#Before this I'd slept in like 3 hour spurts for a few days in a row. Lordy. Tired

[runefactorynonsense]

Cozytober - Day 11 - Candles

[confessions-of-a-transgender-man]

My ed started when I was 10. It started around the time that my bipolar symptoms started, which at the time we thought were an exacerbation of my undiagnosed behavioural and mood disorder (which turned out to just be adhd, but in the 90s girls didn't have adhd). My therapist (who I had been seeing since the age of 5, when my adhd symptoms became rather severe) spoke to a psychiatrist and they arranged for me to start taking valium. 2mg at 8am, 12.15pm, and 4pm every single day. I hated it. And I hated the way I felt, especially how I couldn't control how I felt, so I started to see how long I could go without eating at a time. At first I could only go half a day. Then a full day. Then multiple days. I started to lose the "puppy fat" that I had began to gain. That made me feel good. I also liked coming up with new ways of hiding the fact that I wasn't eating. I managed to hide it from my therapist for 2 years, hiding behind excuses like "I've been doing loads of sports" and "I've just had a growth spurt" and "I've been sick for the past 2 weeks". When I was 12, my therapist started to catch on. She started weighing me at every appointment. She then told my mother to make sure that I was eating, and gave her some information about eating disorders. Mother didn't think it was serious and didn't monitor me too strictly, so I was still able to keep restricting. Then I passed out at school. And I got an ana diagnosis. I managed to keep the therapist from becoming too involved at this point, by gaining small amounts on the day of my appointments, by water loading, not pooping, and eating my omad right before my appointment. But I stayed at the same weight (within a 3kg range) for another year. And that is when I started getting really sick. The week before my 13th birthday was my final appointment with that therapist, and I began seeing a therapist who specialised in treating teens. Within 3 months of my 13th birthday, things started getting really scary. I can't remember how it started, but I remember realising one day that I hadn't slept in over 72hrs, and yet I didn't feel at all tired. And then I started hearing people calling my name when I was in public, but I'd look around and there would be nobody. Then I started hearing someone talking to me on the radio. I knew vaguely about CB radio, so I figured it was just someone I knew messing with the transmission. Until, I started seeing people out of the corner of my eye, when I was alone in my room. At first I'd only see a glimpse of them, but after a few days, they trusted me enough to show themselves fully. This absolutely terrified me. And then the person on the radio started telling me to hurt myself. They told me to get a box cutter and cut open my flesh. I ignored them for as long as possible, but after a couple of hours I gave in. The day after I gave in, I went to school with my cuts visible, looking like a mess (And this was a school with strict uniform and presentation rules), very obviously mentally unwell. I was sent to the school counsellors office, where an ambulance and my mother were called, and I was sent to the hospital. At the hospital, I was diagnosed with acute psychosis and placed in the adolescent psychiatric ward. I spent 3 months there, where I was diagnosed with Bipolar Type I and anorexia.