Eating My First Bagel

(This post discusses my experience recovering from anorexia nervosa and may be triggering for some readers. Please read about my journey with this illness here before you continue.)

Fear; a human emotion which is supposed to protect us, to keep us safe, secure and free from the grasps of death. All fear, no matter what form it may take, stems from the terror of losing our own precious lives. Fear makes us run from the monsters of the night, towards safety, security and light...towards life! But what if the monsters are in our mind...how do we fight or fly away from them? 

I recently realised just how unique yet all too real each individual's fears are. While jumping out of a plane may seem terrifying to you, another person can make a living out of loving such a passion...yet that same sky diver may quiver at the thought of speaking in public. Why and how we develop certain altering fears perplexes me so much. I recently held a tarantula spider, it was scary yet it wasn't as terrifying as one may think. I felt the fear, I faced it and felt so proud! Later that day, my family and I went for dinner. I had googled the menu days in advance, I had picked what I would be having, I had scrolled through weeks of the hotel's Instagram photos to find a picture of the dish, I was terrified but it was all under control. When the waiter came with a completely different menu, I realised just how strong, terrifying and all too real my fears are. This is a story of how I faced a big food fear, a bagel.

I hope this helps to illuminate the unjust myths, defy the unfair stereotypes while also shut down the shame associated with mental illness. I truly pray this doesn't come across as a cry for attention, pity or sympathy! This is just a glimpse into my little experience over the past few years, an experience of which with every day on the twisty path to recovery is getting less painful and more beautiful! Everyone's story is different but also all too similar. The story you are about to read below could and may resonate with every single person who has/had an eating disorder. 

A new goal that was set by my team recently to work towards overcoming my fears was to eat a bagel for one lunch time every week. Bagels used to be a staple food of mine when I was a young girl; salmon, mayo and a wholemeal bagel was my go to lunch almost every day (I'm a plain Jane who loves routine hehe). 

Bagels embody so much for me. As I walked down the supermarket aisle with my mom to buy the packet, I tried my best to keep a narrow pinpointed vision. I used to spend hours in grocery stores when I was very sick. I couldn't walk into a shop without feeling faint. Every single sense would become so overwhelmed with fear. When I look at a piece of food I see numbers, grams, ounces and inches. My mind automatically adds, multiplies, subtracts and divides. Maths was always my favourite subject but I never wished for it to malignantly manifest its way into my life like this.  Now imagine being surrounded by food...the sensory overload became so much that I could not walk into a store without having a panic attack. In my first hospital admission, I worked with an occupational therapist. It took us two months of work, exposure and pain until I was finally allowed to leave the ward with her for an hour and complete my first shopping task. (This fear was probably one of the most minor aspects of recovery for me, nothing compared to the fears surrounding actually consuming the food and gaining the weight, yet overcoming it was still important!) I will never forget just how petrified I felt walking into Aldi. I had to pick up a share packet of Malteasers and buy it for the other patients on the ward. It felt like I was picking up a grenade of which could explode in my palms any second. Not only was my mind racing trying to figure out the volume of chocolate on each specific sweet, but, I was being seen. I was being seen holding food. That was a no no NO for me. People couldn't associate me with food...people couldn't look at me and think I ate...people couldn't view me as a someone who had to engage in a necessary and normal human function. I believed I had to be pure, perfect, empty...and to me food did not correlate with those desires (a belief I am still working really hard on breaking). Luckily I have come so far since then and while I still can't go into supermarkets alone without getting lost in a dizzying trance, I can help with the shopping and pick up everything and anything! On our pre-challenge grocery trip, I picked up a packet of the New York Bakery wholemeal bagels. I remembered how many calories they contained from my previous obsession of scrolling through Tesco's online shop, and, while their nutritional value terrified me, that was the challenge and it was something I was committed to doing. Suddenly I looked up and saw a different brand of wholemeal bagels...I freaked. This was not expected, this was not supposed to happen, why had nobody told me there was another wholemeal brand available?!? Had I accidentally chosen the higher calorie brand? I wanted so badly to analyse the other packet, to make sure I was ok, to ensure I was safe. I am so grateful for my mom who stopped me, held back my tears and helped me to think more rationally. A bagel is a bagel. End of.

The word 'bagel' itself holds so many memories and embodies such meaning to me, it makes me quiver how a piece of food can send you back through a terrifying timeline of past blurry and painful moments. The bread also brings me back to January of 2017, just before I was readmitted into hospital. I became so good at lying, deceiving and manipulating; I used to wear my special 'eating slippers' and would sneak food (mainly my staple bagel slims..I do not recommend they taste like burnt cardboard!) up my sleeves down my top and into the fluffy booties under my feet, safely hidden from the worrying eyes of those who loved me and buried deep down far far away from my grumbling, hungry tummy.

Wednesday was the day we had set for the challenge, a day I knew I was busy with lectures which would help to distract me after I completed the task. I was so scared but so ready to kick Ana to the ground! Preparing the bread, I subconsciously went to tear out all of the dough from the inside, as I did when I was 10 years old to ‘prevent a big belly'. I stopped myself and just wanted to run back to the little girl version of me and tell her to stop, to hold her and tell her that it’s ok. To tell her that she can't see herself properly. To tell her that she is worthy of love and care. To tell her that she is far too little to harbour so much self hate. To tell her that I love her. That triggered memory shocked me as to how this illness manifested in my life a long time before I, nor anybody else, ever realised. 

My dream is to go back to New York someday and that really helped motivate me to attack this fear head on. I can't wait to return fully free, healthy and happy and to gobble down a delicious authentic NYC bagel, yum yum yum! 

In the end, I did it. I ate it! It tasted like fear but also freedom, fun and flavour. Immediately afterwards, I felt really proud. I text my family and their prideful love made it all so so so worth it. This magical feeling was however fleeting, and later that night my mind had seemed to mist over with a hateful, terrified, dark and misty gloom...Ana was not going to let me get away with this. In a flurry of tears and shallow breaths I grabbed my phone and I wrote and wrote and wrote. 

"I feel so fat, ‘not sick’, unworthy and like a fraud. It feels like a massive beacon is flashing from my belly...an alarm that draws every ounce of attention to how big it feels. It feels like my thighs, arms and hips are spilling out. It's so real, how can this not be real?! I can see it, I can feel it, I can sense my body infinitely expanding, with every atom and every cell, like a balloon...but I have to believe that this is Ana lying. I have to feel the pain. You can’t just wish to be ok or hope that someday you will magically recover...you have to go through the agony and torture to eventually reach any point of remission. Right now it feels as if I’m willingly walking through fire and every cell in me is screaming in misery, all my body wants to do is run and cry and protect me...but my mind’s idea of protection is starvation and as alluring as it seems I have to trust and embrace that it will never ever save me. I have to walk through the fire, embrace the flames and hold trusting faith in the embers that this pain will not kill me, however, surviving it will slaughter this illness..this pain will reveal and foster the real true me. Like a phoenix she will rise from the ashes. I can’t wait to meet her and I can’t wait to be her. I can not wait to see and be the me who is free, happy, alive and in love with both life and herself." 

What is something that absolutely terrifies you? Since completing this challenge, I am continuing to eat a bagel once a week (at least) and it is thankfully getting easier and easier bit(e) by bit(e)! Is there something you could do to take you one small step closer towards freedom and one giant leap further from fear? Feel free to let me know in the comments below or you can privately message me (it makes my day getting such kind lovely messages from you, it means the world that these posts are helping people). I hope this year was a year of growth love and happiness for you. 

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

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I hope you enjoyed!

lots of love & peace & happiness