Chrissy's story... (Brisbane, Australia)

I don’t know when my eating disorder started.  It’s a hard thing to pinpoint exactly.  I know it was early, I was very young when I first started believing that my body was a ‘thing’ that I needed to be worried about.   For some people, it starts gradually.  Maybe they are carrying a little bit of extra weight and begin dieting, stop eating and then it spirals out of control.  Others do this with compulsive exercise.
 
For me it was more about two ideas 'perfectionism' and the idea of  ‘control.’   An eating disorder gave me something I could control and it was a very private pleasure

 this control.  It was very secret.  I was living in an environment where I didn’t feel I had much control over my own choices, my own life, but this was one area I could control.   A place of my own.
 
When I was in the thick of my eating disorder, the all pervasive thought was ‘
 
The people in my life think that I should be living in this way, their way and I Don’t Want To!
 
So I created my own private rebellion. I began to starve myself and it made me feel in control.
 
There is a sad ideal in society.  A sad sort of ideal that we are all pushed towards by those trying to sell us products, a fake ideal that we desperately try to live up to.  This perfect image of what a woman is supposed to look like.  As a young girl I remember looking at magazines, at the models who were so thin and that defined what ‘beautiful’ looked like. 
 
Those people who sell us products use celebrities with thin bodies to keep the pressure on – to keep us hopelessly reaching for that kind of beautiful.   It’s not obtainable because it is not real.  Each photo that you see in a magazine advertisement has been retouched, shifted deliberately to create an image that no-one can reach.  It keeps us feeling like failures, it keeps us buying their stuff in the hope that maybe, just maybe we might be close to being worthwhile. None of it is real.  It’s all fake, smoke and mirrors.  A dark magic show that is creating an epidemic of men and women starving themselves, throwing up meals or exercising out of control.  A horrible pattern that destroys your body...

Chrissy Beth
for Made Beautiful by Scars -real women's stories
All Rights Reserved
COPYRIGHT 2016

BUY BOOK ONE HERE