Grateful Series: The BestWorst Two Years

Chapter 3: Press On

"Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal; it's the courage to continue that counts."

Mike Ditka

The last two years have been the best worst two years of my life. Every day it felt like I was faced with another challenge I couldn’t handle, yet tomorrow always seemed to just arrive out of nowhere. It wasn’t like I was overcoming the challenges, or that I felt I was learning from them, it was more that the consistency of time didn’t afford me any other option. 2016 was a year of uphill battles. 2017 was mostly a year of loss. But half of 2017 and up to today, I could not be more grateful for it all.

I think it’s safe to say I lost the war. Or at least I was on the back foot for a while.

Even with a wired shut mouth, lack of food and little energy I still made sure I was exercising every day. I needed to in order to know that I was okay. Unfortunately an exercise obsession runs in my family, but hey, better addiction to exercise than drugs I always say…anyways, I mostly walked, but there were times when I pushed the boundaries a little too far. My surgeon said I shouldn’t exercise for 6 weeks (other than gentle strolls) and thereafter I could take my walking on flat surfaces to perhaps walking in the mountains. However, I have always taken doctors’ advice with a pinch of salt, but this time, even I can admit I was taking handfuls of the mineral and scrubbing it deep into my open wounds.

I would wake up early, go for a walk and then proceed to go swimming with my mom in the gym pool (and while we’re being honest, I tried a few gentle jogs too).

The swimming may sound fairly harmless but let me describe the scenario for you:

An anorexic body, with a jailed mouth pops her now loose costume on in the change room and scrapes together enough strands of tattered. thin hair to stick into a swimming cap. She receives looks from everyone around her, but everyone judges everyone these days so that’s normal. She gets to the side of the pool and acknowledges she can’t dive in because it will jolt her jaw, so she slowly lowers herself into the water. Zero body fat = instant goosebumps. She tries to swim a few strokes normally but quickly learns she can’t open her mouth to take in air when she lifts her arm, so she opts to swim head up – which is not actually any easier. But still she swims on. 100m, 200m, 500m. Every time she pushes off the wall she winces with pain. Every time she tries to suck air through her gaps it’s a battle. But still she swims on and proceeds to complete a 2km swim. With a now swollen face from the exertion, and blue lips from the cold, she runs off to the shower to warm up before returning to the change room, returning to the judging stares and pulling on some baggy clothes to help her get warm again.

She did this twice a week for two weeks.

After the two weeks of being shut tight I went in for my appointment to get the wires cut and the plate removed. My surgeon was concerned about how little I had gotten and I remember thinking to myself: Well you try not eat for two weeks and see what happens to your weight… But then there was another thought that also crossed my mind. I remember liking him telling me I looked skinny.

As I mention at the start of every post in the series, 2017 was indeed a year of loss. But honestly, one of the worst things I lost was my appetite.

So you know how you get sick, or spend time in hospital or for some reason stop eating a lot your stomach shrinks? Well, I didn't ingest one single thing in two weeks that could have kept my stomach even close to it's original size, so naturally, my elastic belly shrank to what only felt like the size of a peanut's infant,

I remember my first meal so clearly. It was the day my wires were loosened enough for me to chew, so my parents booked dinner at Village Sushi in the Noordhoek Village to celebrate the momentous occasion. When Uratar our waitress came round to take our orders, I ordered something that I would normally only get on special occasions - a medium-spiced red chicken curry. I don't remember being hungry at all, I just remember being so excited to sink my teeth into something and feel my stomach burn through the food. When the orders came round, we said a simple grace, after which I dived my spoon into the bowl, stuffed a spoonful of curry, coconut and chicken into my mouth, chewed for what felt like a century and then swallowed slowly.

I almost cried.

It was the most satisfying mouthful of food I have ever had. It may sound so simple, but it was phenomenal to feel my jaw and teeth crunching away, feel the food slip down my throat, and feel my shocked stomach wake the hell up and do some work.

