Posts tagged submissions

“I just wanted to share my story.

When I was 4 years old, I began taking Ballet classes. By the time I was 11, ballet was my life. I won a lot of competitions in that time, and in the next 3 years, I won state champion 2 times and came 2nd the other, and I won National champion once (all for my age group, of course.)

But, when I was 14 I started restricting, had to know the calories in every single thing I ate, and I made sure I’d work every single one of them off. 6 months after this had started, I’d lost about 15pounds and I got a very major role that was supposed to be for someone several years older, but I deserved it. I trained harder and restricted more. My parents took me to a doctor who diagnosed me with Anorexia NervosaI was immediately pulled out of Ballet and forced into recovery.

After 2 months of being an out-patient, I was sent to a Recovery centre as an in-paitent. At that point, I was a high-risk patient. I started gaining weight, and was released after I gained about 20lbs. I started doing ballet again, quickly finding where I had left off. Ballet triggered me and I soon fell back into my Anorexia Nervosa and started losing weight again. I got another major spot in a play and won lots of competitons. I won state another time, but only placed 3rd at Nationals.

I’m now 16, I’ve been in recovery 3 times and I continue on with Ballet. Ballet is my life, but also my trigger. It sounds so stereotypical for the Ballerina to Anorexia, but it happens and only to a very small amount of us. I’ll always struggle with my Anorexia, but I’m now recovered and I plan on staying that way. I just thought I’d share my story.”

Hi Anon rather than post 5 separate asks I just copied them into one post.  Thank you for your story,  I love receiving them.  I am very glad to hear you are recovered now and still have managed to keep your ballet passion. You have obviously got great talent and had great success at it although it is also a great shame ballet  has triggered you so many times.  Unfortunately ballet and a few other sports have a bit to answer for in terms of the ability to contribute to stirring up eds.  I will try and find some info on this and post it for interest.  

Thanks again for your story and all the best for your future life,  I hope you continue to stay strong.    One thing I hope you will keep in mind is that if one day you have a daughter of your own  as much as you love ballet yourself it might be wise to steer her clear of it, considering your genetics and your experience of ballet being very triggering. <3

Hi :)
I am currently working on two tumblr projects. I hope that some people can get involved and help me with them :)

Taking Back Our Strength - Video Project

The idea: A video consisting of photos from my followers and other eating disorder recovery blogs to provide motivation and reminders of why recovery is what we want.

Logistics:
Submit a photo of you answering the following question by either holding up a piece of paper, a banner, writing it on yourself or any other creative way!!

The questions:
1. What have you lost from your eating disorder? (Write “I lost…”)
2. Why do you want to recover? (Write “I want to recover because….”)
3. Something that personally helps you with recovery (write “…helps me with my recovery”)
4. What has recovery given you? (write “Recovery has given me….”)
5. Who positively inspires you? Could be ANYONE. (Write “….. inspires me”)

There should be one photo for each single answer, you can submit as many or as little answers as you wish, and you can answer the same question as many times as you want to. If you want to hide your face, that is absolutely fine. No nudity please.

Reasons why?: I want this to be a positive video, a whole page will be dedicated to it on my blog and beneath it there will be a list featuring links to the blogs of everyone who takes part. I want it to be somewhere where anyone can go and remember why they hated their eating disorder, why recovery is so good and why they want to keep on fighting and see the courage of others and the support they have.

Others Taking Back Their Strength - Eating Disorder Recovery Blog List

This page is here for people who are searching for others in the same situation as them, taking back their strength and recovering from an eating disorder.

Some may be availableto give help and advice, but please be aware that this is not a requirement to be featured on this page, this is simply a ‘network’ of people who are all battling the same demon.

To be added to this page please leave the following in my ask:
1. Blog url
2. Name, age, gender
3. Disorder history (just the name/description is fine)
4. Stage of recovery (choose from 1. Contemplating, 2. in recovery and trying, 3. doing well, 4. Nearly there, 5. Recovered.)
5. Do you post ANY material that can be considered triggering, if so in what way and do you give trigger warnings? (photos, quotes, thinspo, personal posts)

Please note, if I feel your blog may be too triggering, I will not post your link in order to protect my followers or anyone who visits the page. I will let you know if this happens.

If anyone has any questions about these projects my ask is always open - I hope lots of people want to get involved :)

The information here can also be found on my blog.

