| My Story |
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| The following piece of writing is basically who I am, and the experiences I have been through. It is constantly being updated, as I plan to include some early diary entries, and poems that I wrote during some of the hard times. Please use caution whilst reading it, as I have written about attempted suicide, as well as self injury. If you wish to contact me via email, then please do so using the address in the top right hand corner. I will do my best to answer you as soon as possible. Gina xxx |
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| Well where do I start… okay well my name is Gina. That’s a good start I guess! I am nineteen years old and I live in Southend, Essex (UK). I’ve lived here since I was 4, before then I lived in East London. I currently reside with my mum, her [now] fiancé, and my younger brother who is sixteen.
I'm at University studying Behavioral Studies (which is essentialy psychology and sociology), and hope to work in Counselling later on. I work part time at a local doctors and do regular volunteering elsewhere. I guess you could say I’ve had “issues,” since around the age of eleven or twelve, but to name an exact date would be impossible, since much of it to me is now a blur. I don’t believe in labels but if I had to stand up in a self-help group I’d probably describe myself as “purging anorexic/bulimic with history of chronic depression and repetitive self injury. Quite a mouthful (no pun intended) but there, it’s out there so now you know. Why it all started? Couldn’t tell you, still trying to figure that one out. I believe now though that my reasons for the self-destructive behaviour are different to when I first started. When I was in my early teens, I cut and starved and purged because I hated myself. I compared myself to my peers and I wanted to be different, I wanted to be in control I never thought I was good enough. The school I attended was a grammar, and therefore competition was rife. We competed to be the thinnest, most popular, most intelligent, having the most good-looking boyfriend, the list goes on. There was the in-group, the out-group, and us. I was in the non-group, full of the people that weren’t quite popular enough, or nerdy enough to be in the other groups. I didn’t mind that to be honest, because our group was full of really diverse personalities. I was always quite shy, not particularly forth-coming about anything, probably more of a listener than a talker. However from day one of secondary school, it became apparent that image was going to be everything. My primary school I attended previously was tiny. It contained 30 students in all, and in Years 5 + 6 (ages 9 to 11) I was the only girl but one. Because of this, I adopted a tomboyish approach to things, I’d play football in lunch breaks, talk about basketball and generally have no interest in anything remotely girly. However I was in fact a girl, and I got picked on fairly regularly. This didn’t bother me as much as the fact that my brother also got bullied. I still up to this day feel immense guilt at not preventing it, even though I know rationally I am not responsible. During secondary school I slowly drifted from my friends. I distanced myself through the eating problems and the self injury. Once I’d got it into my head that not eating was the answer to being the person I wanted to be, anything else was a failure. Of course at that age, hormones are everywhere and eventually I’d eat, and then I learnt to throw up (purge). I regret the day I managed to do it, and the fact I never stopped from then on. The things I did in the midst of bulimia were terrible. The methods, the places, the guilty secrets that I still keep to this day. I found the not-eating part easier to cope with. It was less messy, less emotional, more switched off. For the most part I was walking around in a daze. During those periods of fasting I’d be up at three in the morning doing homework, buzzing with coffee and manic energy. Then in the day I’d be a zombie, walking aimlessly around the school building with my friend Helen talking about nothing. I didn’t have an unhappy childhood, my parents were neither abusive or absent. My mother worked part-time at a local hospital and my father was a lecturer at a local college. They separated when I was 15 and divorced when I was 18 (that’s paperwork for you!). I currently have strong relationships with both my parents and their partners, and am grateful for having them in my life. Most of secondary school is a bit of a haze, I remember vague memories, like getting my first and last detention two weeks before school ended, being generally terrified of the teachers there, and falling asleep in exams. The thing I remember the most, unfortunately, is the self harm. I self harmed daily for three years. I don’t quite know how it got so out of control, and looking back it terrifies me that I used to do it to that extent. It started out, like most people, tiny scratches on the arms, nothing anyone would notice outright, just a little comfort feel. Then you’d discover razors, and that’s where it all goes downhill. I’d be in the toilets before school started, during lessons, in the lunchbreak. It’s incredibly sad really, I can’t imagine doing that now. In my last year of school I’d known two close friends who had also self harmed. One did it purely for attention, she’d come to school with her arms on show, especially it seemed to attract the attention of teachers. The other friend was someone I became to trust implicitly, she’d had a terrible history and we began to support one another. However I think I was too deeply engrossed in it and began to lie, saying I hadn’t done it when I had, and I suspect she did also. It was around that time that I also started to take laxatives, diuretics and diet pills by the handful. Made me terribly ill but I became slightly addicted to the feeling that I was somehow “helping myself.” I wish I could point out the reasons and explanations for why I started or why I did it for so long, truth is I simply don’t know. I did however become involved in a relationship with a guy who didn’t treat me particularly well, and this didn’t help my self-esteem. By the time I started sixth form, I lost interest in myself and everything in my life. I didn’t bother turning up for a majority of lessons, and spent most of my time at home, cutting myself, crying or asleep (at least trying to, I wasn’t eating properly and could barely to at the best of times). However I did meet someone who is now one of my best friends at sixth form, Claire. She attended for less than a year then left after an overdose, to go back to her old sixth form. We became quite close, and we formed a little friendship group with Helen and a few others. We all had history of eating problems and self injury, so we got along quite well. It was then I first smoked cannabis. I don’t think it helped any of our issues, but I have to admit we have shared some incredibly funny moments while stoned. I don’t advocate drug use but we did just the same. I was trying to get better on the outside, but on the inside I was incredibly depressed. I had taken a massive overdose preceding, and several minor ones since. The bulimia took a turn for the worse and I was purging twice, sometimes three times a day. The others knew I was struggling but I eventually blocked them out, not really caring. I was messed up, I was still cutting, this time in the sixth form block toilets, still skipping classes, and my grades fell from A’s and B’s to D’s and E’s. I’ve been in hospital only twice. Once when I overdosed, which was very emotional and humiliating, and the other when I woke up in the middle of the night throwing up blood. That was awful, I took myself to A&E and was there 2 hours while they tried time and time again to take heart measurements, because surely the results were wrong (they weren’t). I’d been put in therapy at fifteen, for a year, which made very little difference because I had no feedback. I just sat and said a few sentences each fortnight and that was that. I had no interest in stopping because I didn’t see it as a problem. I went to a different counsellor when I was seventeen, who was trained in domestic violence. There were a few problems with my brother at the time who had developed an aggressive streak, and I basically went to see her because I wanted some help with it. She turned out to be one of the most compassionate and caring people I’ve ever known. It took me 7 months to tell her about my eating problems, and when I did I felt like someone had lifted an enormous crater off me. I left 5 months later because I relapsed and decided I didn’t need help because I didn’t have a problem. When I was eighteen I was referred to a consultant psychiatrist, who turned out to be a twat, and was later referred to another consultant who also turned out to be a twat. I haven’t attempted counselling since. I regret a lot of things. I regret wasting so much time devoted to hurting myself. I regret my scars which will never fade. I regret losing friendships over my obstinacy and refusal to help myself. I regret not stopping myself sooner. There are things however I am grateful for. I am grateful for meeting those who came during my periods of complete depression and becoming my closest friends. I am grateful that I have learnt so much during the past 7 years about how not to treat oneself. I am grateful that when I recover, I will have enough experience to help others who are not yet at that gate. I am grateful that I’m still alive to tell my story. Gina x |