But 1 spoonful, 2 spoonfuls, then 3 and I was stuffed. Absolutely and totally full that if I consumed any more food - even a glass of water - I felt like I may pop. Weird. I asked for the rest in a doggy bag and pinned the nausea down to a shrunken stomach that would eventually return to normal...but it's two years on and I still don't know what hunger feels like. So that was the start of my next dilemma: When all your food coaching taught you to 'eat when hungry' how do you un-teach yourself that and eat because you need to? It was a crisis. I never felt hungry, and when I did eat, I would feel a wave of nausea and my stomach would bloat instantly even after a few spoonfuls of soup. You can only imagine the drastic consequences that this had on my personal, work and social life.

A lot of girls choose to starve themselves. There are many different reasons why, but I guess the most common reason is their own warped perception of what beauty is, tied together with a crippling insecurity of their self image. Then there are some cases where the choice is not their own. Unfortunately for me, I was one such case in which starvation chose me, and refused to loosen her grip on me even after the choice was placed into my own hands.

So now I am a couple of weeks post-op, carrying out my days as a freelance writer, doing activities here and there, still tortured by depression and anxiety...but now all that as well as the added complications that come with anorexia. The horrible part was that as much as I tried to contain it, you can only hide your body and your lifestyle from the world so much. The reality is everyone is keeping tabs on everyone else and everyone was DEFINITELY keeping tabs on me. Personally, I was so scared to go anywhere for fear of being judged. I didn’t want to eat anything in front of anyone because I physically couldn’t even stomach a starter portion of food and the comments that were passed were too much for me to handle.

It turned every social occasion centered around food into an emotional war zone.

Eventually I developed a system: I would plan my week down to the hour and establish when I would need to feel an inkling of hunger or just not feel full and bloated. Once I had mapped out the social occasions that involved food, those would be my set meals, and any other time I felt a dip in energy - or like I wanted to chew something - I would grab a small snack and be fine to go for another couple of hours. It was incredibly unsustainable and pretty crazy, but it worked so long as nobody rattled the cages.

A day's schedule would look something like this:

TUESDAY

6-8 swim & shower

Coffee & 1 Banting rusk

8:30-12 Work

Cheese, carrots and dip (can't have big meal, need to be hungry for dinner with Paynes)

12-17 work

Walk to get rid of the bloated feeling from 'lunch'

19 dinner

Walk after dinner to settle sore stomach

Now I know it's crazy. Trust me, I know...but what choice did I have? I needed to keep everyone else happy and I hated that everyone immediately assumed I was doing this to myself. Even this process was incredibly draining, but it worked for a while. Unless my boyfriend or friends wanted to do a spontaneous dinner somewhere and only mentioned it at 17:00 and I had already had a 'big' lunch during the day...then I was thrown. And this ended up happening quite a bit. So when it did, the natural conclusion for everyone around me was that I had a problem. They diagnosed me as bulimic and anorexic, and no matter the occasion, constantly tried to shove food down my throat or get me to order more when I couldn't stomach another morsel. This happened at least twice a week. So once again I needed a back-up plan for these moments...and I got one, but I just wish I had consulted a professional about it first. (I'll share this with you another time).

In terms of the sudden weight loss and how that affected me, it’s not really something I can sum up in another blog post. It would be a lie to myself and the world to say that I have moved on completely. In fact, it’s two years later and I still struggle with my body and food every day.

Every.

Single.

Day.

So it will be an element that entwines itself in all the other struggles I went through and am still going through. I am rather going to continue with the story and let that component jump in wherever necessary. But just know, it is always with me.

As hard as it was at the time, it was okay, because I was recovering. I was moving forward. In my mind the op was behind me, I was on anti-depressants which were starting to help with the heaviness and I had an awesome skiing holiday to look forward to with my boyfriend and his family. I had been assured I was going to enjoy the holiday and start 2017 braces-free and with the tragedy of 2016 behind me,