Debs so bravely and honestly wrote about her own harrowing story of how her anorexia spiralled into bulimia, and it truly is extraordinary. It takes a lot to face your past, and her greatest fear is slipping back into a life that was very near to resemblinga slow death. It’s a tribute to her strength, honesty and vulnerability that she can talk so candidly about something so evil and overwhelming that she stood up to and buried. But it’s also from such adversity that true, captivating and extraordinary beauty evolves.

What you can gather from stories of eating disorders is that their root sets in early in life (5-8 years old), typically due to bullying, abuse or a lack of nurturing, and then are compounded by puberty almost like they are lying dormant waiting to be activated. A series of traumatic events (relationship breakdown, bullying, divorce, rape, assault, kidnapping, abortion) then reinforces them and encases and surrounds it all in a fog of clinical depression. As time passes, the mind and emotions shut down and mimic what’s happening physically.

My issues with my body image and self esteem started at the age of 5, my first day of primary school.  I suffered from severe eczema from 3 months old, a condition that had seen my be a guinea pig for various treatments and in and out of hospital with, sometimes life threatening, infections.  In short, my immune system had the arse kicked out of it.  I was very badly bullied at school from the word go by kids and teachers - all ignorant to the fact that eczema was not infectious.  I never had a real problem with weight though, and was a fairly average size.  However I was adept at scrutinising my appearance in the mirror constantly.  My mother would accuse me of being vain, but the truth was I was looking to see what new patch of eczema had popped up - what new imperfections there were to hate about myself.

When I was 17 I fell in love with Stuart. He was my first love and I idolised him.  Sadly he was an idol with feet of clay and proved to be a selfish and uncaring man.  The first couple of months were amazing until one day he dropped me. Just like that.  As I hadn’t experienced the disappointments of love before, this was a massive blow and I had no idea how to handle it.  I decided that in order to win him back, I must use sex as then I associated sex with love.  However this only tempted him back temporarily and I shortly found myself rejected again.  I decided the sex thing had worked, and therefore it must be my physical appearance that was the problem. So I just stopped eating.  As the weight dropped off, my mental state started to crumble.  Suddenly I had control. I couldn’t control Stuart or what he felt about me, but I could control my food, my body.   However, eagled eyed friends and family started to notice the rapid weight loss and whilst they never confronted me, they (I later found out) convened and decided to make me eat.  As any Anorexic will tell you, trying to force someone in that situation to eat will only make them rebel more.  Suddenly I wasn’t just controlling my food, I was being victimised (in my mind) by people that were supposed to care about me.  I couldn’t understand them, didn’t they know that this was the only way to get Stuart back? This was my life!  Stuart and I got back together and I put it down to my shape change, so continued not to eat. However this became increasingly difficult as Stuart often wanted to eat out.  That combined with the interference from family and friends meant that I had to eat.  There were whispers of doctors and hospitals - all this would take me away from Stuart - so I simply swapped one demon for another. Anorexia for Bulimia.  It seemed so easy and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t done it sooner!  Now I could happily gorge on all my favourite foods - satisfy my friends and family - and still have ultimate control.  No one would ever know!

However, this was a short lived secret.  It wasn’t long before my suspicious friends and family figured out that my sudden love for food combined with frequent toilet trips meant that I was now in the clutches of bulimia.  So I just stopped hiding it. There was no point. They knew, I knew they knew.  Stuart knew, but was the only one who didn’t care. In fact the only time he showed any emotion towards it was anger if my vomiting meant we were late for some event.  I had started out a healthy 10 stone, but was soon 7st.  Too small for my 5′7”, curvy frame.  As Stuart continued to pick me up and drop me, my condition got worse and worse. This was the only control I had now.  My throat burned from where I was throwing up so much.  Soon I stopped eating all together, but couldn’t stop vomiting. This was out of my hands now, my body started to do it automatically.  I felt sick constantly.  Was this my body’s punishment for bulimia?  This carried one for several months until one day it got so bad I was being sick all the time.  But this now was something else.

