Courtesy of New Harbinger Publications
Howard-Taylor: I went first to pro-anorexia sites, after reading an article about them. They're awful places, with weight-loss challenges, "thinspiration," and tips and motivations, but they gave me what I needed: Contact with people who knew what was going on. I made some deep friendships that I continue to keep today. One of the girls I met on one of these sites is now one of my closest friends, in real-time. It was only through these pro-ana sites that I came to the realization that what I was going through was not peculiar to me, myself, but that it was shared and that the things I thought were madness particular to me, were actually widespread hallmarks of a disease. In that way, the pro-anorexia sites actually helped me to acknowledge that I had a problem. On the other hand, of course, they represent close-knit communities of generally-young girls tied together by common illness. When you lack that sort of bond in real life, the urge to remain close "within" those communities is very strong, and was one of the reasons I didn't want to get better. Luckily, a group of us decided that our lives were not being helped by the site we were on, and we decided to start a new site, a positive site that valued people as individuals, rather than as victims of a disease. Our site naturally became recovery-oriented.The birthing of We Bite Back and its forum marked the beginning of my recovery. It is born out of a disorder, but it exists because we refuse to be defined by that alone.
AOL Health: Taking the final exams which would determine whether you would be admitted to Sydney University was a turning point for you.
Howard-Taylor: I am naturally very proud, and very ambitious. I'm also terribly competitive (which worked to help develop the anorexia in the first place). I had for some years been at the top of my school year. Everyone just expected that I would do excellently. Anorexia fouled all of this up. My marks started dropping, and my brain started feeling more like a flubbery, unresponsive blob than an active, analytical organ. Other girls started to beat me. As totally as anorexia had destroyed my sense of self, my relationships with others, and my academic ability, it had yet to destroy my ambition, and probably couldn't have destroyed my pride. The fact that anorexia could cause me to fail, was what first turned my mind. As much as I just could not see my level of emaciation, I couldn't deny the mental effects. I couldn't read, I couldn't write essays, I could hardly keep conversations. I couldn't "find" words. I couldn't process ideas. It was agony to accept that the only thing holding me back was the fact that I was starving myself.
AOL Health: Did keeping a journal help?
Howard-Taylor: Keeping a diary was just another way of meticulously controlling and documenting everything that I ate. Writing in my diary became as much of a compulsion as the anorexia itself. [But] keeping a journal was [also] a way of keeping my mind, of managing it.
Anorexia is so senseless, and so incomprehensible to anyone on the outside. I felt that if I could find words for what I was feeling, and for what I was going through, if I could somehow invent a vocabulary for the darkness, that I would be able to manage it better -- and moreover, be able to explain it to my mum. She was so distressed that I needed a way to articulate what I was going through, to help her to understand.
Now it represents my personal evidence that all of it really happened, and in those moments when I try to convince myself that nothing was ever wrong with me, it shows differently.
AOL Health: For a great deal of the time you were battling anorexia, you couldn't admit to yourself, let alone to your friends and family around you, that you were a "real" anorexic. How have you been able to not only admit the problem to yourself, but open up and share your story in a book that is available worldwide?
Howard-Taylor: It was difficult at first. I still worry about how people will perceive me when I go and give talks on anorexia. I'm still worried that I won't come across as "thin" enough to have people believe me. But I have the evidence: I kept such a detailed diary, that reading back over it now, I can see all too scarily how sick I was. I have my prescriptions. I have the every-day reminder of a handful of anti-depressants. I have a family who can (unfortunately) never forget. I still see my psychiatrist. But with developing health comes a developing sense of just how wrong things were. I can admit to myself now that I was very, very ill. But it takes time to appreciate this, and just how dreadful it got only becomes apparent as life gets better and better. When I was editing my diary and putting the book together, I often neglected it for weeks on end because I didn't think there was a real issue there at all. I came close to deleting the manuscript a number of times. In those early days of recovery, you have to learn to trust. I had to put my trust in my family -- that they were horrified by my body for a reason, that they were genuinely scared for my life.
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