’t go into this later, I’d just like to say that I wore the hoodies and stuff in late spring, when it really began getting hot. I always got asked about why I wore all these jumpers, it was so hot, etc. I’ve now given up on wearing jumpers and have taken to wearing some mid-riff tops. Doesn’t really help with my self-esteem, but at least I’m not sweating my life away.

I’m going to recall a special day before the Miley Cyrus concert here. She was my first and favourite celebrity crush and she finally came to Adelaide after my almost six years of loving her. Even though she wouldn’t see me at the concert and even though I knew that, I wanted to look good for her. I made myself vomit six times that  day.

Another interlude of Aysha’s Relationships but there was a pause in my bulimia from early July to late August because I met this guy. He was nice. Really nice. He listened to my problems and he held me and he was just brilliant. I kind of broke his heart, but that’s another entire story. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know about the bulimia and my self-confidence (or lack thereof) and how crap I felt about myself, but we were at the Pancake Kitchen, which is a 24/7 restaurant that sells savoury/dessert pancakes which are amazing. I hadn’t eaten there in a while so it was nice to go there with my close friends and this guy. But halfway through me eating my pancakes, I suddenly felt this hand on my lower back and my guy whispered into my ear, “You’re so insecure, aren’t you?”

And I don’t know what it was about his words that set me off, but something did. I wanted him gone. I wanted to stop eating my pancakes. I wanted to vomit them back up. Why was he telling me I was insecure when finally, fucking finally, I felt somewhat alright about myself that I was able to eat these huge, calorie-filled pancakes. I went home that night and vomited. Not long after, whatever he and I had was ruined and we broke up. And he quoted poetry to me through Facebook, which was pretty hilarious but, yeah, not the right story for today.

Some shit happened with this guy from my school (okay, interlude again, but you need backstory on this guy: I had practically been in love with him for two years and he and I told mostly everything to each other and I recently told him about my bulimia and he was so sweet about it and he was the first person I smoked weed with and he recently had cancer removed and I adore him, alright?) that ended up with him telling me he hated me and I back-pedaled. A lot. I fell back into my routine of vomiting, of hating myself.

Now we’re in September, I think. This timeline is all over the place, alright? But anyway. This month was… bad. Really bad. It was a mixture of family issues and social issues and hating my school, my work, everyone that surrounded me and, yeah, the hatred for myself played a huge part in this month. Not a lot of people know this, probably only Emily at this point, but I easily could’ve died this month. Was so close to passing out after strangling myself, like… the world was just spinning and I was losing focus and I went from standing to lying on the floor… I managed to stop myself, though. I don’t know why I did, but I am so fucking glad I did. I am so glad I lived to see October.

*********

Because October is when I became a fan of One Direction. Yeah, this is 1.7k words thus far. Fuck.

Now I would like to state before we get any further that, yes, I became a fan of One Direction because I heard WMYB on the radio. I know some of you fans are elitist and are all “I liked them on X Factor, so nyah!” Well, I just want to point out now that I really do not care. Trot on.

I had heard WMYB a few times on radio, but I had never really listened to it. You know when a song just plays and you hear it, but only faintly? You’re concentrating on something else? Yeah, it was one of those songs at first. In my defence, it played mostly on my way home from school or on my way to work so I really had no motivation to listen to the songs on the radio. But one day, I don’t know, I finally listened. And something about the song sort of clicked in my head.

These boys (I didn’t know how many there were at the time hah), whoever they were, were telling me that because I don’t know I’m beautiful, I’m beautiful. I don’t know why, but it just made my heart swell up. The song got stuck in my head that night and I couldn’t stop singing it. I didn’t throw up that night, which was actually extraordinary. That didn’t happen often.

I finally searched up the band who sung this song that made me smile and feel nice about myself (it was slowly turning into what She Will Be Loved meant to me, which was my go-to insecurity song) and I went through all the stages a new fan goes through. Ooh, they’re cute. They’re British? Pip pip, cheerio. They were on X Factor? That’s nice. Look, an interview! Heh, that one is so funny. Video diaries? What are these? Hm, reckon I might click.

And then it just took off from there. I downloaded their songs that were out, I watched hundreds of videos, I joined Tumblr (on an account that I deleted) and I became a fan. It was so sweet at first. Liking this new band of five talented singers, who were obviously very gorgeous, and I felt like such a teenage girl again. I had been feeling so old at the time, not like a teenager at all, so it was nice to be reminded, I guess.

The bulimia was still continuing. Twice a day, every day of the week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. All I know was that it continued. I still hated myself, I still wore jumpers, I still pinched and scratched every inch of fat I could until it was red raw or even until it bled. I fucking hated myself still, as much as I ever had.

But then in the middle of November, something happened. I had gone through as much videos as a new fan possibly could, I was falling in love and I started dreaming about them (nothing sexual, oh god) and I was reaching that status as a fan that’s somewhere nicely between dedicated and obsessed. I danced to their songs while I cleaned my room, I ended up not studying in exam week in favour of watching more videos—I still passed my exams!—and they just made me want to smile all the time. It had gotten hard to smile in 2011 so finally having a reason to smile was great. It made me want to cry. I did cry, actually.