Keep fighting beautiful people!! x x x

http://takingbackmystrength.tumblr.com/

What a wonderful idea,  thank you for the submission

It’s hard to explain something that is just so natural, but sometimes you have to let something out, or it’ll eat you up inside. So this is my story, and it’s not always pretty, and it’s rarely happy, but sometimes the truth is all that’s left to tell. From as young as I can remember, I hated myself, I would do things at primary school and instantly wonder what I had done and why I had done that. Even something that was normal for a child, falling over or breaking something, I would hide and cry and call myself stupid over and over again. I remember it vividly. The earliest memory I have is when I was at a park and I saw all these girls older than me and I thought to myself that I’d never be like them, I was stupid and worthless and useless. It wasn’t that I’d done anything, it was just an innate feeling that I had. A core belief I held of myself. Sometimes you meet people, and they’re just sad, that’s just the way it is. Then, when I was ten years old, I started restricting my food to try to physically manifest the deep hatred I could feel burning up inside me. I would not eat for long periods of time, or only eat when I was in my parent’s presence. It got to the point where I fasted for three days and nearly fainted in school. I don’t remember much about this time, until it got truly out of hand the most part of my life is a hungry blur. Then, one day, when I was 13 my mother got the call. She’d been ill since I was born and on all sorts of new medicines and treatments that were being tested out to try and give herself a few extra years, and finally they’d found a match for her to have a double long transplant. I was left at home when my parents went into hospital, and I didn’t hear from them for hours and hours and hours. Eventually I heard that she was through the operation, but it was the weeks/months afterwards that were the hardest. I would sit alone in the ICU waiting room for hours, I don’t remember much. All I remember was the sticky blue plastic seats that stuck the backs of my legs, and the white porcelain toilets where I would sit and throw up, and the hard paper towels that would wipe my mouth time and time again. I couldn’t cry, I barely spoke, I began to eat less and less. I wouldn’t make myself sick but whenever I became upset I would have to run to the bathroom to be sick, as if it was my body’s way of expelling all emotion, everything inside me, because it couldn’t escape through my tears. In the winter of 2009, December 23^rd specifically, I fell apart. And I won’t launch into some dramatic speech about how it was chaotic and haunting and beautiful because it wasn’t. This sadness had been dwelling in me for as long as I could remember and I had begun to decay, from the inside out, and bits of me began to fall away, because my body couldn’t withstand the strain of years of self hatred. I was sat on the top deck of a bus, on the way home from a Christmas Party, and the details aren’t necessary, but I had been let down by somebody I opened up to, and somebody I romanticised about and dreamt about, and he let me down, and I should have seen it coming but I didn’t. That forced me to look inside myself and for the first time in a really long time, in years, I cried. Keeping everything in for so long had made me such a twisted and hateful person and it was as if everything I buried deep down had slowly and carefully destroyed me and what I saw was unrecognisable as what I once was. That was when my depression hit; I was in a fog of such anger for so long that I could barely hold myself together. It was then that my father was hospitalised with a tumour on his heart. He also had open heart surgery and was held in ICU. The night before his operation my whole family were at the hospital and I left. I said goodbye to him and he held me and told me that I needed to let somebody in, because I was destroying myself. I went home in complete silence and when I got in I locked the door and fell in a heap on the floor and just cried and cried and cried, because I didn’t know what else to do. In March I began to self harm. At first it wasn’t serious but it soon got out of hand, often the cuts were too deep and once or twice there was an awful moment where I didn’t know whether or not I should call an ambulance because the blood was coming fast and heavy. With cutting, you start to see what it’s all about, why people do it, what sort of relief it can bring, and so you do it, and it’s just a scratch and you haven’t hurt anybody and it won’t scar and everything’s ok. Then one day, somebody made you feel bad about yourself, or they upset you and you remembered the relief, the pain, the guilt you felt from cutting, and so you do it again, but deeper this time, and more. But you think, it’s ok, it’s just a few scars, they’ll heal and nobody has to know, I was just angry, it won’t happen again. But it does happen again. At first it’s just when you’re feeling upset or lonely or down, or when you have an excuse. Soon enough, you don’t need one. Missed the bus, I’ll cut myself, failed a test, I’ll cut myself, woke up late, I’ll cut myself, cut myself, I’ll cut myself. And then it spirals out of control, and you’re carrying razors with you to friend’s houses, just in case you get the urge, and you’re slicing up your arms in school toilets and more and more of your clothes are getting covered in blood because you can’t bandage them properly, or they’re so deep that bandages don’t work. You begin to flinch whenever anybody touches you because you’re terrified they’ll find out about your disgusting habit, your dirty secret, and when it’s summer, you’re wearing jumpers because you couldn’t bear for anybody to see. When it got to summer 2010, things were