You Got This!
“When life throws you lemons, make lemonade”…
I’ve always found that proverb to be quite funny and optimistic - as it is intended to I guess. But then one it kind of hit me that life didn’t just give me some lemons, it has just been throwing and tossing those lemons all over the place in my life giving me plenty opportunities to make sure my lemonade recipe would be right on point with so many trials!
Before getting any further I want to talk about one thing that sometimes can get in the way for you to read and understand the book the way it has been intended and written. My story - or the little stories/chapters of my life -, is not being shared and exposed in this book to call for compassion or cry or help or even to put myself back into the “victim” shoes. I’ve done my shares of “victim” days and as much as it can sometimes feel like a really comfy place to be at and a state that we may want to stay in because that seems easy, that place has been the most painful and the one causing me the most destruction and damages.Was I a victim in some points of my life? Absolutely, all the lemons were definitely lemoning to say the least. Did I then act and react like a victim? Well duh!! I didn’t really have any tools or any ways to do otherwise, to find different ways to get out of it and when you are being seen as the weak link you might as well believe that you are and act as one. Not only are you making sure that everybody is right around you but in a sense your brain also tells you “if you are a victim and you are weak, people will have no choice but to help you, they will be there for you, they will pity you and be there because you do not leave weak people alone. Just be a victim it’s easy it’s what you are and what you will always be and that’s what will help you”.
How much did I believe that for years and years and years. Being a victim became my identity everywhere, even at home with my family at some point I was the poor little victim and that thing is a vicious cycle.Again it all starts well because it’s comfortable and you think that you got everyone on your side and everything will then be ok. But trust and believe that is not how things work. Nobody wants to have to be surrounded by a victim all the time.That little, weak thing that is just always wimping, never happy about anything and cannot see the positive in a thing for their dear life.
But again, is it that a “victim” cannot see the positive into things or is it simply that being a victim transfers from being an unfortunate situation at a moment in life to being the definition of who you are.
I have spent years of my life apologizing for everything but mainly for existing and taking up some space. How dare I be here really? Did I still not understand after years and years of being thrown those lemons that I was not wanted and/or welcome here?
Well I guess giving up fully, disappearing, seemed like too easy for me. Ive always had my dad’s really competitive mind and as much as that can easily turn to be a really bad default it turns out that this competitiveness and the tenacity that I inherited from dad probably ended up saving my life in the end.
To whoever needs to hear this - you were not born a victim, you may find yourself in a position where you have not yet found your strength, your power, your purpose or talent or anything that will bring you that ounce of confidence that you need to shut down anything and anyone that comes along the way and tries to make themselves feel better about their own life by putting someone weaker than them down.You’re here for a reason and you will eventually find that reason in your own timing, be patient, be resilient and do not give up!
The idea of writing about life, about my life specifically has never really been a thing. Don’t take me wrong I’ve always loved writing, I studied philosophy for a reason and oh man I could
write pages after pages after pages about anything you’d want me to.Writing feels good, writing helped me to feel isolated and heard at the same time. Even when I was little I wanted to have these little journal that you could close with a secret key that you kept and you’d be the only one able to read what you wrote about. I guess you’d probably call that your morning or evening pages nowadays but back then it wasn’t really a thing.
Nonetheless I would love writing in these books, feeling alone with my thoughts but also having a full on conversation just me myself and I that would bring me so much joy and so much peace because I was feeling heard and understood.
How is that bringing us anywhere? I’m getting there!
If I find happiness in writing and a sense of healing through it then maybe other people could find the same sense of healing in the other side of things while reading what I wrote.The thought has been with me for years and I never really took the leap to start writing things because you know I always have a part of my brain that likes to click and enter the “victim zone” and tell me that nothing I do or want to do is that great. So why would that idea be different. So the thought of writing was kind of coming and going here and there until that one day where things changed, they shifted in a second and I knew I would write about all these lemons.
I don’t think I will ever be able to get that moment, that split second where things felt so obvious and all the thoughts of “you writing? Whatever”,“you can never write a book”,“why would anyone read what you wrote anyways?!”, they all disappear and became irrelevant because I knew I would write, I would do it, I had to do it.
That moment is a memory that I will never be able to erase from my brain.A few years ago I was home in my apartment in Toulouse, I believe it was a Sunday night and I was folding some laundry getting everything ready and making sure my apartment was all cleaned up before jumping back into a new week. I was just having a good, chill Sunday evening when I turned on the TV to check the news.As the news anchor changes subject to the next headline I felt like a huge weight fell down on my shoulders. This next headline was the death of a young girl - 13 years old or so - who committed suicide at home because she was being bullied at school and after a 2 weeks vacation time could not bring herself to go back to school and have to face all of this again.
And then it hit me so hard, it reminded me of the number of times I had the same thought, thinking about ending everything, thinking about hurting myself so that maybe the other thing wouldn’t hurt nearly as much or maybe I would hurt myself enough that everything would stop, for good.
After the news we could hear a lot of people have their “thoughts” on the situation, thoughts that they deemed so important and necessary to share - the first thought was obviously to feel so sorry for the situation and feel so sorry for the family and the kid who had taken her own life, etc.They were feeling sorry just because it seems socially appropriate to talk and feel that way and it seemed like it was a subject big enough that even if you didn’t relate to it at all and could not understand any part of it you still had to put your own 2 sense in it and be part of the conversation.And then you had the smartie pants people, sometimes the same people as the ones feeling so deeply saddened, who had to mention how unnecessary her death was because SHE JUST HAD TO SAY SOMETHING.You could hear the same things everywhere “why didn’t she talk to someone?”,“she could have just asked for help it’s not that hard”,“Why didn’t she stand up to these people they are just kids after all”,“I don’t really get how it can be that bad?”.
Well let me tell you a few things here -
1. Being bullied is not something you just talk about like that, why? Because when you’re a kid there are a few things that won’t necessarily be taken that seriously until sometimes it’s too late
Yes she could have asked for help for sure, but the problem is who do you ask though?
Standing up to the people who bully you that’s a great idea but unfortunately when you get bullied emotionally and/or physically, whoever does it knows how to do it “well” and there is not much that you can do to counter attack because they just put you down so much there is no room for you to stand back up.And that’s all true when it’s one against one but unfortunately more often then not the game is not on a fair play like that and you get out-numbered
This one is probably my favorite, how does it get that bad? Well that’s actually a pretty easy one to be honest. It gets bad because it’s every day, every school day your harasser will find you, they will find you and they will bully you and they will make fun of you, push you, insult you, etc.Try to take all of this every day for weeks and weeks at a time and alone, it doesn’t take long for anyone to be done and no be able to get back up from there.
And I mean granted when you look at it from an adult perspective you’re also more inclined to think that it cannot be “that bad” because they are all only kids but kids don’t play, they are harsh towards each other and if they want to destroy you they will find all the ways to achieve that.And a parent will never really know if their kid is being bullied or even an harasser at school.
If you listen to people and their childhood experiences with school and friendships you usually find two different stories:
1. You have the “popular” people, the untouchable ones who have been thriving through all of it, always regarded as the most powerful beautiful people, the ones everybody want to be close to and friends with. School is the way for them to start establishing their social status and they grow up wanting to be more than just prom king and queen. These people have always the most amazing stories to tell, they were invited to the best parties and just thrived through all of it.
2. You have the “normal” people, the ones who are a little more silent, do their best to keep their grades up, they usually have a little pod of friends and they overall enjoy going to school and hanging out with friends there and just all of it in general.They may have not been invited to all the best parties and places and maybe they haven’t made a lot of friends through the years but they still enjoyed the ride and have fun cute little stories with them and are usually still friends with their high school people.
But I guess I should say that there is a third type of story, another group of people - hopefully and thankfully - not the most populated group of people but we definitely don’t want to leave them aside.
This group is the “left aside” people.And no it’s not necessarily a choice for them to be on the side, to not get invited to parties and to just not blend in any groups.We often talk about how school and growing up in general can be a tough time but let me tell you that was an understatement for me!
I guess I already gave it out but I was definitely a third type of story as a kid.The one on the side, alone, not many friends, not feeling like I “belonged” anywhere and just trying to make it through one day at a time. I must say not having friends was one thing, like I can be an independent kid and be on my own and that would have been the whole story of my childhood we would have been so golden. But the problem was I became not just the “left aside” kid but I also became the “let’s find one to bully” kid.That second part is the part that changed the entire game for me.And it didn’t just change a couple of years of my life, it changed decades of it.
You know when people say “kids can be really mean towards each other” - well they actually have no idea how true that is!! We always think kids are innocent, they don’t mean what they do or what they say, they are just learning and making mistakes and all these things but I truly believe that for a lot of them - even if (let’s be nice here…) it comes from their own hurt and pain and cry for help - they know exactly what they are doing and the impact of what they are doing.
If I go back a little bit I would say that the early early days did not go too badly. I was the youngest in my little kindergarten class - being born in December my parents didn’t want me to be 3 and a half for my first day of school so instead I went when I was 2 years and 8 months.Was that the first hiccup on the road for me? Was that when the Universe was like “Oh no big big mistake on that one, let’s make it a little harder on the way for her we wouldn’t want her to have it too easy!” If that was the case let me take the time to say “Congrats Universe you did your job really well because home girl over here had it everything but easy trust me!!!”
Anyway, kindergarten went overall great.We had a lot of separation anxiety for the entire first year. Crying and crying and crying again every single morning right before being dropped off at school. I guess I was somehow super aware already and I must have known something not so good was waiting for me right around the corner.
We can say though that Kindergarten was okay. Nothing wow but we made it through in one piece and apparently - according to the teachers - I was pretty smart and would be stellar for the rest of my school education.Were they wrong with these prognostics you asked? Well no not really wrong, they were actually pretty right.When it came to schooling, homework, grades and all I was pretty badass. But let’s not keep sight of the fact that even thought the working part of school went well I mentioned earlier that I was a “third type of stories” person aka I was friendless, an alone kid at school.
That loneliness started almost right after kindergarten.What happened? What was the shift? Why did I all of a sudden went from being surrounded by a decent amount of people to nobody at all, I do not recall anything and am still to this day wondering what happened there.