I was readying myself to vomit. I was home alone and I had eaten too much dinner. I actually hadn’t eaten that much but, at the time, it felt as if it had been an entire cow. As I reached to put my fingers in my mouth, something came to my mind. Something I had seen one onedirectioncutefacts’ tumblr. This photo, actually. I hadn’t ever seen the tweet but this photo alone… fuck. Now I know that it should be a worldwide knowledge to never call a girl ‘fat’, but at the time all I could do was compare Harry’s tweet to “But don’t you have to be thin to have an eating disorder?” and I ended up just sitting back from the toilet and had a huge think right then, right there.

Yeah, I had my huge bulimic epiphany in front of a toilet. Txt it!!!

I know that at the time, I had only been a fan for a month, give or take a few days. I wasn’t their biggest, their best, their most in-the-know fan—I was just a new fan who really liked them. And as a fan who really liked them, I began to question myself.

Would they want to know a fan has bulimia? Would they want to know a fan hates herself? Would they want to know a fan ended up bed-ridden for two weeks because her health had deteriorated so badly because of what she was doing to herself? Would they want to know a fan might’ve killed herself if she hadn’t found out about them?

Even writing that made me cringe. I’ve always wondered how a fan can depend on a band or a celebrity to save their lives, but I started to understand. At the time, only four people knew about my bulimia. One was encouraging, one didn’t say anything and two had forgotten. I wasn’t opening up about it either. I didn’t want a counsellor or to be treated differently or any of that crap. I was dealing (a lie, but I believed it) fine by myself. So to start liking One Direction and to suddenly have all these feelings, it opened doorways.

Sitting there in front of that toilet, I began to contemplate whether or not I was going around this whole ‘getting thinner’ thing the right way. All it took was eight months, a few boy issues (a few girl ones as well ha), too much hatred and a lot of vomiting before I finally told myself that maybe this was wrong.

And all it took was to fall in love with One Direction.

Between mid-November and the start of December, I listened to One Direction more and tried to think of them to stop myself from going to the toilet. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. All I know is that listening to Moments and WMYB and Same Mistakes is a whole lot better than kneeling over a toilet bowl or the back garden, crying and dry heaving and gagging and vomiting. I even began to feel better about myself, which may have had something to do with Harry saying he likes curves on girls (yes, I am purposely ignoring the fact he likes girls with flat stomachs – leave me with my bliss) and because I was beginning to talk to this new guy, who told me I was beautiful as is.

On the night of December 4^th, I decided that I would try and stop my bulimia. Try is definitely the keyword there, but I’ll get to that a bit later. For some reason, I decided to send a message to Eleanor and asked if she could tell the boys that they’ve helped a girl from Australia want to overcome her eating disorder. As embarrassing as the message is, I received a reply from Eleanor which you can read here.

Her reply, whether or not she was telling the truth, was what cemented the idea of getting better in my head. If the boys knew that they were helping me, I didn’t want to let them down.

Obviously I’ve hit a few bumps. I have made myself vomit a few times from the 4^th until now, with the last date being on the 26^th. Although I had happily been a glutinous pig on Christmas, Boxing Day didn’t treat me so well and it all just had to come up. I haven’t done it since. Well, not voluntarily, anyhow.

I received a virus on the 4^th of January. Not sure where it came from. All I know is that I spent the entire day vomiting. Eight times in total. Almost vomited all over my doctor as well, which was actually funny. I had my mum by me the entire time, rubbing my back, telling me how unpleasant it was to vomit, and I had a bit of a cry. She thought I was crying because I was vomiting except I was actually crying over the fact that I wish I had her all those months to rub my back, to care for me. I almost told her about it all but then I got a mouth full of vomit so that stopped those plans.

It’s the 15^th now. I haven’t made myself vomit in over 20 days, and it’s a fantastic feeling. Absolutely phenomenal. Yes, my self-esteem still isn’t the greatest and I had a little cry over how my stomach wasn’t flat enough just last night, but I’m on my way. I know it.

It’s surprising that One Direction had such an effect on me. I went from vomiting every day, despising every inch of myself, almost killing myself to feeling beautiful whenever I hear a One Direction song, laughing more and not spending half my time hovering over a toilet. It’s surprising, but I am not complaining in the least.

What One Direction has done for me is surreal. More than surreal. It’s downright fucking amazing. I don’t care if they never know about me (though I’m still clinging to that hope that Eleanor did tell them) as there are other fans who deserve to be known by them or how they’ve helped me, but all I care about is that I know and that I can always keep on my mind that they’ve, in a huge way, saved me before when I’m feeling down and that they can definitely save me again.

So this is my huge eating disorder post on what happened and how One Direction helped me and it’s over 3k and very long and tedious. Probably not all that interesting but… whatever. Deal. It was nice to get it all out finally, hah.

I’m going to head off now to sleep for a bit but not before I say that I’ve now got a One Direction poster next to me bed, which I’ve written over in invisible ink. Though no one else can see it and it’s quite pointless as I don’t have the light for it, I still know that I’ve written ‘SMILE’ all over it and that’s all I need.

Hopefully I can fall asleep tonight with a smile.

Thank you anyone who’s read this :)

EDIT: It is the 18th of March now and, during the two months from when I wrote this until now, I’ve relapsed a few times with my bulimia and attempted to kill myself again. I’m still trying so fucking hard to get through it, and hopefully I will.

I’m seeing One Direction on April 18th and I’ve made a promise to myself that, after their concert, I will not ever make myself throw up or attempt to kill myself again.

I’m going to try so hard to keep this promise.