Journey to Recovery
hi
i’m emma i wish i could come on here
today and tell you all that i’m a
survivor
i survived with the disease with the
highest mortality rate of any other
mental illness
however the truth is i am a fighter
i am a fighter because every day is
still a battle against my own mind and
the voice is trying to bring me down
today i would like to give you an
understanding of eating disorders and
mental illnesses using my story
a story of pain tears fear denial
acceptance and finally recovery a story
that is far from over but that i have
chosen to make public because i want to
be able to help those who struggle like
i do
so here goes my story i grew up in a
loving family with both of my parents
and my two siblings
i loved sports i supporting running
swimming triathlon rugby
flag football i mean basically
everything however
since a very young age i felt a huge
pressure to succeed
there was a voice inside my head telling
me i wasn’t good enough
that i wasn’t worth it my parents
constantly told me that i was a very
negative person
i mean i had everything i needed to be
happy i was healthy
had a few friends i was a good student
but to me
it was just never good enough quickly i
began struggling with anxiety
sports were very important to me they
allowed me to release all of my stress
and anxiety nevertheless food quickly
became another coping mechanism
i was only six years old when i started
binging i would secretly go to the
kitchen
hide food and raise my clothes and run
back to my room
i remember the couple of times i was
caught i broke down and begged them all
to tell my parents
i wasn’t eating because i was hungry i
was eating because
for a few minutes it gave me a sense of
relief i was able to breathe again
but afterwards i always felt so much
worse
when i turned eight my family and i
moved to panama and i arrived here
at the met in a new school i really
struggled to make friends
so instead i focused on what i knew well
and made me feel safe
sports as i got older sports became a
huge part of my identity
and slowly i started feeling like i
belonged now my sister and i are only
one year apart
so as she started getting older i
started comparing myself to her
more and more i’ve always had this
feeling like she was better than me and
to tell you the truth it really scared
me
so i started to push myself more and
more
i got into competitive sports and
quickly sports were no longer fun but
instead caused me so much stress and
anxiety i remember getting sick to my
stomach before
every swimming competition and i begged
my parents not to come
now you might be wondering why would i
want my parents to be there
why would i want them to cheer for me
like everyone else
the truth is i will scare them with
teammate fail
i wanted to be the perfect child the
best swimmer out there
because at the end of the day the only
thing i wanted was to make them proud
fast forward to 2017 i was training
twice a day while at the same time
school started getting more challenging
i would come home exhausted from
training and then i have to start
working
i was taking on way too much and soon
enough the voices inside my head became
so loud and the pressure had been taking
on just burst
i started binging and purging and
exercising whenever i had the chance
now i know how hard it must be to
understand like
why would somebody purposely make
themselves throw up most of you guys
probably think it’s gross
but the truth is binging and purging is
an addiction
it’s as if i was numb to the world and
purging was the only thing that made me
feel something
i think that the best way to describe it
is that resisting the urge to purge when
you have an eating disorder
is like resisting the urge to use drugs
for a drug addict
it’s so exhausting both mentally and
physically and some days you just don’t
have the strength to fight the urge
so instead i isolated myself kept on
pushing and i told myself i could do it
i told myself that i had it under
control
my teachers and coaches were all proud
of me i was really good at pretending
everything was okay
but after a few months my parents
started noticing my secretive behavior
they started noticing me rushing
straight to the bathroom after dinner
taking hour long showers my hair falling
out and the huge bags underneath my eyes
so one night they sat me down and
confronted me about everything
as they spoke to me i couldn’t even look
at them i was so ashamed of myself i
wanted nothing more than to disappear
i will never forget that that night was
the first time i thought about killing
myself
the voices told me that i had failed and
that i was nothing more than a
disappointment
as time passed i stopped purging however
my relationship with food didn’t get any
better
i felt guilty after every meal and would
only allow myself to eat if i was going
to train afterwards
in may of 2018 i qualified to become a
part of panama’s national triathlon team
however due to all of the training and
my adequate diet i enjoyed myself
i had a stress fracture in my right leg
and suddenly i could no longer exercise
i identified as an athlete and to be
told i could no longer exercise
really scared me that same month one of
my best friends moved away
and i was really lonely on top of that i
was terrified for the next two years of
high school i would soon have to face
that summer things got bad my depression
completely depleted my appetite and
suddenly starving myself became so easy
i seemed to have a perfect life or at
least that’s what i wanted everyone to
see
because it’s easier that way it was
easier to fake a smell than having to
face all of my emotions and the pain i
was truly feeling
in september i was finally given
permission to exercise again
however i quickly realized i was not as
good as i used to be