As a little kid I actually loved school. I was a little nerd give me all the things to do, to learn, to read about, to discover, I just wanted to know more and more and more and get the best grades. Starting Elementary School was obviously a pretty big deal and the preparation for it was oh so intense and the excitement was immense. But it all went down oh so quickly too! First grade happened without too many bumps, I was mainly on my own or hanging with the boys - I somehow have always been feeling more “at home” and like “I belong” when surrounded by boys than with too much estrogen and feminine energy around me. Second grade came around and then things started to go down hill from there on for me. I don’t know if it’s the combination between being nerdy with great grades and being closer to boys than girls but I somehow became the enemy for a bunch of girls. Did I really get what I did wrong - if anything - back then? Obviously not, I was just a kid, I was supposed to go to school, learn, play have fun and that was where my job description stopped. But it did not happen like that for me…
Things started pretty small, during recess and any breaks we would have there will be looks, laughs, words ; anything to make me uncomfortable and to make me feel rejected from the girls that seemed to be ruling school back then. I so so wished to be friend with them. I would have done anything to be on their good side, to be part of the conversation - not the one they were making fun of but you know having a conversation with them as part of the crew.That definitely was not in the cards for me.We went through second grade and then third grade with the same things happening over and over again, the mocking, the bullying, the insulting, finding any and all ways to make me feel like s***.
Every year the anxiety to go back to school was getting more and more intense. How could I face all of this? How could I face them again? Would it be the same? Would it be worse? Would they finally find another victim to bully or was I really just the premium choice, a once in a lifetime opportunity not to miss?!
Everything escalated and became absolutely horrific once we got to fourth and fifth grades.To answer the “would it be worse?” question, the answer is absolutely yes.
Things escalated as they did not stay as verbal insults, but it all took a turn when it became physical. I saw myself falling in the staircase in front of everybody after one of them just tackled me to make sure I would plant face on the ground. I think the most humiliated I have felt was in the bathroom. For a little context on this one, my school has this playground area that we could use during recess, lunch time and all whenever the weather was good enough as it was outside with no covers/roof.To make things a little more practical for us, instead of having to go to a bathroom that was on the other side of the school they built what you would probably consider as outside bathroom with a part for the boys and then two stalls with normal “sitting” for the girls.The only difference from a regular bathroom was the size of the doors and the way it was made.The doors to close where smaller than your usual doors, tall enough that you would not be seen when you’re doing your business but small enough that an adult for intense could open the door from above if necessary.There was a big gap between the top of the door and the mini roof they placed above. I guess it seemed pretty obvious now with those details to know what happened next…
As a courtesy amongst girls, someone would always go with you as you were going to use the bathroom so that the door would be guarded, nobody to peak and nobody to open the door so all incidents would be avoided. But when you are not surrounded by many kind kids sometimes you just take matters in your own hands and decide to be brave, to go use the bathroom on your own and you pray really hard to make sure that you’re quick at it and no incident can happen.With the utmost surprise as I am heading towards the bathroom I realize that one of my harasser is right behind me going in the same direction. I found it odd especially because she was alone but of well, let’s be brave for once and keep going where you want to.We both got to our destination and as I’m about to get in she say “don’t worry I’ll guard the door for you”.Thinking back about it now I was really silly to think that all of a sudden she could have had a change of heart and became nice to me after being one of the heads of the group bullying me and being what I would called in charge of my fate. I didn’t argue or even respond to what she said, I went in silently and got in position.The lack of anticipation on my end was the fact that, as I mentioned the doors were really low, and oh surprise she is extremely tall for her age.. It took about point 5 seconds for me to realize what was about to happen, she waited for me to be unable to move or do anything to then unlock the door from the top and let the door open wide.
Oh wait did I ever mentioned that the door was facing directly onto the playground aka I was completely exposed to everyone who was there. I never thought someone would ever do that to me. Just why? What’s the point? How can you do that to someone else? It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid, a teen, a whatever ; just humanly speaking how do you do that?!
I stayed horrified to go to the bathroom for a few months after that and would only ask to use the bathroom during class time so I knew the bathroom were supposed to be empty. Nobody around to do me dirty.
The Elementary School bullying episode ended on a big big high when I found myself having to go on a one week camp with all of them.The school had the brilliant idea to organize what was supposed to be the best adventure for all of us. Let me tell you already, no need to hold your breath it’s going to be as horrific as you think - if not actually worse..
Due to the fact that I seem to be a very lucky person, I obviously had to be placed in the same room as some of them.
Wait for a second! This entire time I am talking about this mysterious group and them and all of the girls and all but I definitely omitted the fact that by “group” I am referring to 6 girls. 6 incredibly broken, miserable girls who had nothing else to do - I guess - than to spend their time finding ways to humiliate and destroy me.
Okay so let’s go back to our trip.The trip was really supposed to be nice and believe it or not but I somehow wanted to be excited about it. It was going to be in the countryside, spending nights in some cute little trailers that had been refurbished to welcome 4 to 6 people to sleep there.We had to spend 4 nights there and oh boy it felt like I was gone from home for about a month back then.Things didn’t start too badly, we were outside, going on poneys and seeing animals around and all during the day. It was peaceful and I would be able to stay on my own, not have to really interact with anyone - a real vacation. But then came the night time and as I said I was in the same trailer as 2 of the 6 mean girls. Lucky for me there was another girl from school - not a good or a bad, just another girl I never really interacted with before - who was also in the trailer with us which I think it saved me a few times to be honest! Does that mean I got to enjoy some peaceful, restful nights of sleep in that trailer? Absolutely not, I totally thought something was going to happen every time I heard a little noise of anything. Maybe they were planning on scaring me, maybe they were planning on killing me?! You just take a pillow and boom done, goodbye, see you never, done deal.
The part where I did not find any salvation was on our last day there.The teachers wanted us to enjoy the nature one last time before leaving and going back to the city and for that to happen they decided that we needed to go on a trail. Nothing better to feel connected to Mother Nature than by being in the middle of Mother Nature and feeling the air in your lungs, the wind blowing and smelling that fresh grass. Once again I was walking on my own staying with the group but finding my little space there so I did not have to interact with anyone but above all so that nobody would interact with me. It was all going so well that for a second I thought I was finally going to celebrate a victory - the victory of not being completely humiliated for a few days.
That was the biggest mistake I was making, letting my guard down just like that because it felt ok? Oh no. No, no, no, do not do that ever! As we kept on walling on that trail we passed by a huge nettle field. If you’ve at all ever been in contact with nettle you may have noticed and felt that once they touch you and scratch you a bit you get extremely irritated and it just hurts a lot.Well as we passed by that field, the teachers told us all to look and pay attention to that plant that we were seeing going miles away as it was a pretty dangerous plant and once that we would need to stay away from so that we would not get hurt. That was all the necessary information for the bully crew to know that anything happening between this field and me would result in pain and hurt.As the head of the class with the teachers start walking again to keep on going with the trail, I felt something grabbing me from behind and grabbing my feet on the other end before feeling myself floating before hitting the ground.Yes you did guess correctly, I had just been thrown in the nettle field, just like that - 1, 2, 3, toss! This type of incident would have been happening during winter I feel like the damage would have been minimized but it was obviously an end of school year trip aka mid-June/beginning-July situation so as you probably guessed with that piece of information I was in a t-shirt and shorts because it was really hot outside.The scratching, irritation and every kind of pain that comes from being in contact with nettle just hit me so quickly and so intensely I just couldn’t bear the pain.That obviously helped for everyone to have a good laugh to end the trail.Thinking about it now I am not even completely sure of which part of the situation embarrassed me/ humiliated me the most - was it the fact that nobody was actually asking if I was ok and instead they were just all laughing? Was it that the teachers helped me out of the nettle field but their first question was “why did you go in there we just told you all not to touch any of them?”? Or was it the fact that I just got thrown in a field by two girls and was therefore just like that being treated like a disposable piece of garbage that nobody cares about?
Thank goodness the day I got tossed in that field was also the day we were going back home! The ride home in that bus was absolutely horrible. So much happened in the couple of hours it took to come home, I honestly didn’t think I was actually going to make it alive - I know it sounds extremely dramatic but I swear that was definitely the feeling and the thought.
As time was passing and the closer we were getting to home, the sicker I was getting. I started getting fever, the rashes from the nettle was still extremely there and it developed hives on my body. I was trying so hard not to scratch myself everywhere but it was so painful and itchy. Because of the pain and the nerves and maybe the fall too - let’s not forget there that I was tossed by people taller than me and landed in a field not on some cushiony sprung mats from the gym - my head was pounding like never before. I got put in the front of the bus because of the bad “conditions” I presented and in case I needed to be sick or anything like that it would be easier to stop, open the door and get it down without making the entire bus dirty - cleanliness first. I remember seeing my mom in the parking lot where the bus was driving us back and I was so traumatized by what had happened and in so much pain that I started crying in the bus. As I walked out of the bus towards my mom I was in so much pain she had to run towards me and help me get to the car before going straight to the doctor to be examined. Mom obviously asked the teachers what had happened to me, what was going on there and the only answer they gave her was that I got a little clumsy and fell in that nettle field but nothing too bad it must have been the after shock of the situation getting to me due to the fact that I was so sensitive. In the car, now heading to the doctor, mom didn’t ask a lot of questions she just wanted me to be seen by a professional, make sure I was okay and was going to be okay with all these hives and rashes and fever. Needless to say that I got to end Elementary School on a Hive don’t you think! Lol
If by now some thoughts like - why didn’t they call a doctor when it happened? Couldn’t have they reached out to someone right away? Couldn’t she have texted or called her parents when all that happened? Well let’s just say that my Elementary School years are a little far back now and mobile phones were not an option especially when you were under 18 years old.
Now that we finally got through Elementary School I thought the hard stuff was finally over.All I had to do was pretty simple - convince my parents to not follow the same plan they had followed for both of my sisters and put me in the public school we had next to us for Junior High School/Middle School instead of the private catholic one as they did for my sisters so that I would not have to be surrounded by them anymore.
It did seem pretty easy to be honest, a quite feasible thing to make happen. If I ask mom and dad politely why would they refuse? After all we are not that religious in the family so the catholic part of the school is not necessarily that requested or sought out by mom and dad so what would be the issue of switching from private to public? Well it seemed like that was a big mistake on my end to think that way because it turned out to be a very big issue for them actually.To be honest I did ask to change, I implored to change school but I never gave any reasons for them to make such a change in their plans.
I’m not too too sure exactly why I did not say a thing but all I can tell you is “no it’s not that easy”. It’s not that easy to talk about the things that are not going well or not going according to the plans or to the way you know things should unfold.And it’s not easy because maybe some other things are going on at home.
