The Fear

I'm leaving in just over a week, in 8 days......and the reality of what I'm doing is starting to hit me. I'm excited and looking forward to the experience, but also nervous, scared, terrified. What if I can't do it? What if I'm kidding myself about being in recovery, and I'm actually not well enough to be going away? What if I get sick while I'm on the project and end up being a massive burden to other people? What if everyone hates me? What if I'm terrible at teaching?

Or what if I stop thinking and just get on with it? Feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear is natural....I felt this way before I started uni, before my year abroad, before camp, and those things turned out ok. Better than ok even. And I think feeling scared is almost good, because for so long I haven't really felt anything, I have just been numb to the world. The only fear I have actually felt has been associated with gaining weight and eating foods I consider scary. This is different - I'm not scared about going to Africa because of the food or my weight, but because it's so daunting, so new and I have no idea what to expect.

Anorexia is a bitch. Just when I think it's starting to lessen, it rears its ugly head again. This is my response to any kind of fear or anxiety I think, to distract myself from what is really bothering me by fussing about what I weigh and what I eat. For the past week or so the anorexic thoughts have increased, probably because I'm so nervous about going away. It's far easier for my brain to waste time worrying about the calorie content of every muffin in Starbucks than for me to contemplate what I am about to do, and the possibility that I might fail. But the anorexia has already taken so much from me, and I won't let it win again. To do that would mean not only letting myself down, but other people too. People like my family and friends who have supported me, encouraged me, made me realise that I am stronger than I thought I was, that I can be anyone I want to be and do anything I want to do. And, most importantly, I don't want to let down the people I am going to be working with. It may sound corny, but I want to help people, to make a difference and do something positive for people, no matter how small an impact I may have. So I need to adopt the slogan of a certain well-known sportswear brand, stop thinking so much and just bloody do it!

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

~  The Hours

Human pincushion

I am a human pincushion and have been injected to within an inch of my life in preparation for my trip. Well, perhaps not quite. As well as a tendency to digress, I also exaggerate - a lot! It was more like two injections, but they really hurt! I think I was more hardcore as a small child. At 6 it didn't phase me, but at 26 I was weighing up whether contracting some foreign disease was a more attractive option than having a needle stuck in my arm! My arms did actually really ache afterwards, but I'm thinking I'd be complaining a lot more if I got hepatitis A, diphtheria or typhoid!

The thing is, getting those injections was so easy and it was free. We complain about the NHS, and while it is severely lacking in some areas, we all still have access to free healthcare. If someone gets sick, collapses in the street, has a car accident, they are taken to hospital and treated, no matter what their sex, race or social status. It is just so wrong that those rights don't exist in every country today, in 2009.

I dropped Geography in school after Year 9, so I don't really know a whole lot about other countries. Or indeed my own country. When I applied for uni I found out that Bath and Bristol were on the opposite side of the UK to where I had thought they were. My parents paid a small fortune for me to go to private school and learn about Oldham and the Spindles shopping centre in Geography lessons!

With that in mind, I decided it was time to do some reading on South Africa. I went as far as getting Nelson Mandela's book off my Dad's shelf, but never got around to cracking it open. And neither has he....there's not one tiny crease in the spine. Clearly it's a display book to make him look more insightful and intelligent. A lot like my copy of Pride and Prejudice then (although in my defence, I have seen both the film and the TV series!). So I went for something a little lighter and have just finished reading Rainbow Diary: A Journey in the New South Africa by John Malathronas. Think Bill Bryson, but younger, gay and not adverse to a spot of recreational drug-usage and you're along the right lines......

After just a couple of chapters I was astounded by how much I didn't know about South African history and culture. I don't really want to get into a political rant, but it scares me how something like apartheid could continue until so recently. I mean, I can remember as far back as 1994, it was in my lifetime. How is it even possible that a regime like that could carry on until then? There is so much I want to say on the subject, but I don't know where to start. Yet.

But I have thought about what I believe....

