Sometimes life gets in the way of doing things we are passionate about. This is a mistake. We should absolutely always be consciously following those things that make our hearts sing. Whether that be writing a blog like this one or following your online work-at-home career like a good friend of mine. Sometimes, actually that is an understatement, usually I let the day to day get me down and it creates a barrier between me and those things that I love to do.

Thanks to that same good friend I mentioned above, I have developed a passion for reading, and with that came the vision of myself writing. Though I have no particular visions of myself become a world class writer - there is no reason I can't write for my own benefit and enjoyment. I have never been one to be overly confident in my own abilities and so that self consciousness translates into holding myself back. I hold myself back from writing this blog. I hold myself back from writing that book I was so obsessed with planning. I hold myself back from going on that date, and from going back to school for a career I have always dreamed of having. For those who aren't on a first name basis with me - that career was Nursing.

The anxiety started full force when I was a young teenager. I have since come to learn that I have suffered with it my entire life. I attribute it to my experience in elementary, junior and high school as a gay male in small town Canada. The harrassment started when I was quite young and continued throughout my education. There were times in my childhood that I wouldn’t leave my house without company, and even then I was always looking over my shoulder. I saw a therapist in elementary school for several years and although I can’t remember what those sessions consisted of at that young age, I can guess it had something to do with my fear of everything.

I don’t think I started having full blown anxiety attacks until several years into my high school years. I remember living with friends and waking up through the night with such terrible chest pain I thought I was having a heart attack. At 17 years old that was not only scary but confusing. I was relatively healthy. Though I talked myself out of calling 911 – my friend could attest to the fact that I was scared shitless. It was such a harsh attack physically that I suffered from acid reflux for months afterward. Thank god that has never happened again.

Cut to a year later with my first gay relationship. I was in the closet so to speak until I was around 17 years old and when I finally let my guard down enough to meet someone who I thought was great, I was more than a little bit of a push over. I got with someone who was a pathological liar, who saw merit in cheating and lost no opportunity to let me know my weight was an issue. I was annorexically thin, and that was how he preferred me. For eight years I stayed in this relationship. I have since realized that the relationship was mutually abusive in several ways. Firstly once the cheating started I became a little more than controlling. The more control I saught the more he pushed against and did those things that caused the control issues. Excuses aside, the relationship was full of lessons and I wouldn’t trade my time with him.

Albeit difficult, that relationship is where my anxiety seeded itself into what it has become today. The anxiety attacks strengthened into what they are now. It has caused deep seeded trust issues in me that have ruined relationships since. I am working on these problems every day and have come a long way since I left him in 2012, though I still have a very long way to go.

So there is where the eating disorder began, with a weight controlled environment for several years, however above all of that I have always had a terrible diet. I am a fussy eater – over and above any other adult I have met even if I am sure there are tons of people out there like me. I can eat any type of junk food going, can try new flavours and almost always like them. I can not however eat, well everything else. I want to be more adventurous but it is a one step forward two steps back type of situation. I hyper fixate on one meal and eat it until I am sick of it and can’t eat it for a while. That does not happen with junk food. So this is where the binge eating disorder comes into play. I can go several days without eating, or could anyway. I have thankfully gotten a slight handle on what the frequency, moving away from going several days without food to needing to eat every day. The problem I have now is I go most of the day without eating and then need to gorge myself in the evening – when it is most unhealthy for me to eat. I do not purge, and I say that with the utmost care for those that have this problem. I have thankfully stayed away from that aspect of the cliché where binge eating disorders are concerned. I just eat until I am bloated and gross and feel like I am going to be sick. Sometimes there can be several straight hours of eating. Progress, not perfection.

The body dysmoprhia is definitely something I have a harder time accepting in myself. I don’t have anyone to compare diseases with and I am so crippled with this self consciousness that I will certainly not let anyone see my body, so I really get no opinion but my own. However I am pretty convinced that my body is just shit and there is little anyone can say to change my mind. If I am being honest with myself this makes the utmost sense. With my eating habits it stands to reason that my body is responding accordingly.

So there, my mental illness is a part of my life, but it is not the defining part of my life. I am learning to accept it in myself even if those around me cant or wont understand what it means for me.

Next time on Maury...