Maybe your sisters are already going through some tough times for different reasons and mom and dad are already really worried about 2 out of 3 of their daughters. Do I really wanted to be an added problem? Was my problem an actual problem? Like I know all of the things I've been living, experiencing were wrong but back then I didn’t have the proper word to express what was happening to me.The only place my mind was going to was “damn you must be such a bad person and have done something wrong that you don’t remember to deserve all that bad treatment by so many”.And because you don't know what really is happening, and because you don’t have the words, and because you don’t know how to defend yourself in front of these mean girls, you just buckle everything in.You do your best to make it through one day at a time and thats the best you can do but then where does it go? Where do you put and pour all the anger, the frustrating, the hurt that you feel everyday? Well you don’t just pour it but you spill it all over the one thing you think will not hurt you back and will not leave you on the ground - home. I don’t even know if I could find a word to describe how I was behaving at home. Maybe “brat” would be appropriate but I don’t even think that would be a strong enough word honestly. I was simply and truthfully an a**hole, especially towards my mom. Moms are moms, they love us unconditionally so they will never say anything to us and they will on loving us and accepting us no matter what. I was so mean, so rude that I remember that one day when it came out of mom’s mouth to say “if you’re like that at school I'm not surprised that you don’t have any friends”. She was definitely right about the friends part! I was totally alone.Was she right about the attitude though.. Definitely not, the only reason I was the way I was at home is because I couldn’t find a way to defend myself at school and I needed to know and to feel that I could still stand up for myself. Except I was standing up for no good reason at all and picking fights just to be able to win them and feel good about myself, feel “strong”.
Even thought me talking, saying what had been happening to me all these years at school would have maybe given me the opportunity to get my parents to agree on changing me from the private to the public school, I still kept my mouth shut and did not say a word. I think one of the big part of why I did not talk was also because I did not want to disappoint them.After all everything went well for both of my sisters during their school time, how come things would have to be different for me? I didn’t want to be a problem, I didn’t want to look weak, and nobody would know anyway as I was doing so good at school with my grades!
So here we were, about to start 6th grade in that private school just like mom and dad planned for me and just like both of my sisters did years before me.There was one thing that could have helped me and saved me from this situation - or at least make things a little more viable for me - not being in the same class as them! I prayed and prayed and prayed so much to not be in their class. But as we now have discovered and unveiled luck is not really something that’s been with me to say the least.
So here we are, first day of 6th grade and all my toes and fingers are crossed for me to not be in the same class as them, please universe just do me this one solid gift for once..
Well that would have been too easy wouldn’t it be? How did I even think that would be possible for me to be in a different class from them - I got some jokes and hopes I guess.
There we were, same class which means having to see them all day long. How was I supposed to last an entire year like that knowing they completely despised me, they threw me in a nettle filed a few months prior and it just felt like they would have done anything just to put me down.
Well I did not. I could not last an entire school year with them around. If you ask me how things happened, when did it get to the point where enough was enough and I just couldn’t take it anymore, I would not be able to tell you. I do not remember the day, or the month, or a specific word or anything like that. But I can with all the clarity in the world tell you the moment where it finally got me and broke me - music class.We had that music class to attend where we were learning how to play the most loved instrument by any kid at school, I name the flute! I was no exception of the non-fan club to the flute and was just doing my best with it but definitely never showed any talent for it.We got to class, took our seats, started the lesson and the teacher asked us to take our flutes and open our books to a certain page to practice a melody.We are all getting ready to play, the teacher is counting us down to start and there it happened - only one sound could be heard, only one person was playing the flute and was playing it really badly everybody could hear it.That person playing, that lonely soul trying to get that melody out of the flute, struggling and failing at it.. yes that was me.
Mean girls had done it again, they managed to make everybody in the class not play when we would be supposed to just for me to be there alone and to fail in front of everyone.And yes maybe when you read it like that it does not sound that dramatic but let’s put some perspective on everything for a second - that was the 5th year in a row that they were all against me, that was the 5th year in a row that everything was about humiliation and just pushing things further and further to know where I would break. They finally found it, they found my breaking point.That moment, hearing the sound of my flute completely out of tune, everybody laughing around, the teacher not really understanding what was going on and not able to react and to make people stop the mocking it was all too much. I took all my belongings and ran to the nurse. I pretended I was having a really bad stomachache and needed to call my mom to get picked up from school.
That day I went home and I thought it was finally time to talk. I would tell mom and dad everything that had happened and they would understand and I would not have to go back and everything would be fine! But I just couldn’t, I couldn’t find the words, I couldn’t talk to them, I couldn’t tell them everything that was happening.The next day I pretended I was still feeling sick and needed to stay home.
If I did not talk I was obviously not going to be able to pretend being sick forever and just stay home. I either had to go back there or I had to talk.Talking was still impossible for me so I eventually got back to school.The day after I got back was the day we had music class. I was not sure of what was happening to me but I do know now that I experienced a panic attack. My hands got sweaty, I started getting really hot, my breathing started getting faster and difficult and I felt extremely light headed becoming really pale. I did not even put foot into the classroom, I just physically couldn’t. I could hear the laughters, the flute sound, I could feel the stares and the look of humiliation ; I couldn’t face any of that. I ran to the nurse and asked to be dismissed from class because of a really bad headache and to call my mom to pick me up from school.
There I was back home, safely in my home in my room everything would be fine. It was Friday, I could breathe, I did not have to go to school tomorrow or the day after everything was going to be fine. But then again until when would it be fine? Until Monday morning when it was time to go back to school and to face it all again when clearly I was not able to face any of it again? That was it, I needed to come clean and talk. I really didn’t know what words to use, what to say, what not to say, how to say things but I had to talk. I remember I waited until the end of the weekend to say something. Sunday night had hit and I just couldn’t go to sleep, I couldn’t stop feel nauseous and agitated and anxious, I had all that stress weighting on my chest and was having a hard time breathing properly and taking deep breaths. I waited for mom and dad to come back from a dinner. I remember hearing the car in the garage - you could always tell when they were back between the garage door opening up, the car getting in the garage and mom (or dad depending on who was driving that day) coming in through the main door. I was standing in the door frame of the living room and my mom came through the front door right in front of me and she saw completely decomposed and wasn’t sure what was happening. I told her I needed to talk to both her and dad and was waiting in the living room for both of them. I remember having a hard time to talk as I could not stop crying and not being able to catch my breath properly to speak. I started explaining all the things that had been happening over the years, the fall in the stairs, the bathroom door, the verbal insults, the humiliation in the music class, and all they did to bully me on a daily.They were both speechless and just did not know what to do or what to say.
They both hugged me and were in disbelief that I had kept all of that to myself for so long without asking for help.They both told me they would help me and would make sure nothing like that would happen ever again.
As much as I felt some relief by talking to them I was not sure of what was next for me. I asked them if I could now change school but they told me it wasn’t that simple because it was too far from the beginning of the year and transfers could not be made like that.They wanted to help me and to find solutions and ways for me to be better as they realized I was really hurt and traumatized by everything that had happened over the years.
In the morning my mom took me to school to go talk to a therapist that was at school and who was supposed to help me with this whole situation.Their idea to make things better was for me to confront all of the mean girls, to call them in the office and have them apologize to me or at least talk about what happened and that would make everything so much better. They literally forced me to be there and do that as I thought it was a reckless idea, totally useless but also totally terrifying as I did not want to see them ever again.The interaction happened for them to deny everything and for all of them to mention that I was not understanding things right and that they did not mean in any way to hurt me or anything and I was basically making a big deal and being a baby about this whole situation. Did the therapist go further than this you ask? Absolutely no they did not.They took what they heard from those girls and that was it, the truth was there and I was in the wrong.
After that wonderful meeting, I was just told that I needed to basically grow up and go back to school because things were clearly in my head and nothing “that terrible” had ever happened to me really. So I went home and I was told I would have to go to school the next day…
I got ready the next day in tears, crying and crying and terrified and panicked and I wondered why I even talked to anyone because what I feared had happened - nobody believed me and I was alone again against all this s***. I tried to hold on to the door nob of the living room door and almost ripped it out as my parents took me to get in the car.The entire way I was crying, mom was the one driving me and I could tell it was hurting her so much to see me like that, to see me in pain and broken but what do you do as a parent when you know kids go to school, they need education and you have never encountered anything like that before.We arrive and she opened the door on my side but my seatbelt was still on, she tried to take me out of the car but I resisted. I was not going to leave the car. I knew there was a rule at school, once we get to 8:05 you cannot enter school anymore until after lunch time. I just had to make it until 8:06 and I would be safe for the day. I got so hysterical not wanting to go in, it was now 8:05 mom could just not make me go in and I couldn’t have gone in the way I looked after so much crying and tension and fear. She stopped trying to take me out of the car, closed my door and we headed back home.
Mom drove me to school a couple more days after that, trying to get me out of the car but always unsuccessful and always ending up coming back home without going to school. One morning after these tries, mom and dad pretended that dad needed the car for work to go to one of his clients to do some accounting for them and therefore needed to take me to school that morning. I knew very well that dad did not need the car that morning but they had thought that as strong as mom is, dad may be able to get me inside this damn school as I was way more intimated and would not want to say no to what my dad wanted me to do. Until that specific morning, I don’t think either my mom or my dad had fully realized how broken I was, how petrified and incapable of going inside the school I was.There we were, in the car, dad was driving and trying to reassure me, to tell me everything was going to be fine, it’s okay to be scared but it’s not going to last and the longer I wait and I don’t go inside the harder it’s going to be for me to go back.
But here is the thing, I knew I could never go back. I just couldn’t.
Not because I wanted to be difficult, not because I wanted to act like a brat, not because I wanted a special treatment but because I just physically couldn’t. My body and my mind were now in a flight or fight mode that was activated and school was the fight and I couldn’t get there and I would do absolutely everything I can to not go back.And by everything I actually mean everything no matter the consequences.
We got to the parking lot a little earlier than usual - dad had to start work no later than 8:15 but he also planned to have more time to take me and make me go inside this time.They thought that replacing mom with dad was going to do the trick but it didn’t and it actually pushed me to a place I never thought I would actually go.
We are on this parking lot and my dad is pulling me out of the car, he wants to make me go inside but I am again hysterically crying and I just feel it inside of me I cannot go in.A teacher - who happened to be a family friend and a neighbor - arrived at the same time as this whole scene unravels and tried to come in to comfort me as well and to pull me closer to the door.As both my dad and the teacher try to pull me there my eyes start wandering around looking for a way to escape, for a way to be safe, for a way to make it all stop.And there it was, the way to make it all stop, my out was right there, down the parking lot on the road that truck was coming down, I just had to run towards it and let if go and it will be all gone. No more tears, no more fears, no more disappointing people. I saw it coming down that little hill and I had to run towards it. I only had a few steps left to take when my dad pulled me back, hugged me and told me “I am taking you back home you’re ok”.
Would have I jump under the truck? Would have I actually taken that leap? I don’t know but I just know that in that moment it seemed like it was the only way out.The only way for me to be understood in a sense or to not have to explain myself and hope for people to get me. It wouldn’t have been for my dad pulling me back in that moment maybe I would have been another girl in the news, taking her own life after being bullied at school.
