I’m now 25 years of age with a life that is full of, happiness and aspirations. Sadly, these personality traits have only just come back after being disguised with weakness, isolation and despair. This was due to a slow introduction of unwanted triggers and circumstances, leading to a situation where I found myself tightened under the gruelling grasp of an eating disorder to control the way I looked by diminishing female body parts. By becoming smaller everything slowly started disappear and made me feel better about myself and the smaller I became the better I felt so the cycle continued into a dangerous downward spiral.
I am currently now rebuilding my life after engaging in an 8month stay in an Eating Disorder Unit @ Newmarket House in Norwich. Through writing these blogs I start to encourage my own recovery as well as showing others that with self belief and motivation life can and does improve! I believe that positivity can come out of every negative; Over the past year I have began to share my story, but more importantly, place emphasis on the optimism that can be nurtured whilst facing every day challenges. I have become very passionate about making a difference in this area of mental health, and I want to use this blog to raise awareness about the illness, inform people about the severity of an eating disorder, and the huge consequences of living a lie and forcing yourself to live your life in the wrong body when from the young age of Seven you knew this just wasn’t right. I carried on regardless because I was just too scared to admit how I truly felt as well as worrying about peoples responses and losing people of which I was closest too. So by writing this I just want to encourage people to talk, ask questions and gain a better understanding of both an Eating Disorder & Gender Dysphoria and to not be afraid of getting the help you need in order to live your life to the fullest.
My disorder began with restricting my food intake. I’d try to skip breakfast and barely eat lunch, I was living off one small meal a day or telling everyone I had already eating. My stomach would roll and growl all day long and this would go on for days. Inevitably though, after feeling absolutely ravenous I’d eat whatever I could to show people that I was fine and in fact just hungrier than normal. But with all that came the powerful cycle of sickness to get rid of anything consumed which made the episodes of eating more and more out of control. I continued eating less during the day and then more than making up for it in the evenings. Several years passed, and my eating habits fluctuated. The process of being sick seemed so easy. I could eat whatever I wanted and however much I wanted, and then just get rid of it with a simple flush of the toilet.
Bulimia became a sort of coping mechanism for me. Although I never once made my-self sick it just happened and was so so easy to continue this cycle to achieve what I wanted. It soon ended up not being so much about food but about control. I was dealing with a lot of stress and there were lots of things in my life that I just wasn’t able to manage. I’d eat and get a rush from eating food, then I’d get an even bigger, better rush after getting rid of it all. All of this did come at a very costly price to my physical and mental health and with constant support and care at Newmarket House I was able to look into this in greater depth as to what was the driving force behind my Eating Disorder. For me I knew what it was, I knew full well what was holding me back this whole time but how to say it was always my biggest concern. I worried about what my Family would say, my friends, and people from the outside that looked in would do. I just didn’t know how people would be or if they would simply just judge me and throw me under the bus as some complete weirdo who no longer wanted to be female but wanted to be male.
“Everything you want is on the other side of Fear”
The more I explored and shared my experiences within Therapy the more things made a frightening amount of sense. One family therapy session was what hit the jackpot for me.. My Dad said I was like the son he never had and the words that wanted to come out were I AM but I just couldn’t do it I wasn’t ready for what could be rejection. I began to talk through this lifelong struggle and I came out with the words that I was in the wrong body and wanted to be a male and with that a huge weight shifted off my chest & shoulders. I finally begun to come to terms with who I was and why I had been feeling what I was feeling. It was a relief to have some understanding and to begin to have the words to articulate all the tricky stuff built up inside of me.
This however made me even more aware of all the difficult stuff that was to come. I was worried about coming out to my family & friends, rejection, fighting for my right to access treatment and support, how I’d be seen in the street, all of those things. What I do know is I’m incredibly grateful that I am still here and still alive, because I was never really sure I’d get to this point. I honestly felt so trapped and pent up with anger and frustration of how shit life would be if I had to carry on being someone I’m not and it just felt like the easiest thing to do would be to give up and kill my self because the pain had become so unbearable. However thanks to Newmarket House everything has now changed I’m on the path to embarking on my new journey as Jode and as the male that I’ve always wanted to be the guidance and support I received through coming out as Transgender gave me a new lease of life, characteristics of my old self were back and I was like a coiled spring, bouncing off the walls being the old cheeky chappy but perhaps a little bit more off the scale as I was buzzing because I literally just felt so free.