i tried convincing myself i was simply
out of shape
but the truth was i was slowly
deteriorating
i was struggling to keep up with basic
training and i remember once in a while
thinking
it’s been two days maybe i should eat
something
but the voices inside my head quickly
told me that i was fine because i had it
under control
on october 8th i woke up early to go to
training
i was extremely light-headed and i could
barely feel my legs
as i got ready to jump onto my bike my
coach took me aside
and this is when he told me the words i
will never forget
he told me that i was not okay that i
had been brainwashed and that he refused
to train an anorexic girl
hearing those words absolutely broke me
the coach once believed in me
had completely lost hope in me and i was
heartbroken
i was crying so much i could barely
breathe and i remember thinking my
entire world was falling apart
sports had always been such a huge part
of my life and once they were taken away
from me i felt like a huge purpose of my
life had been ripped away as well
at this point i had control over nothing
in my life other than school
and food and this is when things got bad
for the upcoming months things got worse
day after day
i was completely depressed and it was
becoming so much harder to get out of
bed in the morning
starving myself had become a
subconscious coping mechanism which i
used instead of having to feel
all the pain i was truly in by this
point my parents started becoming more
controlling
but that’s the thing about eating
disorders they’re all about being in
control
i like to think of my eating disorder as
a toxic friend
a friend who always finds me when i’m
alone comforts me and cares for me when
truly she just wants me dead
my eating disorder constantly fed me
lies and without realizing it i became
completely obsessive
the dinner table became a battlefield a
constant battle between not eating and
causing yet another argument
my pens shouting crying and my brother
running upstairs to hide from the
screams
i hated what i was doing to my family
but i couldn’t stop
the voices were telling me that i didn’t
deserve to stop
i know this must sound so silly and you
guys must be wondering why didn’t she
just eat
the answer is that i couldn’t eat
imagine having a million voices telling
you not to eat and screaming at you
if you do i was trapped and i didn’t
know what to do
i didn’t want to live like this but i
couldn’t eat
i couldn’t eat because that would mean
losing control and after having lost
control over
everything that mattered to me
controlling my food was the only thing
keeping me safe
by this point my life had absolutely no
meaning i no longer felt like a person
i had become a problem i was making my
family suffer
my friends no longer wanted to be around
me and the only thing keeping me company
was that voice inside my head
i had managed to isolate myself from
absolutely everybody i loved and slowly
day by day i was killing myself in
december i was finally diagnosed with
anorexia nervosa
i started seeing a team of doctors who
made it clear that i was not okay
i made them believe that i was willing
to get help but the truth is
i was convinced i wasn’t sick enough my
eating disorder was telling me i didn’t
deserve to get help and i hadn’t
finished making myself suffer
so i attended my appointments and
decided to play along with the treatment
program
i knew i needed to do things right
because i wanted my parents to be proud
of me
so i told the doctors exactly what they
wanted to hear
just like that i made everybody believe
i was actually getting better
however my weight was still dropping i
was so scared i couldn’t eat but i
needed to make them believe i was
getting weight
and so this is when i discovered that
one kilogram is equivalent to one liter
of water
i started drinking huge amounts of water
before every weighing just to make them
believe i was getting weight
and it worked just like that the number
on the scale went up
i had entered this vicious cycle in
which every time i had to get weight i
needed to drink more water for the
weight i had lost
i would drink up to five liters of water
and would end up in pain and unable to
move
but after all the normal scale went up
and everybody was proud of me
but at this point i wasn’t only fooling
my doctors i was fooling myself i was
miserable and nobody knew what to do
with me
i was constantly freezing my hair was
falling out in tongues
and my heart pains became so unbearable
i would stick my nails into my chest
just to distract me from the pain
but still i was convinced that my
doctors were trying to harm me
every time a step was taking forward to
help me i would do
everything in my power to break it down
i would throw my food away flush my
lunch down the toilet
go on secret runs and even go to the gym
after school
in march doctors told me that i had
gotten too weak and i needed to take
some time off from school
i refused i screamed at her and begged
her to change her mind
i told her that absolutely everything in
my life had been taken away from me
already
and the only thing i had left was school
but no matter how much i cried they
didn’t change their mind
so i spent the next two weeks in bed
eating five meals a day which my
parents supervised two weeks later i
seemed to be doing a bit better
i had gained some weight and my vitals
had improved my parents were proud of me
and i recall feeling like i was in
control again
however i remember coming back to school
for two weeks and realizing
nobody had noticed i’ve been gone nobody
came to grade me and my friends walked
past me as if i’d never left
i felt absolutely worthless realizing i
didn’t matter when my suicidal thoughts
come back and in just one month
i absolutely fell apart so in may i was
hospitalized
