DANIEL

My bulimia is my biggest strength, it is my pride, I celebrate it.

I thought I was wrong, so I wanted to punish myself.

I grew in a very small traditional town in Yorkshire, which I’m very proud of, but it wasn’t very open to the world. At the time, there wasn’t much representation of gay people on TV or films, so I didn’t really understand what was going on with me. My parents owned a mechanics business, my friends and extended family all played sport and I always felt very different. To be honest, deep inside I always knew I was gay, and I felt I could never connect with the masculine ideals that were always put upon me. I was also going through a lot of bullying because of my weight. Even then, it didn’t bother me that much because I always knew that weight was temporary and my body was always changing.

Unfortunately, when I was 16 my parents were diagnosed with cancer. They luckily survived but it was quite a long journey. I was the kid at school whose both parents had cancer, so I got all the attention and I was desperate to control the way people looked at me. Now I know a lot more, therapy taught me it was more about how bad I felt about my sexuality: I thought I was wrong, so I wanted to punish myself. Back then, I felt in control, and I just started to be sick after every meal. After time, bulimia went from control to self-harm. In my head, I had already failed in masculinity by being gay and bulimia was just another failure. I just couldn’t cope with that. At some point I decided one failure was enough so I banished my sexuality and that’s why I didn’t come out properly until very late. I’d rather let people know that I had an ED than knew about my sexuality because otherwise I felt as an epic failure.

All I wanted was to get help and I was rejected.

2 years later, when I was 18, my mum had finally come to the end of her battle with cancer. We went out for a walk, she told me about how as a teenager she struggled with anorexia and she very carefully said to me something along the lines of: “I know you are going through something, I’m seeing the signs, I know it is about eating, and I think you might have some sort of disorder, so if you want to, I can take you to the doctor.” I never knew I could get help, nobody asked me about it, so it felt amazing. I definitely agreed and got super excited because I thought after getting help, I’d go to the university and would start my life again. However, the doctor said not to worry because it wasn’t serious. He told me boys didn’t suffer from EDs and it was just teen-age angst or stress. I was absolutely heartbroken. All I wanted was to get help and I was rejected for being a guy. After that I just spiraled very rapidly.

I went to university and I was by myself quite a lot. For the whole 3 years of university I just got worse and worse. I was at a very bad point where I would think about suicide. I wasn’t hospitalized but I was very ill. I would isolate, I would destroy close friendships and refused to have any relationship because I thought if I let anybody in and they knew what was going on, they would hate me. Towards the end of university, in my third year, I had a very bad night where I basically passed out for nearly 24hours. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling horrendous and I needed some distraction, so I weirdly decided to watch an episode of American Dad (I hate adult cartoons). Coincidently, the cartoon was battling anorexia and it was portrayed in a really offensive way, but evens I was really rooting for this character to get better. It lit something inside of me and I thought to myself: “you know, I’m going to survive this”. I decided to start recovering on my own and took bulimia as a research project at uni. That would allow me to study it, learn about it. Since then, I got into running and started to be in a really healthy mindset where I thought about food as fuel instead of a negative thing. I started to respect food, and understand it, and in time, I loved it.

During all this time I was living a lie.

In my head, I thought I was better because I stopped myself from making me sick. I moved to London and I started working for a charity called “Missing people”. I realized all the people there went through a lot of trauma but they’d turn it into something positive and I was inspired to do the same with Eating Disorders, so I joined a charity called “Anorexia, Bulimia care”, a National Helpline based in Bristol. It is a small charity that focuses on specialist care for people with ED, but also connects people who have recovered with people going through recovery.

Some years passed and one night I was walking home when I realized I’d lost my relationship, my job, I was about to lose my home in London and things were really bad. It dawned on me that I actually never had recovered from my Eating Disorder and during all this time I was living a lie. I had reduced the amounts of times I pruned, but the mindset was still the same. I started to look at different options but I knew my chances of getting help through the NHS would take time because the waiting list was 6 months. I was very desperate and my parents offered to pay for private counselling. I know I’m super lucky that they were able to afford it and I will never take that for granted.

I want to encourage people to find the strength and the hope inside them

My counselling changed my life completely. When I went, I basically said “I need you to help me to end my ED” and they somewhat told me “you need to accept the fact that you hate being gay”. I had over a year of amazing support, weekly sessions and so on. I finally accepted to be the spoke media person for charities, which opened a lot of doors to me as I ended up doing lots of stuff like media interviews, documentaries… I continued down that path of volunteering side. In 2019, I launched my own campaign to have the government step in and force social media platforms to regulate what advertisements could get targeted to people with EDs. In 2020 I worked with the BBC to change Twitter, just this year Instagram has changed their rules. Facebook and Google still haven’t, so I’m trying to get there. I got a freelance job in the BBC where I’m a contributor to their story lines about EDs. For me now, my bulimia is my biggest strength, it is my pride, I celebrate it. That’s the reason why I do what I do now, to encourage people to find the strength and the hope inside them.

I’m very lucky I survived it, but I shouldn’t have to feel lucky, I should feel supported.

When I was very ill, there was nobody out there talking about it so I just didn’t know that anybody else could possibly had bulimia. I thought it was just me. I never imagined that other people made themselves sick as I did. I heard about it on TV and film but it was always about people who were famous or models. I had bulimia and my weight changed every single 2 weeks. I was never thin, I was never underweight, I was constantly changing. For me, it is very important to show people that you are never alone, and that there are people and services that exist that can, and are willing to help you. There is a light at the end of this eating disorder tunnel, and there is no set way to get there, but if you need it, someone out there will help you get there.

That’s why it is necessary to keep doing things. It is necessary to encourage conversations about mental health because, in my opinion, everybody has an experience with some form of disordered eating, whether if that is a new diet or overexercising. We can all help each other. People think it is not as serious as it actually is and yet it is one of the mental illnesses with the highest mortality rate. I’m very lucky I survived it, but I shouldn’t have to feel lucky, I should feel supported. People’s perception of me being weak or looking for attention was not even close to my reality. I didn’t want attention, my parents had cancer and I was one of a few LGBTQ+ people in my town, I could get already if I needed it. I would love to just have been able to enjoy my sexuality and being gay, but instead, it made me sick every night. It is not something I ever chose or wanted. Creating open dialogues, encouraging people to connect and help each other will contribute to get rid of the stigma around EDs though it is a very hard goal to achieve.