I can’t really explain how I felt when I discovered I was pregnant.  Shocked - my ravaged body had long stopped having periods so I had no clues, no indicators, I was definitely shocked.  But more shocked at Stuart’s reaction.  Cold and callous.  Uncaring.  No matter how many pregnancy tests I showed him, he rejected my claim. It wasn’t even that he was questioning the paternity, he was unwilling to believe I had conceived.  By this point my mental state had degraded so much that I did seriously consider whether he was right. I wandered round in a daze for a few days, not believing that my darling Stuart could be wrong, but also deep downing knowing that really I was pregnant.  I asked him several times what I should do - I was so under his spell that I was incapable of making decisions - and he said I wasn’t pregnant.  Then one night after a serious vomiting bout (self induced) it came to me.  Of course he meant I should abort the foetus!  That’s what he meant by not being pregnant!  So just like that I went to the family planning clinic and did the necessary.  I was so convinced that Stuart was right and that this wasn’t any more than a cluster of cells.  Truth be told I doubt my body would have supported it full term, but right now I was 17 and doing something for Stuart. Again.

When I came round from the abortion, I expected to feel happy. But I didn’t. I felt so desperately sad.  What had I done! What had driven me to this!  I locked myself in the toilets and cried and cried and cried.  I felt inhuman - a monster.  I left a tearful message on Stuart’s voicemail asking him to collect me as I was done.  I sat outside on the bench in Ealing and waited. And waited.  I sat on that bench for 14 hours.  He didn’t come. In that time no one asked how I was, several gangs swaggered past but no one hassled me. I guess my painfully thin frame (I was now 6 stone) combined with manic crying and proximity to the abortion clinic acted a neon sign above my head screaming ‘She’s crazy! Stay away!’  Either that or I looked like a crack addict and as such they didn’t mess with me.  In the end I called my mother, pretended I had been at a party and could she pick me up.  I saw him a couple of days later and neither of us mentioned it.

My lowest point came a few months later. I was so weak by now all I could do was lay in bed. The most I consumed in 3 days was a water biscuit.  My poor desperate mother decided to try and get me out of the house and so suggested that I accompany her to Marks and Spencers in Camberley.  For some reason I agreed, which surprised me as all I normally wanted to do was lie in bed and cry for Stuart.  However, when I got to M&S, I was so weak that my mother had to push me around in a wheelchair.  Whilst in there, I saw someone I had worked with less than a year before and suddenly I was filled with memories from before I succumbed to the eating disorder. I remembered things like going to the pub with friends, walking into town with my best mate and laughing.  I hadn’t laughed in a very long time. I hadn’t realised that.  Something inside me just snapped. I turned to my mother and cried.  She was used to me crying. However this time I wasn’t crying for Stuart or myself, I was crying for her. I realised what I had done. I remembered myself.  I said to my mother that I wished her to go through the M&S food hall. She looked confused and asked why and I simply replied ‘I would like a sandwich, I am hungry’. I could see her turn away because of the tears in her eyes. I managed about 3 bites of that sandwich. It was prawn mayonnaise, I remember it well. I’ve never tasted anything nicer. All the way home I struggled not to bring it up. It was horrible but I was determined. After a while the heaving stopped and my body digested it. It was a slow recovery, I won’t pretend I went home, had a pizza and never looked back, but I slowly got better. I split up with Stuart and realised just how bad he and the eating disorder was for me.  I’d like to pretend that it’s had no impact on my life but truthfully it has. In times of extreme stress and upset, I stop eating and throw up a lot. This lasts for quite a while and normally sees me lose a couple of stone. I am also now technically over weight.  I think I fear becoming that skeletal husk of a person again so much that dieting scares me. However with the help of a professional trainer I am now going to tackle my weight healthily.

It may seem that I just snapped back to life, but it took months and months and lots and lots of Prozac. It was a horrible time of my life where I didn’t even know my own mind and I wouldn’t repeat that for all the tea in China.  If it wasn’t for my family and friends I believe I would have taken my life. I had slipped into a real madness that I couldn’t see myself getting out of, and their love and patience was all I had to grab on to. I am just so glad I grabbed onto it before it was too late

If you want to contact Debs, drop me an email and i’ll forward it on to her.

That professional trainer would happen to be my sister, Joey. It seems like she is coming to specialise in helping people with eating disorders swop their method of losing and maintaining weight from an unhealthy one to a healthy one. If you need advice or help, email her confidentially on johanna_ireland@yahoo.co.uk (i won’t be told or get to find out).