When you talk about being bullied in today’s world it makes sense to people, they know what you mean you don’t really have to explain much of it. But back then people would just look at you and think that you’re simply a difficult kid and you’re too sensitive, not able to take a joke and you need to talk to a therapist to get it together. Maybe that’s why also it took me so long to talk even to my parents. I know they love me, I know they only want my happiness and for me to feel safe but even then how can you understand something nobody talks about or when they talk about it it’s always in a way that makes the person being bullied sound at fault. It doesn’t take much for one to be “selected” as the one to bully. It’s actually a pretty simple selection most of the time - if you’re pretty smart aka good grades at school, your confidence in yourself is not through the roof you will easily let people tell you how stupid you are or anything they want you to believe about yourself you will surely trust their words as they talk with so much confidence, you’re lack of confidence make you a little bit more isolated you don’t have a lot of friends and they know that therefore nobody is there to team up with you, you’re the easy target.
We often talk about the power of one’s thoughts but do we really get the extent of what these thoughts can make you do… Thinking that you’re beautiful, badass, talented, crushing it, etc.All of these are amazing thoughts that will only bring you more confidence, more of whatever it is that you’re thinking. But what if your thoughts are not so glamorous, not so positive, not so nice towards yourself? Your brain thinks, the words are in there but unfortunately there is no distinction between what’s good and what’s bad so everything is taken for what it is and bears the exact same weight.
After this little “truck” episode and the scare that came with it, it was time to rethink a few things and to also have some talks with my parents.They never imagined what was and what had been going on for me all these years. So unpacking all of it was a lot and got me to a place where functioning normally was just not an option anymore. Education wise, it felt pretty clear that I was not going to be able to go back to school that year. It was also too late to sign up for an “online”/homeschool program so I ended up spending the rest of the year with whatever kind of material I was given from the school and just me reading trying to not give up on all of it.When it comes to life itself and being now away from everything that was happening on the daily, it was like a giant weight had been lifted off of my shoulders but at the same time my entire body and being were just giving up on everything after this fight that I had put on for all these years to stay afloat. I don’t think when traumatic experiences happen you ever really realize the importance of the “trauma” that they bring until you distance yourself from the situation and look at everything from a different angle. For me, when I started looking at thing from a different perspective and when I started talking about everything and putting what happened into words and hearing myself saying all the words and stories, everything fell apart. I started going down a spiral that I never thought I would be ale to come back from. I had a lot of rage and anger but above all I was just broken from inside, feeling helpless, feeling as if I had done something wrong and I was myself not normal.
When you start getting in your thoughts like that and when you start uncovering and talking about everything that has been happening you realize that the only reason you kept going is because your brain, your subconscious actually suppressed and repressed a lot of what happened and did so for years so that you could keep going. But when it all comes back to you even after couple of years it hit you right back just like it did the first time it happened. I started loosing my ability to sleep, having all the nightmares like I was reliving everything, every mocking, every insult, every physical aggression, everything was coming back during my sleep and feeling more real than ever. I was definitely not a baby anymore but for over a year I had to camp in my parents room and sleep on a really thin mattress on the floor to be able to feel a sense of safety before going to sleep.
For the longest I also could not not panic every Sunday night. I had that thought that maybe in the morning mom and/or dad would want to force me to go back to school and I just could never do that again. It was all in my head they were not going to do that but for some reason that’s all I could think of and I could not stand still filled with anxiety, fears and that feeling of not being in control of anything.The days went on and even though I was home things were not getting better for my mental health and for me to feel better.We got to a point where I got diagnosed with depression and I needed to be put under a treatment in order to make sure I was not going to do anything I did not want to do - in better words I would not get to the point where I wanted to end things. I don’t know what I was expecting with that anti-depression treatment but I do know that I was hoping to feel better - I guess that’s kind of the point! But that kind of didn’t really happen that way. First of all the treatment just numbed me. I went from feeling so much and so many things all over the place to pretty much not feeling anything anymore.The good thing is though if you don’t feel then you don’t hurt! That was at least the thought… but again that was the wrong one..You can feel numb but still be completely hurting and just not have the capacities to really talk about anything at all.And you know when you get a treatment and it seems like you remain in the same state, nothing improves then we kind of need to change the treatment to give you something a little stronger and hope that it will make a difference and you will finally bounce back up! Well they did change my treatment and I did “bounce” but I actually did not bounce back I was just bouncing on the sofa eye rolled all the way back - or close to be, I honestly could not see hahah - and having some nice side effects and convulsions from that new treatment. So yeah we bounced but definitely not the right way!!!
So medically I was being followed by our family doctor, our primary care, and yes I was taken care of.The wrong pill was a bad luck situation but the doctor did find something to give me that did not create too much damage and at least did not give me more bouncing on the sofa after dinner the way that previous one did! Less bouncing but I gladly took the quietness.. The medical, the pills, the doctor’s appointments for feeling sick every week with something different with my body being in defense and weakness mechanisms were only part of the new “norm” and new routine for me. I also had to take care of my mind, my brain, my thoughts and all the memories that were stored in there and that were replaying over and over again every single day.
We already know I got pretty lucky with the pills and the treatment.Well I also got a really big gift with the psychotherapist I started to see and talk to. Usually we would all agree that a therapist is here to listen to you, guide you in your reflection, help orientate your thoughts towards more positive or less negative ones however you want to look at it. In a nutshell a therapist is definitely not here to make you feel like crap about yourself and almost blaming you for whatever has happened to you. I guess I'm just one of those lucky people, everywhere I was going, everything I was doing I was just hitting the jackpot at all times!! Lol
Before getting into more details about that brief therapy adventure, let me say that I do love therapy and I think it’s an amazing tool. Not everyone is for everyone and finding a therapist is pretty much like finding a date, it’s gotta click and feel like a match in order to work. But usually when it’s not a match and not a fit nothing bad happens, people part away and that’s all. Well let me not keep the suspense build any longer, the therapist I got to meet and talk to was just the worst piece of s*** you could imagine! And yes I know what you’re thinking I am going in and using a lot of cursing and not being really nice either but you’ll get it in a second!
Because I was underaged that first consultation with that therapist happened with my mom in the room. Everything happened and it seemed fine and it seemed like he could potentially help me get better. Once that first appointment happened the rest of the sessions would be held just one-on-one, him and me in the room nobody else.And that’s when things started to take a full u-turn and it went down for me. I kept on going to my sessions weekly for what would be a few months and instead of feeling better, my state of mind would just keep on declining and I would just get to that one afternoon where my sister came to pick me up at the end of it to bring me back home and I just started crying uncontrollably without saying a word. Once I got home, still crying, I ran to my mom and gave her a really tight hug telling her how sorry I was. I probably stayed hugging her for 5 to 10 minutes without any additional words coming out of my mouth. Once I managed to calm myself down and to catch my breath, my mom, my sister and myself sat down at the kitchen table and my mom started asking me what just happened.That’s when I started talking about what my sessions had been about for the past few months.. I was weekly talking to that dear therapist who instead of making me feel understood, heard and giving me some tools to overcome everything that had happen was just there to explain to me the reason why my mom had chosen to take care of other people’s babies for work. It was all because I was not worthy of love and my mom needed to find a way to love kids and give the love I was not worthy to receive to other kids… So for a few months, every single session I was having with that therapist were going around the topic of why mom could not like me, could not love me and how much of a troublemaker I was for my parents and my mom could not bear the thought of even having me as a child hence why she decided to take care of other kids to pretty much replace me.
I know by now you probably think this is fiction and she is definitely exaggerating the truth and nothing happened that way.. Well I really really wish it was indeed fiction and not the craziness I had to deal with and to hear over and over again being repeated to me throughout all these sessions. But this is indeed exactly what happened and what therapy was for me for a few months.
My therapy journey has definitely been bumpy to say the least.. I had some therapists commenting on how much my mom could not love me, how unworthy of the love of my mom I was, but I also have been told that being bullied at school for years had probably been my fault in the end.And before you come at me and start thinking the same I can tell you already NO this is not true and there is absolutely nothing to justify bullying someone. Did I put myself in a victim position because I did not know what was happening at times, yes for sure I did, does that justify everything that has happened to me, no absolutely not.
Well all that took some time and there we were, the school year was ending and it was time for me to make a decisions - would I go back to school or would I just opt for a homeschool situation right away.
One thing leading to the other, that summer break got me to reconnect with a friend (and yes as surprising as it is I did have one remaining person talking to me in a friendly way). She and I were both in places where we needed to move on from all the stuff that had happened throughout the year and we just want to feel a clean slate.What would be best for a clean slate than changing school and actually going to school in the town next to ours? Well nothing indeed that was the best idea so far and that was exactly what we were going to do!
Weirdly enough I managed to feel extremely excited for that fresh start, it felt like things would be so much better, would be smoother and would be safer - after all for once I was not alone, I had someone by my side and we were both in this together.
The summer was coming to an end already, September was here and I was so pumped to go to school again and to go back to a “normal” life. It all started pretty well, we were going to school together and coming home together and once at school even if we were not really making friends we at least had each other… well that’s what I was hoping but somehow things did not turn out to be that way.
I found out that between my friend and me I happened to be the most social and outgoing one - I know that was quite a shocker for me too to be honest. So as an outgoing person I did try to talk to people and just be nice and it somehow worked and brought us closer to a few people from class. But oh my god what did I even do to myself there though… definitely nothing good I can tell you that much. I really to this day do not understand how s*** went down but it went down in flames before my eyes without me comprehending any part of it.
Before I knew it, my so called “friend” who was so grateful for me and for the friendships I had created with other people completely turned her back on me not just in a sense of not wanting to talk to me anymore, no no she had to go further than that. For someone who knew how much I already had been through she decided that the best course of action for her own little interest and life was to ditch me out of the group of friends we all became so that I guess she would feel more included with them? Honestly I really don’t know the reasoning behind it because it still doesn’t make any sense when I think of it.The thing that happened for sure is that after being called names in front of everyone and after group texts - without me included obviously - I was looked at and laughed at and just feeling like a clown missing some pieces of information of why were people making fun of me that way.
I did found out what it was all about.. at that time being a little different, or if you were saying or even just if people thought you were different and maybe attracted by people of the same sex as you that was kind of the end for you. Nobody was with an open mind, it was not “cool” and definitely ok to be different.
And so that’s what my friend had done.After I did not want to go out with that guy from class or wherever this dude was from she jumped on the wagon to start some rumors regarding the fact that I was actually lesbian and people needed to be careful with me because you never know in case that would have been contagious!!
Again to understand that part you have to understand that times were so so different as they are now and you just could not be something different.
And there was the end of the year for me. She had fully destroyed me, having all the kids and a really large part of the school loudly and publicly laughing at me for something that never happened and that wasn’t a thing. I had fastest a really long 2 months in that new school and there I was back to square one, back home.This time though it was not too late for homeschooling program and I decided to join it so that I would not fall behind on school knowing I already pretty much lost the entire previous year.
That year and the following year would be two years where I just decided to follow homeschool program and focus on rebuilding myself.You know one think that the brain will make you do - finding the place where you feel like you have control. If there is one thing that the human being wants to feel is being in control, making the decisions, holding the rains and taking the engine to whatever places the brain had decided.
Well when you are bullied, especially repeatedly, over the span of years, by multiple people etc. you get to point where you really feel like there is no control anymore.You have totally lost the control of your own vehicle and people are just using you as a little pin, like the piece of puzzle or even better one of those monopoly items that you pick at the beginning of the game and you move along the way.You are that little piece of the game that’s being moved from one place to the other. If you start analyzing things and looking at what’s going on from a distance that’s definitely not showing a lot of control. People are just pushing you around however they please. Once you get to that realization you’re pretty much stuck with 2 choices - completely giving others the rains and the power on what’s going on with you and you basically just give up on yourself OR you may want to find a way to get the control back and feel empowered.
I will say that completely giving up on things had already been something I tried and had kind of been surrendering towards for a while but for some reason it wasn’t enough and it was probably not hurting me as much as I was hoping. So I decided that I would have some control back!
You’ve already figured out that the story would not be too simple when it comes to the control part of things because.. well because it’s my story and it seems like no matter what it’s a little bumpy at every corner. So here I was in the quest of control.
It’s a little tricky to say the least to find a way to regain control when you’re home, alone, I couldn’t really fight anyone because how would I do that and there was no external interactions that I was having that would have been able to make me feel strong and empowered. So there was my dilemma of where can I find that control to regain if that’s what’s going to help me.
Well people, if the control does not come to you from the outside you need to go look for it inside!! And what comes inside of your body?? FOOD!!! You guessed it, I had found where I could finally feel in control - the amount of food I would put in my body and what kind of food I would put in my body.
Controlling food and its intake can come in 2 different forms - mainly - either you become bulimic or you become anorexic. They are both eating and food disorder and as much as people think they are simple issues that people have when they think they are overweight or don’t look the way they want, these two eating disorders are way more than that.They are both psychological disorders and they are often seen as simple things to fix or people suffering from these disorders are just as people being superficial and having issues with something pretty “silly”.
I never went towards the bulimic side of things, I took things the opposite way and started being anorexic. Looking at what I was eating gave me that sense of control I was missing and wanted so bad.The thing you do not realize with eating disorder is the way things escalate and how quickly you become controlled by the disorder - the disease - and you once again completely lose control of the situation. So yeah all that for that… It was not that crazy at first I kind of started eating a little less and I was trying to find any ways to move more and to “burn” anything I was eating.The thing in Europe and with European families in general is that we usually have all our meals together. Mom worked from home so she was always there, I was at home as well obviously as I have homeschooled and we would juts be waiting for dad to come home from work both for lunch and dinner to eat together. But I quickly started thinking that my little food game was most likely about to be uncovered if I kept on eating with them.They may start saying something and I just didn’t want to get into it. So little by little I managed to come up with some excuses on why I needed to eat before them and I had to do things after for school and so on so I could just eat whatever I wanted without having their eyes on my plate and pretending to eat a nice big full meal when in reality I would probably eat half of the food and I even started throwing part of the food in the garbage.You know things are not necessarily going well when you start throwing away half of a tomato because you psychologically cannot bring yourself to eating a full tomato.
Anorexia is such a mind game and something so impossible to understand for a lot of people except if you actually experience it. I don’t think anyone can actually fully get how far this disease goes and how much it plays with your mind and your entire body.The sense of control is there and you definitely think that you know better than anyone. But the hunger still consumes you and you know you won’t eat but how do you actually manage to feel satisfied and feel less hungry? The answer is you feed others. Even though I would never eat at the same time as my parents and family I would always be around the table when they were the ones eating. I would serve them and would always really nicely fill their plates. Somehow the quantities for me where all the minimum of the bare minimum but when it came down to their plates I always tried to put as much as possible without them saying anything. It’s so strange how seeing them eat almost more than they themselves wanted sometimes because I was the one over serving their plates was a big satisfaction for me.
Putting less in mine and more in theirs I guess that’s what you call balance right?!
This battle I led with food lasted for a while.And by a while I mean over 9 years… I spent over 9 years of my life with my mind focused on food, planning every meal, trying to feed everyone and overlooking what everybody else was eating wanting so bad to be free of all the rules I had created for myself and the spiral I went deep into. But it’s a game about control and when it’s the only thing that gives you a sense of control you just cannot let it go.That would mean you actually lost at everything in your life, you actually proved everyone who had been bullying you and telling you for years that you were simply not good at anything and not worth anything and there it would have been, they would have been right.
So because you cannot give up on that game - and because by then you do not know the rules of the games anymore because the game is ruling you and you are just deep into it - you try to push things further and further and further just to keep on proving to yourself that yes you are still the one in charge. So little by little you keep on reducing the amount of food you’re actually eating.When you think it’s not possible to reduce anymore you just find new ways to trick the game and things to remove. If you think you’ve made the thinest slices of tomatoes or cheese while making your sandwich I can guarantee you already that I’ve done thinner than yours! I know I know it’s not a competition but it was definitely a competition at the time between the knife, the tomato and me.The slices were so small that you could actually see through them.And as much as I am using the word slice with a plural I also very quickly started to remove some of the slices and therefore land on getting only one of those see through tomato slices as well as an equally thin slice of cheese to make my sandwich which was my entire meal. And if you ever wonder how does one human being survive on a one slice of bread, one see-through slice of tomato and cheese for lunch and watermelon for dinner with a piece of bread honestly I do not have the answer for you. But because I am still standing I guess it is somehow possible. I can tell you that this kind of extreme “diet” will definitely make you lose some weight but at what cost. I’ve lost years of sharing meals with family, being there for big events like when my nephew were born and I just could not get myself to go visit my sister because it would not align with the time I was supposed to eat my mere slices of food. From being in control of something to becoming the slave of your own game that’s what happened.
One thing to know about anorexia is that yes it’s about food and reducing the amount you eat which therefore make you lose weight but there is more than that happening to your body. One of the biggest change I noticed for me was the change in hormones and the fact that my body got completely covered of that really thin layer of hair. It almost as if my body was finding a way to protect itself from the outside as it was becoming more and more fragile. I haven’t really given the extent of the weight loss yet but for some understanding of how low I went and how bad it got I started at a nice 55kg and went down at my lowest to 25kg when I celebrated my 23rd birthday.
It always feels from the outside that getting out of it would be a pretty simple thing to do - just eat! Well in theory you’re not wrong that’s pretty much what needs to be done, but practically speaking that’s definitely not that easy at all. I don’t think that anyone realizes how much of a brain game this is, you will not get better unless you’re mind accepts to get better. I repeat, even if you say you want to get better nothing is going to happen unless your mind is deliberately wired in a healing way.
With anorexia I had to give up on a few things that I thought were worth giving up for that sense of control I was feeling and regaining. I lost my connection to my family as I mentioned before but further than that I also lost the ability to move.To move my body in a sense really practical like walking outside for instance. I was not able to walk outside the house during winter or anytime the temperatures were low as my blood flow started to be really bad and I started getting frost bites on my feet, my toes during cold weather. Imagine walking outside and started not feeling your toes. It happens to a lot of us and usually as soon as you get back inside in the warmth and the comfort of your house your feet warm back up and everybody is happy. Well here is the plot twist for me.. because of the dramatic weight loss I also lost hydration and some of the main minerals in your body that are needed to live comfortably and to be able to warm up after the cold in a normal way.The first time it happened was quite a shock for myself and for my mom. I remember I had been outside on a Sunday afternoon with my parents to watch a soccer game during the winter. I was all bundled up and everything should have been fine. I didn’t really mention anything to my parents but my feet started losing sensation and from time to time I would feel a little bit of itching and a burning sensation. I had no idea what was happening down there but obviously once home everything would go back to normal and we would be fine! Except once I got back home the burning sensation started to become excruciating and I just had to take off my shoes and socks as quickly as possible. But half way through removing my socks from my feet I realized that as soon as I started moving the part of the socks that was touching my toes I was feeling a weird and painful sensation of skin ripping apart.That feeling was not really a feeling but was actually exactly what was happening. I immediately called my mom to the rescue for her to help me with the situation and she did her best to remove my socks with ripping my skin apart.What she found out once the socks were removed were frostbites on my feet, my toes and actually my skin was so dry and dehydrated that my toes were glued together through the skin.We tried getting my feet closer to the heater but the pain was just unbearable, I could absolutely not move my toes as much as I felt the urge to separate them I just could not or I would completely rip apart my own skin.The one thing that my mom started doing and that helped a lot was a gentle soft foot massage with hydration cream in order to give something to my skin to work with and little by little detach one toe from the other.That little frostbites inside kept on happening every time I was going outside during cold weather, it did not matter if I was wearing thin or thick socks, my feet were just not capable of functioning properly.After a few episodes and seeing how painful this thing was, my parents decided to take me to the doctor to check what was happening and what needed to be done for these frostbites to stop happening.Well as it seems like, anorexia makes you lose weight and lose water and a lot of hydration but it also messes up with your blood circulation/flow. Both my hands and feet - as soon as the temperatures were dropping too low - were not getting enough blood to function properly. It’s not really a bad thing in itself, as in a lot of people have blood flow issues and everybody survives and is fine! The thing is when you get to 25kg for 1m52 and you are therefore a “little” underweight your body has zero resources to make things work for you. So it got to the point where the doctor had to warn my parents and myself that by going outside and getting those frostbites I was actually risking to lose my toes.They would have to be amputated at some point if the burning kept on happening because they would not be able to recover anymore. So there I was stuck at home.
You would think that maybe getting that kind of news and risking to lose your toes would be enough of a wake up call to start eating again, eating better and more and just get out of this dark and sad place of anorexic city. I would actually think too today but unfortunately back then that did not make me flinch at all. I was really pissed I could not go and walk outside because how was I going to “burn” the 30 calories from my fake sandwich??? So that was a really big tragedy for me and I may need to review the amount of food I was taking in or find a way to “burn” more at home… Do not fear I found a way! And by a way I just mean that I added some extra climbing the stairs at home, going kitchen to living room for every single item that needed to be on the table for meals.And when I say every item I mean that I would bring one plate at a time. Even writing that down now feels completely insane, to think that I was like that and I could not think of anything else but obsessing on all those compulsive behavior. Nobody could tell me anything about them. I was doing what I was doing and any type of comment on. My behavior or anything like that would lead to really ugly arguments and big confrontations with my parents.
But then if almost loosing my toes, driving myself bananas with all these Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD), let’s not forget the fact that everyday I started resembling more and more to a little monkey with that strange hair down on my skin and mainly my back, what was going to make me change and snap out of this crazy spiral I was in.
It all happened in 2 phases - trigger #1 was my parents and trigger #2 was my passion for movement/dance.