getting out of hand, I was barely sleeping, I was cutting almost every night, trying to limit food as much as possible. I took drugs to inspire some sort of feeling in me; I would often stand in the shower and just scratch at my ribs and my chest and hit myself and slice myself up. I was living in a drugged haze where I would find my energy not from sleep but from speed and I wouldn’t find a will to continue with my life anywhere. Come September things were really bad. My calorie restriction and exercise had gotten way out of hand. I was barely eating and exercising off everything that passed my lips. I was constantly vomiting up stomach acid and I was losing my hair, I was cold all the time, I bruised instantly. My parents refused to accept any problem and so every night I would exercise for hours until I collapsed. I would often faint on my way to school from sheer exhaustion. I was too exhausted to eat and yet I was too hungry to sleep. Every time I did eat I would punish myself with hour upon hour of exercise with my joints clicking and my head burning and by slicing up my arms to the point where blood was dripping from my arms as I did another 100 sit ups. I was lying to everybody around me and throwing away all the food I was given. I had complete power and complete control and I was destroying myself. By December I was such a dangerously low weight that my teachers complained and got me referred to a school nurse who sent me to a counsellor whose appointments I didn’t go to. I was afraid she’d make me gain weight and take my control away from me. I had stopped drinking diet coke and taking vitamins because I was afraid of the calories and was exercising off a bowl of salad, which was all I’d had for the day. My friends were screaming at me and begging me to eat something, people at Starbucks were slipping full fat milk into my drinks, on ‘warm’ days I had to wear huge jumpers and coats. Still my parents denied there was a problem. It was then that I reached my lowest weight of 98lbs at 5ft9” giving me a BMI of 14.48. I was terrified for my mental and physical health and yet there was nothing I could do. It was the most wonderful numbness; it was as if I got an instant euphoria from the haunting of starvation. Nothing affected me; people barely touched me because I would leap a mile if they did. I was hatred and bones, that was all I was, sometimes just bones. I was so totally consumed by food and calories and hunger that nothing else had any impact on me whatsoever. Nobody could penetrate my barrier of absolute nothingness. People were afraid of me; on public transport people stared. I was practically nothing and I was covered in scars and scratches and cuts and bruises; I wasn’t alive. There was no life in my eyes, I could tell from the way people watched me. Then I slowly began to gain weight, somehow I let it all slip away, I was at a point where I was so hungry that I suddenly wasn’t. Then I ate, and all I became was hunger and nothing else. So I continued to eat. I was exercising and never sleeping and taking speed to keep me awake long enough to exercise and to take away my appetite. I would often be coughing up clods of blood and fainting and losing so much hair. I became so tired, I wasn’t angry like I used to be. I was just tired of my miserable and pitiful existence. One day, I couldn’t take it anymore, the constant obsession with food and calories and everything around it, the incessant sadness that dwelled in my veins. So I overdosed. I was taken to hospital and everything was exposed, everything I had worked so hard for so long to keep hidden was just flung out into the open for everybody to see. Everything was taken away from me, my control, my blades, my drugs. Everything. I was left with nothing and I was nothing. I lay in bed for days on end wondering at the impossibility of the challenge of recovery. So slowly I deteriorated, I lost weight and I exercised and I took drugs and I cut myself and I carved fat into my arm. Once again I hit rock bottom, with food smashed up my walls and having sat in my garden in the freezing cold rain, shivering for hours in floods of tears I decided that I was done with anorexia; that this thing, this disease, couldn’t own me anymore and wouldn’t own me anymore. The only option was to stand up and fight, and every time I fall I’m going to have to stand up and keep on fighting, because this is going to be hard and it’s going to seem impossible and it’s going to hurt like hell. But I am a person, and I deserve to live. It’s time for me to learn that this disease doesn’t control me, it doesn’t define me, I am Hope, and I can do something with my life, because it’s mine. My life doesn’t belong to this illness, and now that I’ve woken up and looked at myself and wondered how the hell I got here, I know that it’s time to get myself out of all this. It took me six years to get in this deep, it may be an even longer struggle back to normality, but if I know I can fight, then I’m going to fight. So to anybody out there who’ve just started a diet, or who thinks things are beginning to get out of hand, I urge you to get help now. You see pictures of girls with their ribs sticking out and their collar bones protruding and messages such as ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’ Well I’ll tell you this much, skinny doesn’t feel good because nothing you do will be enough, being dangerously underweight isn’t beautiful or alluring and it never will be. You have to turn around and face your problem today, because I wouldn’t wish this living hell upon anybody, and I just hope you can realise that this isn’t glamorous and this isn’t beautiful. This is awful and terrible and destructive. It’s not a disease you want, it’s a disease I’m going to spend my life trying to beat, so redefine beautiful, because you’re perfect as you are.