• I believe that everybody has the right to education and healthcare and other fundamental things, no matter what their gender, race, age, sexual orientation or social circumstances.
• I believe in the power of dreams and imagination.
• I believe that love and laughter really can be the best medicine.
• I believe that anything is possible.

Something has changed within me

Something is not the same

I'm through with playing by the rules

Of someone else's game

Too late for second-guessing

Too late to go back to sleep

It's time to trust my instincts

Close my eyes: and leap!

~ Elpheba, Wicked

PGCE

I've just sent in my application to do a PGCE in September 2010. It had to be in by December 1st, meaning I needed to get it done before I went away. Which is good really, as otherwise I'd have procrastinated like crazy and ended up not doing the damn thing until about 11pm on November 30th. I've applied for Primary Education (with Modern Languages) so you only get to choose two institutions. In a way it's good because the choice is narrowed down, but what if neither accept me?!

The thought of not getting a place is pretty scary, I don't even want to think about it. What if they don't like my application? Or they meet me in an interview and decide I'm no good? The fact that I'm so worried I won't get a place shows me that this is something I really want to do, that teaching is the right path for me. Unfortunately it doesn't make me any less anxious about whether or not I'll be accepted onto a course!

For my personal statement I wrote a lot about my time at camp and also about going to South Africa and what I am hoping to achieve over there, and probably sound a lot like Alyson Hannigan's character in American Pie (although I swear I have never done anything inappropriate with a flute!). But this is something I care a lot about, something I'm passionate about, and I'm not ashamed of that. For so long all I cared about was food, calories, my weight, my BMI, and there was just nothing beyond that. My world was nothing more than an eating disorder....excuse the pun, but I was literally consumed by it.

My Aunt told me recently that I come alive when I talk about camp, and somehow it does feel like I am coming back to life. There's a whole world out there and I'm only just seeing it for the first time, or seeing it through new eyes. It's bloody scary, but also so exciting. In the past, I've always let the fear overtake the excitement and run back to my eating disorder, but not this time. Life is just too short, there's so much to see and do, and I feel like I've already wasted way too much time by being ill, so I can't afford to waste another second.

Last time I ended with a quote, and I've decided to carry on doing that.....because, well, it's my blog and I can kind of do what I want! So here's another pearl of wisdom for you.....

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

 ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

This one time, at Adventure Camp.........

This past weekend I was in London, mainly for a training weekend with BUNAC, the company who I did Summer Camp USA with back in 2007. I have a position with them where I'm a Student Marketing Co-Ordinator. It sounds fancy, but really just means that I big BUNAC up at universities and encourage other students to do summer camp and the other programmes. It's something for the CV anyway.....

Being around other people who have done summer camp did remind me just how much I loved it and that I absolutely want to go back next summer. I have never felt more free to be myself than I did when I was over in New Hampshire. The experience is so hard to describe - it's intense, the hardest work I've ever done, crazy, mad, emotional. Within a single day you can experience every feeling under the sun. The kids are funny, amazing, inspiring, yet intensely annoying and frustrating at times! As far as jobs go, being a counselor doesn't look so appealing on paper - the pay isn't amazing, you live with teenagers, sometimes your evening meal is something your campers cooked for you over a log fire (seriously kids....how hard is it to boil pasta?!), you work pretty much from the second you wake up until you hit your bunkbed at night and get maybe two days off a fortnight. Am I selling it yet?! The thing is....the mud, the tears and the tiredness are what make the experience. Without a doubt I have never done a more rewarding job - and I really hope South Africa will be more of the same.


Described by my friends as a 'girly' girl, I like clothes, make up, cosmetics. I paint my nails and blow dry my hair. I like to shower every day, wear clean clothes. Mainly I wear skirts and dresses and read subscriptions to Marie Claire and Glamour. But not at camp. At camp showering daily was a rare treat, and there wasn't time for blow drying my hair afterwards. At camp there's no point painting your nails because they'll just get chipped when you're collecting wood for a fire! I had to sleep in the wilderness, face my fears, climb high ropes courses, overturn a kayak, jump into a murky (and snake-inhabited) lake, learn to mountain-bike. Not only did I do all of those things, I enjoyed doing them. I was proud of myself for achieving something other than losing weight. What annoys me is that I can face up to the fear of jumping down from a high ropes course (even if it did take a lot of persuasion!) but I can't let myself eat a sodding muffin. My biggest fear was falling off a mountain bike and getting hurt.....one rainy day it happened. Did I break a limb? Did I get hurt at all? No, I just jumped back on the bike, carried on and had a pretty awesome bruise to show off! So why can't I do that in my real life?