That first “trigger” that pulled me half way through this big whole I had created for myself was my parents. Both mom and dad without wanting to gave me the push and the reason to fight to get to the other side. Dad was the first one to somehow show me that things were just not okay anymore - or at least it was time for me to see that they hadn’t been okay for a while.
My parents have always been the most supportive and loving and caring and always trying to find ways to make things better however they could. One weekend they decided that it would be nice for me to go shopping and find new clothes to feel good in and to be able to wear things that were not 4 sizes too big because it actually made everything look even worse than it was. So there we were, think about a GAP or UNIQLO store in France, kids section. I always loved going shopping with mom and dad, it was always fun and I used to be able to kind of pull up any outfit and just look nice lol The only real issue we had in the past when going shopping was the fact that everything would fit but I would have to pick only a few of them because like mom used to say “we are not about to buy the entire store!” But anyway that day was the complete opposite to any of that. I believe it was the first time I was going shopping since anorexia got invited into my life. I would try one item after another and they would just all be atrocious on me - too loose, too short, too this and not enough that, my proportions just did not work for any of the sizes. Dad was never really one to be that interested into fashion or shopping or anything like that but I remember that day he came along and was inside the store with mom and I. I was in the dressing room that only had a curtain to pull across to close and have some privacy and mom had somehow called dad to come over and look at one piece of clothing.The curtain was not completely closed as I was trying what I believe was a shirt on so my back was visible. I remember putting the shirt on really quickly to hide my body and turned around to show my dad but there he was standing in front of me with the saddest look on his face like he had seen a dead body, tears in his eyes and just no words coming out of his mouth.That look on dad’s face, that will stay with me forever I think. I can picture it to this day like it was yesterday.After exchanging a brief eye contact with my dad, he just looked towards the floor and left the store to go back to the car and wait for us there.You’re probably wondering what was the actual issue with what he saw. He saw the back of his daughter looking like a skeleton covered with skin and that strange layer of hair down.
I never really realized how my body looked and never really thought I was “that” skinny.Anorexia definitely gives you that sense of body dysmorphia where what you see in the mirror is completely different from what people see in the mirror. I would still find myself a little bit “big” even when I was only at 25kg. But the one thing I was really aware of and ashamed of was that appearance of hair on my back. Did I think that the lack of food in my body was the reason for it and therefore should probably eat more and be careful with the game I was playing? Absolutely not - I thought I had some additional issues from whatever that would be but definitely nothing linked to food.
The way back home from that shopping spree was the most silent, sad and uncomfortable ever. Sopping spree that by the way had been a complete disaster, I don’t even think I got one piece of clothing lol.
That reaction from my dad really scarred and scared me then and I realized that something was not right and for my dad to react that way and to let it show it’s because it was serious. The second thing that happened was with my mom, a different day, the weather was pretty nice out and I wanted to go on a walk in the city. I was telling my mom I wanted to go buy something at the supermarket while she was ironing some laundry and I remember her looking at me with tears in her eyes and telling me that I just couldn’t go outside the way I was dressed. I did not really understand at first and found her comment really rude. So I asked her to explain what she meant and she went on to tell me that the way I looked, my appearance looked bad and it looked like her and dad were mistreating me and if someone was going to see me like that they may report the situation to social services and her and dad might get in trouble and even go to jail for a bit for “failure to assist a person in danger”.
When she said that and broke into tears I think something clicked inside of me. I had done all the things I had done for years in a selfish destructive way because I felt the urge to control and I felt the urge to punish myself. But the one thing I never intended to do was put my parents in danger in that process.
At that point I knew I went too far - or not far enough but it was too much to keep going that way and something needed to happen before my family was the one suffering the consequences of my acts.Things did not change and happen over night but from that day on I was determined and had decided that I would change. I would make some efforts and would be able to eat again for my family.
Here is the thing though, you know when I said that one of the most important thing to recover and actually heal from an eating disorder is having a mind that is fully committed to healing and actually truthfully wants to heal. So my motivation in my healing quest back then was to not harm my family, it was never about my getting out of it and getting better, it was about my parents the entire time.
I’m sure we are all thinking the same - how does that change anything? I’m actually not quite sure of the physics behind it but I can tell you for sure that it impacts things.
Once I realized that I was stuck where I was at - I was not losing anymore weight and as much as I tried to basically make myself disappear I was still here and everything was more so a cry for help than me fully giving up on life - I had to make some decisions and try to go the other way and make things better.
Fighting for mom and dad was the best bet to start things with, I was doing it for them so it didn’t feel like I “failed” at my mission to hurt myself it felt like I was helping them out. I wasn’t really sure on how to start undoing everything I had been doing so I decided maybe it was time to get some medical help with dietician and I got a consultation to give me some pointers and guidance towards what I needed to do. I needed to reintroduce reel food in my life and balance things out but also not too fast so I found a new bestie for a while - a scale.Would I recommend for anyone struggling with eating disorder to use a scale? Absolutely not! That felt like such a big mistake for me to start using this thing but there we were weighting how many grams of proteins, carbs and veggies I was getting in every meal. So there we were, weighting one meal after another, rebuilding my diet from scratch basically.When you start eating again as much as you may want to do it and you believe you can, there is always in the back of your mind the fact that the weight will inevitably come back to you at some point and you just need to be prepared for that.Are you really prepared for that though? Eh no you’re not lol
At first when I started eating again and following the scale and the proportions and everything, it all seems pretty feasible and I was almost happy to be eating to be honest. I had been starving for so long!!! I was finally “allowed” to eat aka I was allowing myself to because I needed to for my parents - remember I am not doing it for myself then, it was all for the greater good of mom and dad.
Re-introducing food was not going too bad but that scale thing was quickly becoming a different addiction for me and I just needed to have it with me at all times. I remember not being able to eat at other places than my own house because I wouldn’t know if that was too many grams of proteins or too many grams of carbs - notice how it was never an issue about having too little in my plate lol I just wanted to make sure I would not get too much, so you know that as much as I wanted to get back on my eating game I still have some reweaving when it came to being fully invested.
One thing that was pretty amazing for a while is the fact that as much as I was eating pretty “well” all things considered - like my plates were definitely much better than they had been looking for the longest time - my weight was not moving at all. I was literally weighting the same. I may have put on one or two kilos at first but then that was it.And then it hit me and I was like “omg I did starve myself so much for so long when I could have actually been eating a little bit more and not be so hungry all the time and obtain the same results? Wow what a silly goose was I!! Me who thought I knew everything and had all the answers” Well actually it’s not really what was happening.The first thing is, when you’ve been depriving your body from food and anything substantial that is needed to live, you have obviously created a lot of deficiencies.And its pretty much the same as you digging a big whole in the floor or anywhere, before the whole overflows you will need to refill it fully which will require a lot of work.
And it’s pretty much the same with your body, I did not feed myself for the longest time and there I was thinking that my X amounts of grams of proteins and carbs were so much more than what I had been having for the longest that my weight would go up in the span of 3 meals and I would become the biggest person ever. It obviously does not work that way, there were so many “wholes” to refill and some weird ones that probably created themselves from the lack of everything that I needed to simply fill them up. So for the longest I would be eating pretty well but not put on weight at all.
It got to the point where that stagnation with my weight became a real issue. Once you start eating a little better - whatever reasoning brings you to do it - everything kind of shifts and changes around you. It’s actually really funny to see how food impacts the way you think, I know we all have experienced being hangry lol whenever you have to wait for food and you become so hungry so anger starts to show and you lose your patience and you just can’t focus on anything.Well that’s kind of the state I had been in for years without realizing it myself - I’m pretty sure everyone around me had realized it tho ooopssss sorry everyone! But yeah when you start eating again everything feels better and you don’t think about things the same anymore, and you see the glass a little more full than empty.And when doing so you also realize that you want to actually get better and maybe you start like me feeling like you want to get better for yourself in the end.
There we were though, I had been following all the recommendations, weighing food to make sure I wasn’t eating too little - and not too much too obviously we are making progress but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here lol - but nothing was happening. I wasn’t sure what to do but decided it was time to see if someone else could help me because I was actually really motivated to feel and be better - and also I could see that the weight wasn’t coming back so for some reason it brought me some peace and I was ok to do more and try for more (I know the mind is still so twisted like she wants it but she also only does so because she sees that it’s not initially working so who knows maybe she is broken and will be able to just eat and stay the way she is!! Wouldn’t that be a gift lol)
After seeing another food specialist, dietitian specialized in eating disorders (one would maybe opinionated that it may have been smart to go directly to that option but you know sometimes you don’t think quite straight on the first trial) I was told that food alone would not be enough to refill all the wholes and the gaps in my body and I needed to incorporate some extra supplement in my diet throughout the day. Eating more now? I mean I guess one could do that when you’re still hungry after each meal anyway! Those supplements were absolutely… disgusting. I don’t even know how to explain, they were kind of protein shakes but really thick and creamy and feeling so heavy on the stomach. It was those weird cans vanilla and chocolate flavored that I had to drink/eat (honestly I don’t know which one at this point) twice a day. I will somehow always remember having to carry them with me and because we were getting deep in summer I had to have a cooler at all times with them in it because those suckers could not be consumed warm - I did try that once and almost threw up (which could have been the beginning of the end for me to start doing this if you know what I mean…)
So there I was 3 meals a day + 2 cans of these horrendous supplement thingy + snacks.That was for sure the beginning of the end when it came to keeping a smaller weight and not regaining everything I lost and more because who could have eaten all of this!!
Well everyone, my weight did not fluctuate an ounce, a gram, a nothing!!! I was making all these efforts, feeling sick from actually too much food coming in my system but my weight that needed to go up was just not doing its deeds. Like what the hell dude, I’m doing my part you now need to do yours! I went on and on for months and months with that same regimen and no changes. At some point, even though my weight was not showing any improvement I decided it was time for me to just eat like normal people do and stop with all the supplements that were just making me sick and making me feel more disgusted towards foods and nutrients than anything else.
I still wasn’t too sure what should be the course of actions for me to put weight back on and no specialists around me was sure either about the solution to that one to be honest. I really started thinking that I may be stuck there.Was it disappointed by the outcome? Honestly not really.. I still felt kind of relieved to not have to feel bigger.
