Hangup 1 - the subject of food

food - ah the love hate relationship I have with it. I eat because a person needs to eat, not because I like food, or am hungry, the feeling HUNGER is unknown.

I have been told that as a young child as young as 2 I refused to eat more than a carrot or such a day, would make my parents sick with worry, I had no concept of hunger or food times. The doctors all said a child won't starve themselves, obviously they had not met me.

I wish to believe it was not an intentional starvation, but I believe now at age 32 it was a way of controlling my environment, my parents were constantly fighting, my mother hardly ate herself, I remember smelling alcohol on one of them, which one I can no longer remember.

By the age of 3 I only fitted into 18 month old baby clothes, to this day my mother loves telling everyone I was tiny and hated eating, wonder if she realises that makes it hard for me to eat now.

By the time I was 12 I was a stick insect or so I liked to think of myself, many others had a lot of nasty names for me. It was decided that modeling would do my self confidence good. Go figure, if anything models are the most neurotic beings on earth.

In the beginning I enjoyed it, loved the attention and everything, until walking past an older ramp model, he turned round and told me YOU LOOK SO FAT IN THAT and walked off looking smug.
So I stopped eating, not that i was eating much those days as it was.
It was easy to just not eat, told mother I ate at school, told friends had eaten too much breakfast and slowly I started losing weight. At the same time I tried to commit suicide, swallowed a lot of pills, just my luck at the time they did not work.

It was decided that boarding school would be the best place for me, so I was packed up, and shipped off, what a dream, no one questioned me on my eating, I had loads of tuck packed up for me that I handed out when I got to school, so mother thought I was eating, at lunchtime and suppertime I played with my food, the kitchen staff noticed but thought I did not like the food, but when people got too close and started asking questions i would eat a little bit.

Finally almost end of the school year and i fell ill, really ill, and was rushed home and into the hospital, it was then realised that I was not eating, my fingers were checked, as they suspected bulimia. I played the innocent sweet child who ate etc, but very little passed my lips. So spent 6 months hooked to a drip and sedated most of the time, I did not want to get fat.

I started the road to recovery slowly, will continue again........