my heart rate was dangerously low and
there was barely anything left of me
i felt like a complete failure why
couldn’t i just be normal
why was i doing this to myself i didn’t
want to accept the reality
the reality that i was not okay that i
did not have it under control
i just wanted my life to end so i spent
the next few months on bed rest
supervised by a team of doctors and
nurses who might completely fooled
i mean i was a terrible patient i
screamed cried hid my food
exercised in the shower and even
disconnected my feeding tube
i mean at this point i was so depressed
i didn’t see my life getting any better
however the only thing keeping me going
was my family
they were the only ones who never once
gave up on me
and fought for my life when i could no
longer fight for myself
i had put them through so much and
that’s when i realized that the least i
could do was recover for them
i remember falling asleep and praying to
god that i would wake up the next
morning
because i just couldn’t stand the
thought of them having to deal with my
death anymore
in june i was taken straight from the
hospital to the airport and my family
and i traveled to cape town south africa
upon my arrival i was admitted straight
into an inpatient facility
specializing in depression anxiety
self-harm and eating disorders
i met so many other amazing teens who
actually understood what i was going
through
and nobody ever judged me for who i was
we attended daily therapy sessions and
workshops with specialized therapists
and i was given a new treatment team who
provided me with so much support
i remember in panama i was blamed for
having an eating disorder
as if it was something i would i had
chosen and was selfishly doing to myself
but my new doctors helped me realize
that this was not a choice
it was not my fault and that i was sick
after three weeks i was discharged and
went back home
the first two weeks were heavenly i
finally had energy again and i remember
feeling happiness for the first time in
years
however i had been trapped in a hospital
for so long that being back in the real
world was actually really scary
so unfortunately i allowed the voice to
come back into my head
and once again things quickly went
downhill
in only a few days i relapsed and i was
immediately readmitted into a kiso
the doctors then realized that the rules
of my anorexia went down much further
than they originally thought
this time things were so much harder i
had been a prisoner of my own mind for
so long that battling my thoughts every
day was a
constant battle however i had been given
the opportunity to experience
freedom and happiness and this time i
was sure of it i wanted to live
i completed four more weeks of inpatient
treatment which were by far some of the
most difficult weeks of my life
because i was forced to face all of the
emotions that i had been
bottling up for years i was so too weak
to take part in most of the activities
offered by the clinic
so once again i was put on bed rest but
i realized that i did not want to live
like this i did not want to be told that
i was too weak to walk around or play
soccer with my friends or even help
carry the groceries
i literally wasn’t allowed to do
anything apart from eating and resting
but feeling this useless actually made
me want to fight harder for my life
i didn’t know who i was anymore i had
completely lost touch with myself
but i wanted to give myself myself a
chance to live
and discover who emma truly was it has
now been over a year since i have come
back home and started my recovery
my road to recovery has not been a
steady one and i have been faced with so
many challenges along the way
however after a lifetime of battling my
own mind i no longer feel alone
mental illnesses are such a taboo topic
which are so looked down upon by society
i mean i have to admit myself i was
never educated upon the subject
for years i was miserable and i was
stuck in such a dark place
and i wish somebody would have told me
that i would be okay that i was not
crazy and i was not alone
up until recently i had never told
anyone that i struggled with mental
health issues
i remember my best friend telling me
that she knew i wasn’t anorexic because
she knew i would never do that to myself
but eating disorders are not a choice
mental illnesses are serious
life-threatening diseases which take 8
million lives every year
mental illnesses have no face and it is
often the people that you least expected
who are truly suffering
i wish i hadn’t let it get this bad i
wish i’d gotten help earlier and i
hadn’t wasted my teenage years putting
on a fake smile and hating myself
but that’s the problem of today’s
society you weren’t taken seriously
until you
physically look sick i was sick for
years and people only started showing
concern once there was barely anything
left of me
i was only admitted to the hospital once
i had lost over 20 kilos and my heart
was on the verge of failing
unfortunately people still
view physical health and mental health
in the same way and it can be so hard to
ask for help due to this stigma
myself i had always been too ashamed and
embarrassed of what people would think
of me
opening up is so scary but i have
realized there’s no point in trying to
hide my reality
the truth is yes i do suffer with
anxiety depression and anorexia
but after going through hell i have
chosen to live
chosen to get better and i am putting
absolutely all of my energy
into my recovery and i should not be
ashamed of that
i want to reach out to anyone who might
be struggling and say please keep
fighting and please accept help
you are so much stronger than you think
and i promise you
things will get better i have been given
a second chance at life and i am
so excited to discover everything my
future holds
thank you
you