So there was the question though - if eating was not changing anything what would? Would I ever kind of look normal again - because at this point, now that my mind was a little less jaded with all the things I was trying to destroy and control I could pretty much tell I was not looking that great and as much as I was trying to keep things cool and positive with food I still felt like doing a lot for the results. I wasn’t really allowed to do any sports or any kind of physical activities at the time due to my weight being too low still and well I did look like I would potentially break in pieces if something was going to happen. But eventually with all the efforts I was making I had to find a bit fun in life and do something that would make me happy.That’s when I decided to return to something that had been my passion since I was a kid - dance. I had always loved dancing and actually thought I would grow up to become a dancer and make that my career (I’m not going to tell you yet that I did but… I did lol). So I did go back to taking dance classes.At first I decided to find a private teacher so that I wouldn’t have to deal with people’s look or anything like that.The problem that came up with coming back to dance classes was the fact that I could not really keep up with the energy needed to dance properly. I was lacking the strength and I was also having a lot of issues with one specific part in my body - my tailbone.You don’t necessary realize it until you have to sit on the floor to stretch and roll and just do all the things and then all of a sudden you get that massive pain and a bunch of bruises because well you do not really have any protection and anything cushiony to sit on but the tip of your tailbone.You would be surprised how fast that part of your body can bruise and how fast you can also dislocate it - and trust me when I say it is definitely not fun to have to replace one’s tailbone.
Strangely enough though, the fact that I was feeling myself so trapped into a body that could not do what I wanted and perform the way I wanted to, was that trigger #2 that needed to happen for me. I will not be able to really explain how but I for sure made the clear and conscious decision back then that I would be back to where I was - at least there - and would be able to dance the way I had dreamt of. I guess that consciousness and wanting to do things for myself to be able to get where I wanted to be at was the one missing piece to my puzzle to be able to put the weight I needed back on.
From there on things got a little easier somehow. I would eat healthy and reasonably but with an appetite that was somehow normal. It was not necessarily what one would call a smooth sailing journey through food and diet but from the ups to the downs and the downs to the ups we did manage to get there in a decent amount of time.
Since all these eating disorder years, food and meals have never been that much of a pleasure thing for me. It’s always more of a necessity and that task you have to do on a daily basis to stay healthy and to keep on doing the things that you love doing. But from time to time I will also be able to enjoy a sweet treat, to go to the restaurant and enjoy some nice food with friends. It’s not all erased from my memory and perfect but as long as I manage to keep some stability in my life and to not fall towards one extreme or the other I say we are doing pretty well all things considered - and by “we” I mean me, myself and I.
Well, there was one lemon with the harassment at school and we made some nice lemonade.Then we got some more lemons as we dived into years of anorexia. It seems to me that it would be kind of enough lemons and lemonade for one person but it also seems like life has its own idea on the amounts of lemonade that were to be poured in my glass.And oh boy did I seem to have been gifted with so much lemonade!
We got one more chapter to talk about before getting to the end of this lemonade - a real health lemonade.
So we’ve already seen how much the brain can affect someone’s ability to heal and recover. But that same brain and the thoughts that come from it can sometimes also be what trigger sickness and a bunch of not so great stuff.
And lucky me I got to experience how the brain could save you and just to make sure we were keeping things even and balanced I also got to experience what happens the other way around.
After getting through the first two batches of lemonades I got to spend some better years going back to school, getting a couple of degrees - Master in Science of International Business Management, Master in Marketing and Communication and a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design & Multimedia.All that then led me to a Junior position as a graphic designer for a company that was dedicated to making cards (birthday, announcement, wedding, etc.).At the same time as I was in that position I was also following a part-time course to further my knowledge and education in coding and development. Everything seemed to be totally fine and I finally had reached the place that I thought was peacefulness. Guess what?! No I didn’t lol
Okay let’s get to it, these lemons were quite juicy to be honest. Working for a company had always been something I wanted to try.You know thinking that you’d be wearing the nice clothes, you have your own desk, working with a team and all that good stuff.Turns out it might not be something for me after all.
Getting and starting in a new place is always that really exciting thing.You’re the new person, everybody wants to talk to you and to get to know you, it’s just cool - especially as a graphic designer we all know that’s a cool job! The thing is the job can be cool but if it turns out that the people around you aka most likely your direct boss - are not that “cool” everything is going to go down real quick.That is pretty much what happened with me. Everyday I was getting that little pinch in my stomach that was getting stronger and stronger with that fear to go to work. I am saying pinch because you don’t want to think about butterflies in your stomach, at least not in this case! That fear was not really coming from anything but a taxi work environment that I will not really expand on because we got more important things to chat about. But do know that your work environment and your health are one, I know it is way easier said than done but once your environment at work becomes toxic the one and only decision to make is to make a change and most likely leave.At some point, your health will be the one showing you that something needs to change. I somehow seem to have really strong and opened receptors that transform and transfer anything toxic into pain in my body so I do understand something is not right and I have to take measures to make any pain cease.
I got that sharp pain in my stomach going on for a while - and by a while I mean like a couple of months. I was just telling myself I probably was not eating the right things (oh wait look we are right away on the food intake… hummm maybe not the healthiest mindset on this situation but oh well let’s see where that leads us). So we kept on going, we kept on working and studying and just doing all the same things that we were doing on a daily basis pretending the pain was not there. I somehow got pretty good at dismissing the things that my body was trying to tell me.And my body was actually just reacting to what my brain was thinking and trying to process but not talking about it - a toxic work environment. So the pain was there, pretty much constantly, my appetite was down - my tummy was the part that was hurting and in all seriousness the more I was eating the more pain I was experiencing - should have that been a pretty clear sign that something was not necessarily right with me yes absolutely. Did I then do something and acted on it? Absolutely not. One of my mots appreciated quality, that probably became the worst default I could have in that specific instance, is my work ethic and commitment to work in general. I will go above and beyond and will not want to miss a day of work or say that I am sick and take a day off.
Well guess what I won because I did not take a day off in the end but dayssssss - or should I say months - off.
The thing with a toxic environment is also the fact that really nobody gives a damn about things happening to you, they don’t even look or care at some point.You’re there and you co-exist in the space but that’s pretty much all you do.
Thank goodness I was still doing a part-time training for web development and coding and I got to spend time with some really nice people there.And those really nice peeps one afternoon that I was there looked at me and just told me I needed to go home because I looked like s*** lol.
Not the nicest thing to say but that was definitely well intentioned, and to be honest once home (I did indeed followed their advice because #1 they were all looking at me like I was about to make them all sick and #2 I could barely stand anymore) I went to the bathroom to make sure I did not look as bad as they were telling me I did and well let’s just say they were not wrong to tell me off. I don’t think I had actually taken the time to actually look at myself in the mirror for a few days and when I finally took the time to do so I just saw a yellow face - my eyes were yellow, my skin had that weird yellow pigmentation to it that I usually do not have. So what exactly was going on, I had no clue. I was down to drinking a cup of broth for lunch and dinner because nothing else would be able to go through and I literally thought I was having some issue due to my amoebic phase and kind of my body taking a little rebellion phase against me to let me know how much I had hurt it over the starvation years.
That same night I went to bed with that stomach pain but it felt even sharper that it had been until then. I fell asleep and around 3am I remember standing up in my bed almost scream from the pain I was feeling. I will not even exaggerate by saying that I thought someone had actually entered my apartment and was cutting my stomach opened with a knife, a cutter or anything that would have a sharp edge to cut deep.That fight that I was feeling inside lasted for about 1 hour. I was crying all I could and I wanted to scream and express my pain so much but as much as I was opening my mouth there was somehow not one words being told… I could not stay standing up, nor could I lay down or even less sit down.The pain was so sharp and all across my tummy I just did not comprehend what was happening. I managed to make it to the other side of it and decided I would go back to sleep for a bit and would probably call off of work in the morning and go to the doctor just to be on the safe side of things.
Well I did not really have the time to get to the morning in peace but the morning got to me. 7 am hit and so did a new cutting episode.The exact same thing was happening again, the same excruciating pain, the same screams that were not being yelled out and the same tears falling down from how extremely scared I was too.
Once that was over, I decided I would give a quick call to my mom to let her know I was on my way to the ER - luckily that was just down my residence across the street back then - nothing really to be alarmed about but that stomach pain had been increasing and getting to some super hero levels that may require a good look at it.
Now we know that I’m not really patient with myself and with the doctors and all that kind of stuff, so taking myself there and waiting in the waiting room were definitely a big big step and sacrifice to what my day was supposed to be about.
Did I think about leaving that waiting room? Oh yes times and times again especially because we know the ER room is not necessarily the most rapid place in the world. But anyway I had my mom texting me, asking for news and also making sure I was keeping my little a** on the chairs in the waiting room until a nurse or a doctor came to see me. Finally a nurse came and asked me to explain what was going on. I told her I had that strange stomach pain and had some pretty sharp sensation of being cut from the inside and well, as she could see, my skin was also pretty yellowy.
I must say I was kind of really confident that they would think I was just wasting their time with some sort of stomach bug and would just send me home asking to drink fluid and to take antibiotics and boom that would be it.
The nurse did some quick exams, took some blood, put me in to get some X-ray and some other ultra sounds and all and then asked me to come sit in one of those beds where you wait for your results. I somehow started to feel pretty anxious with that feeling that maybe something was happening.When I saw the nurse coming back to me with what seemed to be a doctor I already knew I was not going to go home that minute with my antibiotics.When the doctor came towards me his first question was “what did you take during the crisis you described last night and this morning?” And me to respond “nothing I was not sure what was happening and I got quite incapable to do anything when it happened I could not even found a position in which my body would feel in less pain”.
And then I saw his face completely shocked by my answer.That’s when I got my diagnosis - what I had been experiencing were pancreatitis crisis that do create excruciating amount of pain (thanks for that detail doc but I somehow already knew that part lol) and there was actually only one thing that can be administered in order to reduce the pain and that is the good old morphine.As you can imagine I do not carry morphine stash at home so I would have not been able to really find pain relief medicine even if I had tried. In that moment I was like okay cool so what do we do now that you found the issue? Well unfortunately what you have and that we just diagnosed does not have a treatment.Your body is the treatment and needs to fight whatever is happening inside. Oh… so that means… yeah that means you will be staying here until further notice.Was I getting a period of time in that hospital? Not at all.They did tell me you are being admitted right this minute but we cannot tell you when you will be discharged.At that moment I felt like everything was just silenced around me - you know how it happens in the movies when they get a bad news and nothing else matters around and it feels like everybody is moving around them but all in silence.Well that did happen to me too just like I would have been in a movie! Except that was real life then.
The doctor tried to briefly explain to me that what was happening to me and my body right now was not to be taken lightly, my pancreas was extremely swollen and could possibly explode at any time. I know it really sounds like a bad movie scene but that’s what it was though.. it seems like I may have closed my eyes on the pain for a little too long and things were getting pretty bad and serious in there, especially when you don’t know (like I didn’t) and find out that the pancreas is the same as your heart, it’s not something you can live without. Oh man that was a brutal moment. Doc basically told me I needed to tell my family the situation because they were not sure how things would go from there on and what would be the outcome of my pancreas situation so everybody pretty much needed to be ready if you know what I mean.To make things a little more tangible and to understand maybe a bit more how much my pancreas was not a happy camper in there, the level of lipase that your pancreas creates - that’s his job - should not exceed 50-80 and my pancreas got me a level of lipase of 3000 - so about 40 times more than the average recommended levels.