My first taste of coming out was a bit of a whirlwind, I felt like because I had come out an admitted it to staff, everyone around me needed to know as well. Including those of my family and friends so that I could begin to live my life the way in which I’ve always wanted to live. So the next steps began I began to write a letter for different sets of people due to covid it wasn’t as easy as having face-face contact with everyone and it was not something I wanted to do over face time. So I began to write letters one for my Family and Friends and for “The People” of which I lived with so that I could get a taste of acceptance or even rejection although the rejection part never actually happened and everyone accepted me with open arms and made me feel like a KING! It was so surreal the night before I was due to tell my parents I remember sitting outside under a gazebo listening to the rain pour as well as catching tears that streamed from my eyes because I was just so shit scared. I closed my eyes and hoped that it would all just be over but there was a tap on my shoulder from another patient who asked if I was okay, I just replied with I’ve got such a big thing to do tomorrow and I just don’t know if I can do it, and with her second guess she just knew exactly what it was!! I was told that everything would be okay and that my parents would love me no matter what and as we hugged it out and she walked off, I just remember talking to myself and wondering how a complete stranger I’ve been living with less than a year has just guessed your ultimate secret!! Now felt more the time than ever to face up to the truth and tell my loved ones because if she could accept it then so would everybody else. I went to bed that night with the minimalist of sleep knowing that tomorrow was in fact the day that I would tell my parents as it was visiting day, it came round so quickly and I felt sick to my stomach but I knew I just had to do it because ultimately if I wanted this to be the next step in what was to be the rest of my life this had to be the first step. It was a bit of a weird visit as I couldn’t actually see their full faces, I couldn’t hug them and I just didn’t have the bottle to say it out loud so I gave them a letter each (Dad’s slow at reading) so this gave them both the chance to read it at their own pace. Once they had both finished reading (at different times), I saw tears form but most of all I was welcomed with utter joy that I had finally been able to be open and honest in saying what I had been feeling all these years. I was balling my eyes out mind you but it was more tears of happiness that I hadn’t been rejected, I was still loved but as of Jode instead of Jody and since that day I have embarked on a new journey, making lots of different changes to feel as comfortable as I can in my own skin until I was to be referred to the specialists in this field.
Firstly I had my favourite haircut of all time “Thanks to my Sister” who turned a picture into a fine head of hair on my head, I changed my Name and was referred to by male pro-nouns from everyone of which I lived with and I ordered a selection of shirts to match my new look. It was crazy, it was so exciting, I continued exploring within therapy and kept talking to staff, which in turn allowed my eating habits and sickness to turn a corner because I finally managed to come out with what had be troubling me all these years and I could finally see an end and knew in turn to get the right help I had to mentally and physically healthy and with that weight went on, meals were kept down and my overall outlook on life was completely different. My sense of humour came back and I had a spring in my step and I just couldn’t wait to get back home and share the next steps of my journey with my family and friends.
I have people ask me if I still think I would have developed an eating disorder if I had spoken up about my transgender identity when I was younger. The answer for me is a resounding yes. My disordered eating habits are definitely complicated by the fact that they occur alongside my gender-related dysphoria, but many of my eating problems were centered around having some sort of control. It also felt like part of the physical transition. Body dissatisfaction; the negative evaluation of one’s appearance is considered a risk factor for mental health issues in general and is thought to be experienced by both trans people and those with an eating disorder. My attempt was to suppress features of my assigned sex. to accentuate features of my gender identity specifically to present gender identity in ways that are understandable to the world around them.