http://holdinghertoniclikeacross.tumblr.com/

Thank you so much for sharing your story,  you have been through so much and you are so courageous.  I truly wish you strength in your recovery<3

I am so amazed and appreciative that there is a blog like this out there because there are far too many of those thinspo blogs. 

I was bulimic and had the disorder for 10 years, I’m almost 2 years in recovery right now and it is something I fight every single day. I used to be OBSESSED with thinspo blogs/journals, weightloss, etc etc. It was so damaging to be encouraged to continue down the path that I was. 

Fighting the urge to relapse is a struggle every minute of every day. And of course I have gained weight. Recently I was looking in the mirror and those icky little thoughts creeped into my head and I said out loud “I used to be so skinny” and my boyfriend looked me in the eye and said “You used to starve yourself, puke up everything you ate and work out for hours on end, you looked sick. And now, you look healthy.” It snapped something in me, it made me realize how much I caused myself and those around me pain by having to see me be so sick and how even though I feel big or heavy or whatever, I actually look how I’m supposed to; healthy.

So I guess this is just a note of encouragement to you, your daughter and your followers. Though it will be a struggle every day for a long time, it is far better than causing yourself pain. It is far better than being sick all the time. It is FAR better than an early grave.

I wish you and your daughter luck.

submitted by sheiswolf

Thank you for this,  I am so glad to hear that you have recovered.  I need to hear, and sufferers out there, need to hear stories like this..  You have fought and won and though you say it is still tough,  your realisation that going back will never give you happiness is HUGE.   I believe that the further you walk along the recovery path the quieter that old ED voice will become until hopefully one day soon you will find it is no longer there.  Thank you and more power to you!! <3 

if you could see it through my eyes,
maybe you would know.
if you could see it through my eyes,
you would understand, it’s not so easy.
being who you are is not who you want to be.
who you want to be is not who you are.
you try to stay strong, when all you want to be is weak.
you live for it. it’s the only thing you have to hold on to. 
being weak to keep you strong.
being strong to keep you weak.
you say you want help, but it’s too late now.
this ship has already sailed and you can’t save yourself from the storm.
once it hits, you’ll be too weak, too weak from being strong.
the storm will overcome and the ship will sink.
the waves will be your last goodbye as your body sinks down.
down into that peaceful place where you are alone.
maybe that’s what you wanted all along.
to be alone. alone where no one can judge, no one can help.
you can do it all on your own.
be strong. be weak.
be strong to be weak. be weak to be strong.
whatever you do, do it alone.
just you, this weakness, and ship and the sea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

so i wrote this note in a VERY dark time of mine. but as i sit here and read it almost ten months later, i have noticed that i have grown and changed so much. i do not want to be this person anymore. i am strong all on my own. i do not need to be weak to be strong. i am always strong. i do not need to be alone. in fact that’s that least i need. i need the love and support of my friends and family. i am so fortunate to have all of the great people in my life. i am no longer going to let something rule me. i will stand up for myself and do what is right for me. i do not want to end up unhappy. and according to this poem, that is what will happen if i am “weak to be strong.” i am going to be STRONG always. i will live a happy life. i’m not saying it will be easy, but after reading this poem, i remembered how miserable i was, and i do not want to feel like that again. i want to be free, happy, and strong. 

Submitted by endlesswishing

Thank you so much for submitting this and never give up on that wish you deserve freedom, happiness and strength always<3

Dear you.
I will keep this brief.
Firstly, I want to tell you a fact. One which I’d like you to think hard about.
Your brain needs 500 calories a day to function.
Do you realise what that means?
It means if you do not allow your body at least 500 calories a day your brain will have problems functioning. In the simplest of terms, this is why people who go on extreme diets feel depressed, develop insomnia, can’t concentrate or make logical decisions.

Now when I got told this I thought “shit.” I mean when I think about low calorie diets or any diet I think diet = healthy body and mind.
But when do you ever really think about how your mind will be affected by this new diet? I sure didn’t. I didn’t realise the mind even needed calories to survive. It just seemed to me like it could function on it’s own.
Stupid I know.

Secondly; why do you need to go on a diet at this age? Has the doctor told you that if you stay at this weight you will have complications in the future? If not….who is telling you to go on a diet? The media, the celebrities and yourself.The dieting industry put in $40 billion each year to basically make you feel crap.

So tell me, what is the point?
If I could change things I would of asked for help for my eating disorder months earlier instead of making a wl tumblr and letting my eating disorder become worse before finally admitting and seeking treatment. I’m not the only girl on tumblr who has an eating disorder, or a problem with food, or low self esteem, or has dieted extremely. But I can say that the majority of those cases aren’t positive and those people aren’t happy.

You can’t lose who you are by losing a few pounds.  
Just think about it. 

thanks for you submission  for-the-future.tumblr.com/ 

xo<3