This weekend has definitely made me feel a lot more excited about SA! I've been focusing on how nervous I am, but now I've truly remembered how much fun working with kids can be, that every negative minute is outweighed by an hour of fun, laughter and positivity, that I can let go, be myself and have fun too.

Every camp meal starts with an inspirational quote, and with that in mind, I want to end with my favourite quotation. Ok, it's not by Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Ghandi or even Sarah Palin(!) but I still love it and it is something I want to apply to myself and my life:

The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.
 ~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex & the City

12,000 miles

My life is a big jumble of contradictions. I can look in the mirror and see that I am still underweight, then I glance at myself again and I see a different reflection, I see fat. I alternate between restricting what I eat, eating very healthily and very little, and then there will be one or two days a week where I become bulimic again, eat far too much and make myself sick.There's no happy medium, no equilibrium, and that's also reflected in how I feel about South Africa.

One minute I wish I was going away forever, or for longer than 5 weeks at least, the next I worry that I have been too ambitious. A week ago I ate out with one of my best friends and was almost in tears in the restaurant because my prawns had been cooked in a trace of oil (and again Rosey, I am sorry for being such a loser!), so how can I possibly cope in another country, not having any control and eating what I'm given without making a fuss?! Strangely though, putting me on a plane and sticking me in another country seems to help. In April I was at a pretty low point - not just in terms of weight. I weighed out all of my food to the exact gram, the exact calorie (yes, I was actually weighing out celery and cucumber!) and on the days I didn't obsessively count calories, I was binge-eating, vomiting and taking obscene amounts of laxatives.

For Easter weekend I flew out to Spain and met my sister and nephew. Looking back, I have no idea how I got there and back in one piece as I was physically and mentally such a wreck. But, despite being in a pretty bad place, from somewhere I pulled it together and ate out in restaurants, had a glass or two of wine (one of the few benefits of anorexia is that it's a pretty cheap night out - two drinks and I'm fairly merry!) and my world didn't fall apart.

So I know that I can do this. It's sometimes better not to think about things too much, and just get on with them. I blame the producers of Dawson's Creek - a generation of people my age have been brought up watching teenagers talk and talk and analyse themselves to death! If Dawson had just kissed Joey instead of agonising over it for episodes, maybe he wouldn't have lost her to Pacey. But I digress........

The irony certainly hasn't escaped me....the fact that I limit what I eat, and at one point was literally starving myself, and here I am, off to work with children who are lucky to get one decent meal a day. It does feel a bit strange, almost perverse. I'm sure Freud would have a field day!

I have talked quite a bit about my illness, but I don't want it to be the main thing I write about. However it is hard not to mention it, as it is a huge presence in my life still and will probably continue to affect me for some time. But I am more than anorexia. It does not define me - it is a condition I have, but not who I am. The thing is, I almost can't remember who I was before I got really ill, and I don't think I will ever be that person again. But that's ok......the girl I used to be was on the verge of making herself scarily unwell, and so I don't want to get that back. For me, there is no going back, only going forwards.

For a long time I blocked out how bad things got and how ill I became. Scarily, I actually looked back at myself at my worst and missed being there. It is only recently - very recently in fact - that I have started to remember just how desperate and scared I got, how unbearably miserable I felt. It sounds dramatic, but I think my family started to worry that I would die. The idea of going back to that.....it is just unthinkable. But as much as I hate to remember how sick I was, it helps, because it will stop me from ever going back there. With those memories and the thought of going to South Africa pushing me forwards, I know I can keep going and stay on the right track.

The distance between Manchester and Cape Town is over 6000 miles (6161 to be precise). But by December I will have travelled so much further than just a 12,000 mile round trip........

