"Appetite: OK"

I hate food.
I love food, and I hate food.

I am jealous of people who "do lunch", their main objective being to catch up and have a good chat rather than the meal itself. All those people in cafés and restaurants, and - unbelievably! - walking down the street eating a bag of chips. How the hell do they navigate that one? Oh, right, because they don’t hate food, food is just sustenance or something to enjoy or something to discover and share.

It's a salad bagel, honest

I struggle to eat in front of my closest friend. In the past few years I can count on one hand the number of meals we've had together that I have managed to completely finish. She doesn't mind, she wouldn't bat an eye whether I was eating 12 cream cakes or nothing at all or anything in between. Her complete understanding and unconditional acceptance of whatever I can handle on any given day is the only reason I manage to eat in front of her at all.

I have "good" and "bad" foods, and "good" and "bad" shelves in my cupboards on which to store it. There is dirty food and clean food, beige food and green food, [I wish I could think of something else to go there that rhymes with clean and green because that would be really cool, but anyhow…] You get the idea. Food is Hard.

That's all aside from what voices and Marigold do to my eating habits. Food Stuff is one set of rules, then voices and Marigold impose their own. Voices transform my food so that what used to be a plate of stir-fried vegetables is now a plate of excrement, or if I bite into something such as a plum it could change into a tarantula, with half of it still in my mouth and the rest in my hand. So I'm heavily restricted what I can eat because obviously I try to avoid the chances of stuff like that happening as much as possible. Unfortunately most fruit and veg is off limits because most things have the potential to transform into a nasty creature, and the very few things that are on the safe list have to get scrubbed and soaked and sterilised and boiled so much that there's probably not much goodness left in them anyway.
So, with my limited range of Safe and Clean food, I then have to negotiate the normal bog-standard Food Stuff. So I binge and I puke, I fast and I take too many laxatives and diuretics. I'm terrified of eating in front of others, I keep a careful check on any food-related twitter and facebook updates I make to ensure I talk about spinach as often as I talk about cake [at least the consumption thereof even if not the cravings for ;)]. It's hard, it's no fun hating food, but you know that already, right? This is nothing new.

Only, I'm fat. Yes fat, not overweight. I don't mind the word fat, it's just a descriptive word like short or blonde or loud. Call me "plump" and you'll likely get a slap round the head with a wet fish, "plump" is for middle-aged piano teachers and members of the WI. Try to do that dumbass embarrassing bit "you don't need to lose weight, silly!" and I'll probably kick you in your delicate regions. Well I won't, but I'll want to ;)
I really am fat, I'm not one of those bloody annoying stick-thin models moaning that they're fat when they only have to look at a cross-trainer and their abs become instantly 14% tighter. Cross-trainers probably don't even have anything to do with abs - I wouldn't know because I'm fat. I don't think I even have abs, let alone know which part of a gym makes them tighter. And I don't have the luxury of blaming medication or any other outside influences, my fat is all mine. I don't mind, I don't particularly love it but I don't hate it either, it's just me.

I wish I were anorexic.
I really, really do, despite my earlier "it's just me". I know that's a terrible thing to say, and it's one of those things often said off-the-cuff by people who just want to lose a few pounds and are finding it tough to stay out of the biscuit tin. A bit like the people who say they wish they had OCD because they have a lot of housework to do.
But I don't want to lose a few pounds. Or any pounds. Well, not for me. But because I believe it's the only way I'd get help, support, input, even acknowledgement.

OK, we all know about the Cuts meaning many people no longer receiving the treatment they so desperately need, and even before the Cuts we all know how dire eating disorder services can be. But despite that, anorexia is seen as the ultimate in eating disorders and even if there is really bad treatment or no treatment at all, at least it gets acknowledged. No-one can argue with you if they can see the outline of your bones through your clothes. No-one can accuse you of hiding food and eating it secretly if you only weigh 6 stone. No-one would assume you are fine without even asking you, if you only took up half of an average-sized chair.

People [and by people, I mean healthcare professionals] don't believe I have Trouble With Food. [I'd never say I have an eating disorder because I don't, I occasionally talk about it in terms of eating distress but I just usually prefer to refer to it in the context of Food Somethingorother. It's easier.]

"But I haven't eaten for a week"

Take my first appointment with new psychiatrist. Didn't ask me a single question about my eating habits, but wrote to my GP and said that I "reported appetite as OK". Now don't get me wrong, I know nearly all psychiatrists fuck up on the notes at some point and things get twisted and taken out of context and whatever else, but I'm not just overreacting here, this is how it's been for years. My previous psych reported that I have a "good appetite" after I'd spoken with her about fasting and laxative use. A couple of nurses I had the misfortune to recently meet actually informed me I have a good appetite, as in "...and you have a good appetite, don't you" and wrote down that happy fact without giving it a second thought. It's always been like that, they just assume I'm a pig and record it as such.
I HATE the word 'appetite', it means nothing like they use it to mean. Appetite is hunger, appetite is wanting to eat; I could feel hungry after a period of not eating but still not eat anything. Appetite is different from amount and type of food consumed and whether that food is purged or not. So asking solely about appetite is about as useful as a car mechanic only testing the headlights.
I long for the day when a healthcare professional listens to what I say when I talk about food, or even just bothers to ask me the same questions as everyone else. Instead of looking at me and instantly judging me based on what I look like. That's what I mean when I say I wish I had anorexia, I just want to be taken seriously for once. Even if I still get treated like shit or no treatment at all, I just want to be heard.

The most tedious view in the world

I was chatting with a friend a few months back, and the conversation got on to eating distress. Well, it started with a funny story about me trying to purge with a broken toilet - there's nothing worse than leaning over a toilet bowl with your fingers down your throat and realise the bloody flush doesn't work! Anyway we exchanged similar stories for a while, and anyone listening would assume we'd been through a lot of the same stuff. Only, to look at us we are complete opposites. I'm twice her size [or she's half my size, whichever way you want to look at it] and yet we were both sitting there talking about all the same aspects of bingeing, purging, restricting and everything else in between. We've had many of the same experiences in the broad scheme of things, yet have been treated very differently. Example: When I'm in hospital, I don't eat. I can't eat in those places - the stress of the nuthouse and the fear of eating in front of other people and all sorts of other crap all merge together and I quite simply can't eat not matter how much I want to. Now if I were at the other end of the scale I'd be at the very least led to the dining room and made to eat with no regard to whether I wanted to or not, and of course we all know what further "treatment" would entail if I didn't comply. However instead of that I get nursing staff telling me I must be hiding food in my room, smirking when they weigh me and generally making it very clear that they are assuming I'm only pretending not to eat. Every single admission has been the same, "how did the visit go with your friend, did you like the food she brought you?" "What did you have to eat when you went out?" "We always have to regularly weigh people who tell us they're not eating". After all, how could a fat person possibly have any kind of difficulty around food, other than they consume too much of it?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying being dragged to a dining room and made to eat a meal or being tube fed or anything else is something I want to happen to me. People who are at the lower end of the weighing scales do get horrendous treatment, barbaric even. I'm not trying to say it's easy to be that way. I just want to be able to ask for help in the same way I would be able to if I weighed 6 stone. I want to have a conversation with someone about the difficulties I have with food without feeling like they're judging me and assuming I'm making it up. I want to be able to talk to someone about it and know I'm being taken seriously. I want someone to ask me the same questions they'd ask anyone else, and actually listen to my answers, without just nodding and writing down "says she has a good appetite".