This is how living with anorexia for three decades looks (warning: it’s not pretty)

I was 19 when I started starving myself. Three decades on, anorexia still torments me

When you look like I do, you get used to people staring. The nudges and pointing and whispering between as they survey my matchstick legs. My body may be ravaged but my ears are not, I’ve heard the names: “freak” or “ano”; it hurts. I’ll scuttle home trying not to cry, where I’ll hide for the rest of that day feeling, funnily enough, like a freak. This is what anorexia does: it eats away at your body and soul, and overtakes your mind.
Nearly half (46 per cent) of people with anorexia will fully recover. It absolutely is possible. But unfortunately, I have not been one of them. For 30 years now I’ve been in the grip of one of the most pernicious mental illnesses there is. I know it will one day kill me. But if sharing my ugly tale helps just one person get better, it’s worth me describing it.
There’s rarely one cause, there was nothing in my childhood which spawned this. I grew up in Hertfordshire with Mum, Dad, an older sister and my twin brother. A nice, well-to-do Jewish family. Most therapists (and yes, I’ve seen many) have blamed the fact that I was raped by a stranger aged 15. This was indeed traumatic, but I don’t believe it answers everything.
My eating disorder first began in my second year at university. I was never fat. Anorexia is really not about weight or food. I wanted some control, and with every notch of my belt shrinking, my self esteem swelled. This was the height of the so-called “heroin chic” era.
When my weight had dropped to a severely low BMI my tutor at university contacted my parents, who were alarmed enough to book me in with a psychiatrist and it was decided I should be treated at a private hospital. It was a harrowing experience, and I was told I would never be able to have children. I’d not thought about a family back then, but knowing I’d already done irreparable damage was devastating.
I was never fed through a tube, but it’s still being “force fed” because you are watched as you eat and not allowed to leave until food or a protein shake in front of you is consumed. Because I hadn’t been sectioned against my will (only my parents and psychiatrist had strongly advised I should be there) I was able to discharge myself once I had regained some of the necessary weight. But I was far from “cured”.
I still kept secret logs of my food intake. I became promiscuous, what did it matter, I’d never get pregnant? After graduating I landed a job in television, where heavy drinking and taking drugs was the norm, especially living in Camden. Back in the 1990s plying clients with all the booze and party drugs they could dream of was just being good at your job. There was always a wrap of cocaine nestled in my jeans; ecstasy at the weekends. All the dancing burned off more calories.
I now realise my hedonistic lifestyle was the perfect cover for anorexia. I’d down an entire bottle of Bailey’s before going out, then it became a “joke” that Claire always had three drinks lined up in any bar – gin and tonics, shots and water. I never enjoyed the taste, I only ever wanted to get wasted. I’d still manage to exercise for two hours daily, and at nine and a half stone I still looked normal back then. “I’d be thin if it wasn’t for all the booze,” I would laughingly tell friends.
The dangerous situations I would put myself in would horrify any sane woman: meeting dealers on dark street corners in my dressing gown, woozily withdrawing fistfuls of cash from ATMs, inviting crowds of strangers to my flat. I’m lucky I wasn’t robbed – or raped again. I once awoke with a broken nose and hadn’t the faintest idea why.
This lifestyle carried on for over two decades, terrifying my family and attracting either the wrong men or alienating the nice ones. Eventually it caught up with me and I hit rock bottom aged 39.
I’d decided the NHS treatments I tried in the past weren’t working, and through my job in television production I had earned enough to pay for a month’s rehab in Thailand, so I was successfully treated there for the addictions, alongside celebrities and Middle Eastern princesses.
When someone tried to address my eating I lost my temper. “I’m here to stop drinking and taking drugs,” I angrily insisted. And I quit both, for good. The problem however was, that in order to maintain my sobriety, I had to cut out anyone I’d ever partied with.
That left me with literally no one to socialise with. And sadly, after getting clean and sober, there was nothing to mask the anorexia. It only set in further. I’ve been in and out of hospital four times in the 11 years since leaving rehab, but as an inpatient and outpatient (where you attend every day but come home in the evenings) yet nothing has worked.
My body has declined to the point of packing up. The veins in my limbs bulge hideously and I get peculiar water bubbles popping up under my skin’s surface. I have lost many teeth from starving my body – the stomach acid from vomiting has rotted them one by one. I can’t have implants as there’s not enough bone to hold them. People used to say that I had a lovely smile, but my facial muscles are rapidly withering.
My lungs are so damaged that pneumonia almost killed me. My family sobbed as I lay in intensive care in 2019 for 12 days. Every day it feels like I develop some new physical horror. My physique is more like someone in their 80s, a small shove in the street might break a brittle bone. A bruise from the tiniest of bangs lasts for days. Even sitting on my sofa and lying in my bed becomes sore after a while as there’s just no padding on me. Coffee shops with wooden chairs? Total no no.
I see old photos of myself and want to weep for the juicy Jewish bottom I once owned. I have about 50 pairs of expensive jeans hidden in bags because seeing them is such a painful reminder of my old life.
My periods stopped many years ago and I’m too embarrassed to describe the full damage this has wreaked on my digestive system. Years of retching and the acid erosion and utterly f—-d my oesophagus, so swallowing any “normal” food would feel like eating glass.
All in all, I am screwed.
Meals are a huge part of the Jewish culture, and occasionally I will still go out for family dinners. We’ve got to a place of using humour to defuse the awkwardness. When a waiter comes to take my pathetic order I can joke: “Does it look like I eat very much?” It helps, a little.
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It’s a miracle I’ve kept my hair; many anorexics need wigs. And it might sound ridiculous but I won’t leave the house without makeup. I’m deeply ashamed of how I look; this is the first time in 11 years I’ve allowed my photograph to even be taken.
I have come to terms with this being my body. Much harder to accept is that I’ll likely never meet anyone now. In the past I’ve only had relationships with bad boys, and the one time I found a lovely man I felt so ashamed of myself I had to hide the person I really was and it didn’t work out. Who would ever be physically intimate with this body? But how I long to hold a hand, be told I am beautiful inside and have a relationship like everyone else.
It sometimes makes me mad when everyone talks about a “bad mental health day” – try living with a mental disorder every day for three decades.
For people younger than me who are living with this, please, I urge you to fight it with everything you have. Therapy, support groups, mindfulness, whatever it takes. Don’t give up.
But however exhausting I find my life, I am not ready to die. I’ve accepted my situation and am grateful to still be here. I may never recover, but I try to find the small pockets of joy I can. I hope that my tale of warning might make others get help. Don’t end up like me. And if you see people who like me on the street try not to judge them. I am more than what you see.
As told to Susanna Galton
Understanding Me by Claire Plaskow is available to buy on her website.
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s health, you can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk