Warning - I talk about eating disorders in this post.
Hi everyone. I’ll try to make this as digestible as possible. I’m 28, American, work full time, and live with my boyfriend of 8 years. I am also chronically ill but will get to that further below.
Lifelong weight issues, when I was 8 I started to go through puberty and gain weight, turned out I had hypothyroidism. I was on medication until around 18/19, and get my TSH checked every sixish months. This is when I was the lowest in my adult life, about 105lbs.
My highest was 230lbs and I’m currently 190lbs. I’m 5’0” tall, and female if that wasn’t apparent.
My weight has went up and down throughout the last 20 years. I have an eating disorder. It has changed throughout the years, I’ve done it all - starvation, binging, vomiting, hiding food, spending thousands of dollars a year (as an adult) on convenience food, chewing food up and spitting into a bag, excessive exercise, laxative use. The biggest issue with that was the bulimia. Due to the bulimia, I now need $14,000 of dental work with no way to pay for it and a hiatal hernia in my stomach causing bad GERD. There’s a post in my history on r/bulimia if you want more details. As of last week I am six months free from the behaviors.
I was diagnosed with SLE lupus at 23 and have been on medication for that for the last few years. I deal with daily pain but am not on any pain medication. I did become very psychologically addicted to marijuana, which I am quitting as of today (told my contact I’m done, and I’m out). It made makes me a worse version of myself - more likely to make bad dietary choices and not want to move or exercise.
I’m very mentally ill (bipolar II & anxiety) and have been on a leave of absence from my work for two months, unpaid, and I have run out of savings. I am on a lot of medication, and throughout everything, have gained a lot of weight and made myself even more sick.
I was diagnosed with pseudotumor cerebri. It’s a rare disease that primarily effects overweight women of childbearing age. It’s a brain condition that mocks the symptoms of a brain tumor. For some reason, my body is creating too much spinal fluid and it’s collecting around my brain, squeezing it. Doctors know it usually has to do with weight but they don’t really know why. Due to my higher than desired weight, I may go permanently blind. I am about 60lbs overweight. My doctor wants me to lose at least 20, I want to lose anywhere from 70 to 90.
I take a new photo of myself maybe once every six months, out of a dozen, then edited until I can stomach it. I feel absolutely disgusting, inside and out. I am seeing a new psychiatrist as I think my old one didn’t have my best interests at heart. I’m working on my mind. I don’t engage in bulimic behavior anymore. But my mind cannot fully heal until I work on my body.
I’ve spent so much time hating myself. Every single day, even in summer, I wear black leggings and a large flowy shirt/sweater that covers my butt. I have no fashion sense because I feel too fat and ugly to even wear a t-shirt or knee length shorts outside in public. I haven’t bought new clothes in about two years.
I don’t let anyone take a photo of or with me. My boyfriend and I have less than 10 photos together. What if he dies tomorrow? I would have barely any photos to bring up memories to look back on. What if I die? I’m in bad health. I have lupus and am 50x more likely to have a heart attack than other women my age. He would have almost no photos with me.
I’m crying as I’m writing this; the central theme of my life has been neglect. My house is a mess, my body is a mess, my mind is a mess, my finances are a mess, my entire fucking life is a mess. I feel like a frenzied animal in a cage, who realized it’s trapped and is running around every which-way, banging into the walls, trying to find escape. I feel like I’ve been in a coma throughout my 20s, like I dissociated from myself.
I told my boyfriend last week that I feel like I became the horrible nightmare version of myself, like the physical embodiment a broken mirror in a dark room. Like all of the blood in my veins have been replaced by a thick black sludge and it’s made it’s way to my heart. I feel like my soul is poisoned. Maybe I’m right.
Maybe losing weight won’t fix everything, but it would fix a lot. I’m sure this is way too long for anyone to read, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2J77FeN
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