What It Takes

As with all things in the mental health realm, the DSM IV lists a number of must-haves in order to be a Real Live Anorexic.

If you have been reading here with any regularity (or any memory), you may recall that my sister, who has spent roughly half her life being defeated in her attempts to starve herself to death, was possibly the case on which the DSM criteria is actually BASED.

Okay. Maybe not.
(But she could very well be)

For anyone interested, the DSM states that Anorexia Nervosa is defined by the following four factors:

• Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height: Weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight (85%)

• Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though under weight.

• Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape are experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.

• Amenorrhea (at least three consecutive cycles) in postmenarchal girls and women. Amenorrhea is defined as periods occurring only following hormone (e.g., estrogen) administration.

Obviously, seventeen years of bearing witness to the horrors of this illness have taught me that in actual fact, the above prerequisites to the label of 'Anorexia Nervosa' are only the very tip of the iceberg.
I could name many more factors.
But that is, perhaps, for another post.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, given the fact I have lost my sister to the horrifying effects of this illness... given that I have raged at it, pleaded with it, cried to it and knelt moaning before its merciless, monstrous darkness... I would be the least likely person in the world to be drawn into its world.
You'd think I would be incapable of drawing others under the agony that wrapped itself around our family.

You'd think.
I thought that too.
Until something, at some point, changed.

Today I am 6 stone 5.

I'm not a proper anorexic... (which is what I wanted to write about when I began this post).

I'm very, very confused because I don't 'fit' in with the notion I had of Anorexia.
I thought that Anorexia had to come easily to those with it.
I thought that I was a 'fake' because I crave chocolate and all I really want to do is eat lovely food.
I think I'm crazy because I hate working out, but i have to, but I hate it, but I have to.... and my HUGE fear is that one day, I won't have the willpower to drive myself to run for miles, climb hundreds of floors, cycle like a maniac, cross train at high intensity, row hard and fast, use the resistance machines, do my floor exercises until I can't move.

Anorexia, if it is anything like this, isn't about suddenly hating food. It's about a spiral of absolute dread that you will lose control of it, even as it controls you.