In the beginning.....

So somebody called Abra Fortune Chernik once said, “Gaining weight and pulling my head out of the toilet was the most political act I ever committed”. (I have sat through numerous lectures on plagiarism at uni, and feel the need to point out that I read this quotation in Marya Hornbacher's Wasted. Yes, I am a geek. But a geek who won't be getting sued!) Anyway, I’m going to take that a little bit further, pull my head out of the toilet, out of the calorie book, out of my a**e, and take it all the way to South Africa, to a community project near Cape Town where I’ll be working with under privileged children. The rumours are true, I have quite possibly lost my mind, and on October 31st am flying out to Cape Town then travelling south to Fish Hoek where I’ll live with other volunteers for the next month.

If anyone wants to read more about what I’m doing, details are here and it explains it far better than I can: http://www.africanimpact.com/volunteers/community-work-south-africa/

A few people have asked me about why I’m doing this, so I will try to explain as succinctly as possible.......

Firstly, why Africa? Well, in practical terms, all of the projects in South and Central America were ruled out by the fact that my Spanish is limited to ‘la cuenta, por favor’. And I won’t lie, I was kind of influenced by Out Of Africa and do have some fantasies about running into a (young!) Robert Redford lookalike, being flown around in a plane and having my hair washed on the banks of the river..... I have (somewhat annoyingly) been running around informing everyone that ‘I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills’. But I’m no Meryl Streep, nor am I living anywhere near a farm and my accent borders on being offensive, so I may stop that sharpish.

The project looks pretty amazing too. It’s based in a community just outside of Cape Town and the work they do there is so varied, which is what appealed to me. In the mornings I'll be working in the schools, in the afternoons it's more community based and I could be doing anything from working in the library to painting murals in the classrooms. Although I suspect they may take one look at my painting skills and leave me in the library! After I did summer camp two years ago I realised how much I loved working with kids, and now I am considering teaching, so this seems like a perfect way to gain some experience before I commit to a PGCE.

Some people know, and some do not, that since I was 14 I have suffered from anorexia and bulimia, and that over the past two years it has got hellishly out of control, resulting in me landing myself in hospital for a couple of months earlier this year. I’m not recovered yet, probably far from it. (And yes, the people who run the project are aware of my history! I didn’t lie about that, yet did tell them that I could cope with Afrikaans as I ‘speak a little Dutch’. This is not entirely accurate, but nevermind.....) While I’m not naive enough to be doing this as a miracle cure, I do hope that doing something worthwhile, being less selfish and looking after kids who really need help, will in turn help me to gain some perspective. I might come back bigger, but then I could also come back smaller, which probably wouldn’t go down well. But whatever size I am, I don’t want to care. I don’t want my happiness and self-worth to be defined by the number on the scales. I want to be more than just another anorexia statistic, and this is my way of pulling myself back from the huge low I got to earlier this year. It is giving me something to aim for when I slip, when I don't want to eat. When getting well seems too much of a struggle there is a huge reason for me to keep going.

It will soon become clear that succinct is not my style and that I have a tendency to digress when I write. But really there is no single reason why I am doing this. The past two years have - to put it mildly - not been a whole lot of fun, and I just need to get away from things, to do something new and exciting, to prove to myself that I am capable of more than just losing weight.

Despite being somewhat scathing about blogs and bloggers, I have finally decided to get one to keep in touch with people while I’m away. Mass emails weren’t really an option as certain members of my family don’t speak so therefore can't be included in the same emails and not everybody has Facebook. And I still refuse to accept my parents as friends on there anyway – you’re too old people! ;) Plus last week I saw Julie and Julia and now hope to become the next Julie Powell with my very own book and film deal......

I won't lie - I don't really understand how blogs work. But mine is pink, so it can't be bad! I have no idea how often I will update this - either with ridiculous regularity, or never again. It may continue long after I come home from Africa, or I may get bored before I even leave in 5 weeks time. I may be the only person who ever reads this. But for now a pink blog it is - the perfect way for me to bore you all to death even on another continent!