Moving away from that for a bit, the thing that set everything off mainly would have been my struggles with my mum and my dad. I was unfortunate enough to witness their divorce and arguments first hand when I was 12 years of age but before that they argued a lot and mother was subjected to domestic violence and I witnessed it to a degree. This obviously had an effect on me however it wasn’t until a little later down the line of the divorce that things got bad. No. When my parents finally divorced and moved out away from each other I was there messenger, their go-between. This was no good for a 13 year old girl who had her school work to be dealing with and on top of that to adjust to moving around between two houses a lot. They would tell me to tell each other different things like what was happening, when we were seeing who etc. This became very hard for me to handle so to deal with that I began cutting again. Dad would throw his phone at me and ask me to read the texts between him and mum to see what she was like because I apparently always stood up for her when I didn’t. However I think you get the picture, not a good point in my life. Moreover it got worse when my sister decided one day that she wanted to go and live with my dad. This was awful and my mother didn’t take it well. A lot went down with court and CSA (Child
Support Agency) because mum wanted to know that she was getting the right amount of money etc. and she was getting all she was entitled, too. But this in itself caused a lot of problems at home for me. My mum and my sister, Zoe were always arguing and bearing in mind I’ve been around it my whole life pretty much, it wasn’t getting any easier. This is after around 3 moves between mum and dad so you can imagine the stress with school and everything. Of course school would get involved but I don’t wish to go into that. Because mum and Zoe fought a lot, this led us to fight a lot, me and mum. Ultimately one night I cracked. My friend was round and I had literally had enough so I attempted suicide. I won’t go into it because I wish not to but I didn’t end up in hospital or anything my friend stopped me and made my go be sick in the loo that was the start to my eating problems becoming major. This was when I got referred to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service).
My referral to CAMHS was good and bad. It was good because for a while it helped me a lot. It helped me cope with a lot of things like my self-harm and how to manage stress. I was also on anti-depressants by now prescribed by my GP. We did a lot of activities going back to memories to see where it would have stemmed from but to be honest I don’t think we ever found a solution. Prior to this because I was going to CAMHS I thought I would get some help with my eating but the counsellor I had didn’t really take any notice of that. I started restricting, fasting/starving, purging and exercising. I dropped weight a little bit my lowest still was 6st 9lbs. To cut the story short I got a little better and didn’t see them for a while but when I didn’t see them I went on my expedition with school to do Duke of Edinburgh. This was a bad week. I couldn’t sleep until I had worked out what I was going to be eating for that week and when and how many calories were in the food and what I was burning. I began to write down the calories on my arm as I went along. In the expedition it was hard because I was so tired and I was having suicidal thoughts too.