So yeah that was not a good look on my pancreas. But let’s be pragmatic and look at what we need to do to help him calm down a bit. Ironically enough the one “treatment” I was given was to not eat. For someone who a few years back had been fighting to be able to eat again how funny is that!
That definitely felt like a square one moment and the irony of spending so much time making myself not eat and now that I wanted to eat properly I was told that one of the main thing to cure my pancreas was to stop eating and drinking (no alcohol but also just no water). One would think I would kind of be the perfect candidate for it but strangely enough I want to say that it was probably way harder for me back then to stop eating again. The fight I had put up to regain that freedom of eating and just like that I was told no you can’t eat anymore. I was kind of losing any sense of control on my body again.
There we were in that hospital bed that would be my “home” for the next 2 weeks. Because I was not allowed to eat at all I had to have an IV with all the nutrients I would need to stay healthy. Between the IV for fluids and nutrients and the daily blood testings to check my lipase numbers and see how everything was changing and evolving I definitely lost any sensation in my arms. I got also really “lucky” to have extremely qualified nurses that would put the IV in my muscle instead of my vein which would make my arm swell not allowing me to bend or move it all and just not do anything good at all but when I tried to express the fact that it was painful they would just brush it off saying that I was not doing things properly. Well ma’am I am really not doing anything at all and my arm is like double size compared to the other so can we maybe do a little something to fix it? Oh no we are not because the IV is being switched from one side to the other every 2 or 3 days and we are changing tomorrow so you can wait.That was a bummer and that was painful lol the funny thing was the moment that same nurse would come to the room to remove the IV and put a new one on the other side and would make a comment like “oh well no wonder your arm is like that it was in your muscle not your vein look there is no blood at all in the needle”
Oh is it what happened ma’am? So strange I thought it was my doing or lack there of that made me get freaking balloon in place of my forearm. Queue shake my head emoji lol
The part that I did not get while I was in that hospital though is the fact that as much as they told me what was happening, nobody was really trying to understand the reason of it. Like getting the flu is one thing but not everyone wakes up in the morning with that pancreatitis situation not really knowing if there is a tomorrow.
My initial thought on it was that maybe I messed up everything for myself with my anorexic phase and completely upset my insides and it was their way of making me pay back for it.The answer from the nurses and doctors though was “no that would not make any impact and would not be a reason for you to suffer from a pancreatitis”. So then what was it then? “Oh well to be honest it is pretty strange for a young and healthy woman like you to be suffering from this condition knowing that people usually affected by pancreatitis are older sedentary men who eat really unhealthy greasy food and drink a lot of sodas”.
Well that was indeed the complete opposite of my lifestyle across the board. But then what? Do we not try to look for an explanation and a reason? Oh I guess nobody - aside from myself - felt like it was necessary.
Ok then I guess we are moving along with life…
I got to stay in this amazing hospital where my arms were so destroyed from the IVs and the blood tests that they ended up doing some things in my feet and the top of my forehead. My numbers were slowly coming down but not as quickly as they thought and hoped.After about 2 weeks of no food, no water and really no life at all, my lipase was down to a solid 750. Did that still look pretty bad compared to the maximum of 80 recommended by health specialists? Yes absolutely. Did the doctors still decide to put me back on full meals no more IVs? Yes absolutely as well!
I was pretty relieved to be able to eat so whatever they were giving me I was just eating, taking it all in!! Food was put in my plate, clearly doctors know what they are doing so I did not question the thing and went into full eating mode.Waited 2 more days in that hospital and the numbers were pretty stable so they decided to discharge me and send me back home.
The relief I felt was like no other - I was finally free, I did not have to stay in that hospital room and above all it seems like I was finally out of the woods and there wasn’t any more of that “life or death” kind of thought hanging above my head.
Well oh well was I so wrong about that last part.
I was still pretty weak once I got back home because I mean I did not have solid food for quite a while so that would make someone a little weaker than usual. So anyway I got home and started to slowly go back to my little life and business.
Everything was kind of okay except that pain in my stomach that was always there and was definitely not going away.After a few days back home and being back to eating less and less and less - basically back to my soup and bone broth - the pain was still not that great so I made a quick phone call to my primary care doctor who told me to go get some more blood tests and see what the lipase was telling us.
Turns out the few days I got to spend in the wild did not do that much good to my pancreas and the lipase showed to be back up to 3000 (that would be enough to explain the fact that I was in a tiny little bit of pain again). I remember receiving a call from my primary care doctor telling me I needed to come to her office right away. I went there and she had a quick look at me to tell me that I needed to pack a bag and go to a different hospital and basically ask to be admitted.
The feeling of defeat and fear just swallowed my body back in and I was thinking maybe I can just go home and run away and not go to that other hospital - but realistically speaking it’s not like I was about to be arrested and was trying to run away from my responsibilities, I was literally just trying to run away from being stuck in a hospital room again.The reason why I really did not want to go back to the hospital was pretty simple - the condition was still the same so that meant the solution and treatment was going to be the same again aka no food and no liquids for as long as it would take my body to readjust and to get my levels to where they needed to be.The thing that freaked me out the most was the fact that my numbers managed to go even higher than what I first had when initially going to the first hospital, so I guess I really needed to put my body to rest and slow down before the unthinkable happened.
I got to that new hospital that same evening with my little bag of clothes that I had packed and I walked in to get admitted and be placed in a room alone. Once there the treatment and care I received were completely different from that first hospital - alleluia! I got put under an IV again and blood tests were back into my daily activities.After a couple of days there I got a really bad crisis and my number spiked up to 5000 for what seemed like absolutely no reasons knowing I hadn’t had food for days.
Seeing the situation and after giving me some morphine in order to calm the pain down for me, the doctors started to wonder what was causing the pancreatitis and started exploring the options.As we know I was healthy (for the most part) not overweight or anything so that was ruled out of the equation.
The next possible reason on the list would be my gallbladder. It seems like when the gallbladder is not doing its job to the best of its ability for whatever reason, the pancreas may feel a little overwhelmed and overloaded and therefore reacts to that!
Another scenario and reason for the situation could have also been a pancreas divisum otherwise known as having 2 pancreas instead of one.A quick little biology lesson for you - we are all born with 2 pancreas but as we grow and our organs fully form and take place in our bodies these 2 pancreas merge to create 1 single unit.And in some cases, there is a little remaining piece of the 2nd one that is there on the side and that creates some friction with the main one.
Alright so at least we had two solid options of what could be the reason for what was happening in my body and just knowing the possibility to find that part out was really reassuring - I was not completely inhuman with a disease that came out of nowhere with no explanation at all.
So first thing first was the gallbladder option. Let’s dive in down my throat and check if everything was looking good down there. I got put completely under to get that exam done and oh surprise my gallbladder was indeed not working anymore and needed to be removed as soon as possible. Not only was it not doing its job but it also was making other people’s jobs more complicated than supposed to be with the stones that were inside of it. But before getting into that kind of surgery they wanted to rule out that double pancreas situation. It seems really unlikely that it would even be a thing now that we had found the reason for the crisis with the gallbladder but I guess it wasn’t going to hurt to do one more test to check that pancreas divisum thing.
So there I was being put back under (as in full anesthesia, Elodie is out) to know check how many pancreas were living in there! And guess what? I won! I know I know it’s not a competition but I did won on that one with 2 pancreas instead of 1!! Wood woop.Well before we start celebrating there is something we need to discuss quickly.As I said in the beginning and the thing that I ignored and made everything feel way more serious and reel than I thought is that the pancreas is not something you can live without. Once you find out that you have these 2 pancreas inside you have two options - you either stay with both of them and pray that these pancreatitis episodes don’t happen too often so that you don’t have to get to option two which would be going on the table and getting that little extra one removed. Not only is there maybe 4 surgeons in the world that can make this surgery happen but there is also a 50-50 chances to get to the other side. Or should I say you will get to the other side but we are not too sure and can’t guarantee what side it is exactly.
That was kind of a lot to digest at once (especially to digest for me at that moment lol) but I went from having absolutely no idea of why what was happening was happening to finding out there were actually two different sources that were leading the situation to what it was.
Course of action #1 was a surgery procedure to remove that gallbladder and its little stones friends with it.That was a really quick procedure they just needed to put me back under - once again - and do those mini incisions to suck it out of my body just like they now do with the appendix.
Now the question was do I want to get my pancreas actually touched at and take the risk to lose it all if the surgery was not going to be successful? Not that I was hoping for that outcome but let’s just say life had not been showing and granting me with a lot of luck and positive outcomes outside of situations for my trust and faith to be optimum! I decided to not do that pancreas surgery and that hopefully the removal of my gallbladder would do the trick for a while and I would be great.
When talking about it all like that it feels like it went by so fast! When really I had to stay at that second hospital for about a month.All the full anesthesia and surgery happened really quickly one after the other - which was not without any consequences.
Have you ever heard of the postoperative depression? Well that’s what can happen to you after being put under too many times in a short period of time and your body creating a reaction to the substance you’ve been receiving in order to pass out. See my luck here again?! Lol
But anyway I had undergone the gallbladder surgery removal, I now knew I was prone to getting pancreatitis episodes - and it seemed that the only trigger to those were toxicity in my environment or anything that would create really high amount of stress repetitively in my life.
And so from there on, she would live a happy peaceful life without any stress and anxiety! The end!
Just kidding she obviously did not lol She - and by “she” I obviously mean “I” - went on with my life but I actually decided to take all of what life had showed me over the years - the good and the bad - and to finally make some changes and decisions.
You remember when I said that dancing was my little girl dream? Another dream or wish I had was to come to New York and visit this place that seemed so magical. Once I got out of the hospital and got back home, I decided to do a quick Google Search with the key words “dance new york”.That was a pretty wide and random search but it somehow led me as a top of the list result to a company that was organizing 12 days trips to New York with classes to take in the most renowned dance schools in New York City. I had absolutely no idea if it was a sam or if it was legit or anything but I just went for it. I took a leap of faith and that led me to visiting the country that would shortly after become my new home and that has been my home for the past decade! As far as dancing is concerned, that’s also where my life is at.. performing, creating, educating ; I have managed to make my little girl dream come true and I now live this dream every day!
So, when life throws you lemons—and believe me, it will—don’t just settle for making lemonade, make a whole damn lemonade stand. Life might hand you a few sour moments, but with trust in yourself and the resilience to keep going, you can turn anything into something sweet. Remember, you know what’s right for you, even when it’s hard to see it.And no matter how tough it gets, you’re never truly alone in your journey—there’s always a way forward if you believe in yourself and keep fighting for it. So squeeze those lemons, add some sugar, and show life just how sweet things can get when you trust your own strength.