I attempted to stunt breast growth, reduce hips, and eliminate menstruation by restricting intake and being sick. The positive note to my story is that I was able to find myself at Newmarket House with support from everyone who helped me consider my eating disorder in the context of my transgender identity. None of us were experts by any means, but they recognised that my identity feeds so strongly into who I am as an individual and how I experience disordered eating. The world of eating disorder treatment and research needs more of this thoughtful consideration, because I know for a fact there is more than just me out there who is suffering.
I’m still suffering now, although I received some wonderful news this week from The Tavistock & Portman Identity Clinic in London that they have received my referral m life is still pretty much very very difficult and continue to live an everyday battle within myself no matter what good is going on outside. Inside yourself there’s a war raging between who you are presenting yourself and who you really are. The longer and longer it’s dragged out you’re made to feel marginalised and you’re made to feel that you’re not important.” The average wait for a first appointment at a gender identity clinic at the moment is up to 24 months which although it isn’t a shock to me because I knew it was never going to be a quick process it’s just depressing to think that being trans and still being in a female body is going to affect my day to day life – I’m incredibly anxious about being ‘caught’ in the men’s toilets, judging who will be safe to come out to and who might react badly, the anxiety of worrying about showing my ID and it still being female worrying about how staff will act towards. I’m in a job sector where customers will call me she and refer to me as my dad’s daughter and that is frustrating when you’re trying to live your life as that of a son. I have sent off for my name to be legally changed to Jode David Wells and am looking forward to get all my Identification changed and having services refer to me by my proper name because seeing Jody is again just another reminder of some very difficult times. The wait time scares me, because old habits do often creep into my head and I do act on the impulsion of these thoughts and resort back to old unhealthy behaviours of my eating disorder, I do doubt myself on numerous occasions as to whether I can go on to do this and wait this long because it’s ultimately a long time to continue on as you are when you don’t fit in your own body. I am still under my Eating Disorder Community Team but if anything they have been pretty useless and haven’t really supported me enough to help with these feelings that I am experiencing with my weight and shape and just seem to be allowing me to go through this in hope that these thoughts over time will just disappear like they did in Newmarket House. I don’t think they realise how much support I needed in there to keep me going and battling the strong mind that my Eating Disorder creates. I had on hand 24 hour support each and every single day for 8months and now they think that one appointment every 2 weeks to see me and do physical observations will be enough to keep this materialising into something much greater. In my head I’ve pretty much washed my hands with them and will lean on my Doctor who has done all the referral, offered support and guidance and has given me hope that at the end of all this upset and all the extremely difficult points in my life I will reach my ultimate goal of becoming the Man I’v always wanted to be.
I know that my mental health will continue to suffer until I get the right help but for now I have just got to continue to be positive as much as I can and stay focused continuing to do things that make me happy and distract me from some of my most deepest troubles as well as joining support groups to help with this long period that I will face still being stuck in the wrong body.
I am extremely lucky to have an incredible set of Family & Friends who have continued to be such a great support network. I have a great job role within the family business of which is going from strength to strength. Although I am still not playing football, being back behind a managerial role alongside my Dad is going better than ever. I am enjoying going to the Gym to release stress, have some me time and build muscle mass to help me begin my road to obtaining a new physique. As well as being back behind the wheel of my car of which currently is costing a bomb (not by my bad driving may I add) but by stupid engine warning lights and the fact that Ford want to charge silly amounts to get it sorted. So on paper overall more positives outweigh the good right… but deep down inside me I’ll be honest and say that’s not the case Gender Dysphoria is a very much the “battle of the beliefs” hanging on to your belief that you are who you are despite how others may define you, while also challenging yourself not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It’s a constant effort to align yourself externally with how you feel internally. When I was younger I wished that I had the language to articulate the dysphoria that I was feeling because maybe this could of all been rectified by now but clearly for me it just wasn’t the time or the place.
Now the time is for me to be patient and trust the process and await what lies ahead because I know now more than ever that getting on the ladder to seeing a specialist, being offered testosterone and eventually surgery I know I will lead an exciting and fulfilling life.
The Mind Diary 