TRIGGER ALERT – Eating Disorder
Before Karen Carpenter the truth wasn’t out in the world, afterwards, I just ignored it. Eating Disorders can creep up on you. Throughout my life, they would resurface and I don’t remember much time without putting my body through one form or another.
The number one killer of mental illness is eating disorders. They can affect both men and women.
I tried every one of them, multiples at a time even. And I did come close to dying, with seventy-eight pounds on my 5″6″ frame. Threatened with hospitalization. Then I removed myself from the heartache and pain I was going through in the United States and went to Mexico to visit my best friend Glenn, who is now my husband. It is there, that I gave myself permission to eat a bit. I was away from my stressors, and Glenn and I would dine out on rooftops in candlelight, toasting each other with wine while brilliant sunsets capped off the evenings. I returned to a place in myself that I thought was gone forever.
My eating disorder can go dormant, but I don’t think I will ever be rid of the disordered thinking that brings one on. It is always just under the surface.