Okay, yeah so. Gives me a lot of tension to talk about but.
mmmm... fuck. Why does talking about it feel like taking a leap off of a cliff? Like it genuinely feels as difficult as taking a jump out of an airplane.
Basically, I was ten. I got deathly ill, botulism, not food poisoning. Because I wouldn’t stop whining that I was hungry and my dad, didn’t care... he gave me something that had been sitting out a really long time. Pizza.
And yeah it was just traumatic how ill I got and also how the situation was handled. My parents started fighting, my mom was saying “you knew that was old you shouldn’t of given it to her!” And I was in severe pain buckled over, I couldn’t walk.
and then the vomiting started and it was just incessant, projectile like, buckets of it. I couldn’t make it to the bathroom so it was just everywhere. And then I started shitting myself too.
J don’t know why but my parents, I don’t know where they were during this time but I was alone, for many hours like this. Laying on the floor and just puking, it was to the point I couldn’t pick my head up or move my body so I was passing out in my own piles of shit and vomit.
and according to my mom this went on for days, until I was taken to the hospital. At this point, like after I couldn’t stop passing out into my vomit and covered in my own shit, I don’t remember what happened after that. This is the part that’s blacked out, but I was admitted to the ER and then spent several days in ICU according to my mom.
I just have no memory though she said I was awake, so it’s not like I was unconscious or anything. It was just “really bad” as she put it and... she said I nearly died.
Doctors now believe it’s possible that the botulism could of damaged my body in some ways- even neurological damage, and I’m lucky I wasn’t brain dead and blind after the whole ordeal.
After that I started having a lot of health problems, I had to quit dance because I was getting ill all the time from how thin I got, and my heart was damaged my doctor believes from botulism and other virulent exposure.
I was unable to eat after that. It started as a precaution, like okay I’m scared to eat for now so I just won’t so I don’t have to deal with the anxiety. And this habit that I thought I would recover from after a few days- lasted years, and the anxiety surrounding food and the irrational thoughts about it were so severe I wound up hospitalized by age 12, weighing next to nothing and my heart giving out. I had to be brought back with shock pads.
I just wouldn’t eat anything. There were very few safe foods or things I grew to trust. But it was essentially like starting all over again with learning to eat and what you’re comfortable with eating. When I first started to eat again, (after a period of force feeding, that was very violent and traumatic) I started to drink milk like a child essentially, and it was sort of like that for a while like building from the basics all the way back up to trying new foods to, venturing out of your comfort zone.
But I still have a hard time, it’s just not as noticeable and severe now. But it’s there with everything I drink or eat. And that feeling and rushing thoughts come back where you feel like your head is going to explode and you can’t breath and your heart starts pounding, all because you have to drink water from a cup, that your mind is telling you is too dirty to drink from.
It’s OCD because of how detail oriented it is. Checking number dates on everything. Everything. All the time. The smallest speck or the slightest bad smell and it goes in the garbage. I won’t lie though a lot is wasted for absolutely no reason other than I just couldn’t press myself to eat it. It’s easier to throw it away and not eat it, than it is to obsess over it.
It’s an obsession with cleanliness, and it’s an irrational delusion that everything I eat is going to end in hospitalization and death. It’s a mistrust of factories, and farms. It’s a fear of every bacteria known to man. It’s panic attacks with the slightest stomach pain or nausea because, your brain registers that as “it’s happening again.”
It was to the point when I was a child, at my worst with the disorder, that I would lay on the floor shaking head to toe in the bathroom, panicking for hours about something I put in my stomach that I regret having eaten.
Restaraunts? Forget about it. Lettuce? Ecoli.
A cold patch in the food? Better cook it until the point of being burnt!
That pan is dirty forever; throw it away. there’s a mark on your fork so you can’t use it.
I soent too long scrubbing every dish and still theyre “scary” to use.
I buy food at a drive through and then toss it without eating it. Or I’ll have one bite or one smell even- and feel off about it and just throw it away.
I can’t eat left overs.
lol it’s a little maddening. Not as bad as it used to be because I have safe foods now but yeah... it took years to get to this point and I’m still quite neurotic and have panic attacks a lot about it. In restaraunt especially.
