FACES OF PRO ANA: A blog destroying life, and slandering those who suffer from mental illness!

My name is Lauren. I have suffered from an eating disorder for the past 6 years of my life. I have be diagnosed with anorexia when I was 15, Bulimia and Clinical Depression at 20 and have been threatened with involuntary In Patient hospitalization and sectioning for suicidal tendancies.


Eating disorders are NOT a lifestyle, they are a serious mental illness that kill people. For many years I thought I was alone. I felt ashamed because I knew my behaviours and compulsions were not normal, but who was I going to tell, no one would understand because I thought I was the only one. I hid my disorder from the world, and promised myself I would never tell. I thought I starved myself because I didn't deserve to eat, I cut myself because I deserved to feel nothing but pain, I purged because I deserved to feel empty, to have a void in my life I would never be able to fill. Weight for me was irrelevant, I just wanted to hurt myself because i thought I deserved nothing more.


Through therapy I learned that my Eating Disorder developed through a need of control. I couldn't control anything in my life, not my friends, not my family, what I did, who I was, I was at the mercy of people who controlled and manipulated me. Submissively I gave in to the demands and expected more from myself. Anything less than perfect became a failure. I learnt to hate myself for who I was, for not being who everyone else wanted me to be. I thought and still think of myself as a disappointment and a failure. I live only because I am too gutless to die. Another failure to myself. The only thing in my life I could control was food. I could choose to eat or not eat, it was my body, and only could control what was put into it. The more weight I lost, the more people pushed me to eat, the more they pushed me, the further they pushed me into this hell. They were trying to take away the one aspect of my life I had the power to control, and I couldn't let them. In 6 months my weight plummeted from 65kg to just 40 kg.. a BMI of 15.4. My hair fell out, my nails were brittle and broken, I had to give up my passion, dancing because I was too weak to stand, and the thought of anyone looking at my ugly face and fat enveloped body was unbearable. I was forced into recovery which morphed from anorexia to bulimia. My weight skyrocketed to 65kg with all the binging and purging. Then my ex cheated on me with a beautiful skinny girl and this triggered a severe anorexic relapse. I became so paranoid I would loose him to someone more beautiful and deserving then I, that I wittled myself down from 65kf to 47kg in the matter of months. That is where I am now.


The cost of having an eating disorder is high. I have lost so many friends, because I isolated myself from them because I did not feel worthy of being part of their lives, I have lost the love of my life, because my ED ruined our relationship, and my self destructive path to try and be good enough, to be worthy of his love pushed him away. I have just had a miscarriage because my body is ruined from years of starvation and purging, its likely I will never get preganant naturally again or be able to carry a baby to full term. My kidneys are damaged from mulitple overdoses and suicide attempts.... I have lost so much because of this mental disease. Do you think I would be promoting pro ana to other people, having lost so much myself.


I know the pain and agony that ED's cause everyday for so many people, old and young, over or underweight. It destroys not only our lives but the lives of those we love.

Do you think we choose to spend our lives wishing we were someone other than ourself? Do you think we choose to hate ourselves so much that we don't believe we are worthy of this world? Do you think we want to spend all day everday obessessing about every calorie we have eaten, could eat, or will eat.. or to exercise to the brink where we can no longer stand, to wittle ourselves away to the point where we no longer look human, when it hurts to sit, hurts to lay down, to sleep, to exist.. ?


Do you still think I am pro ana?


I am a member of an online eating disorders community from which most of the pictures featured on FACE OF PRO ANA's blog. These pictures were taken without our knowledge and posted without our consent in a way that is truely misrepresentative of what the community stands for.


FACE OF PRO ANA States : "Pro-ana refers to the promotion or support of anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder. It is often referred to simply as 'ana' and is sometimes affectionately personified by anorexics as a girl named Ana."


This community does not support the promotion of anorexia as a lifestyle.


The coverpage of this site states:

"If you have come here in hopes of developing an eating disorder, you really need to leave right now. They are not cool or glamorous. They are not a quick fix. They are not a diet. They are a living, breathing hell. But once you're in, you're in. You're in until it kills you, or destroys your life so much that you have to break free, or until your friends and family grow so concerned you are forced into treatment. So please, I beg you, don't let this monster into your life"


Do this still sound like a site that is part of the pro ana movement?


" Without a place like this, I would have had no one to talk to. Depression and eating disorders often go hand in hand; 20% of those with an eating disorder will eventually die from it, and half of those will take their own lives. Perhaps if people have a place to go and speak freely, without judgement, they will not feel so desperate or alone. Perhaps they will see that they are loved and wanted and needed and understood"


This community is full of amazing and wonderful people who come together to offer each other support and understanding, and a place of refuge from the stigma people associate with those of us who suffer from mental illness. The rules of site prevent anyone from giving out tips of how to engage in self destructive behaviours or encourage people to maintain the disordered behaviours they already have. It is a place to come to share how we are feeling without fear of judgement. A place to be who we really are, for some of us its the only place we can be open and honest about our ED's and how they affect our lives.


I for one know that withou the support and understanding I have recieved from these wonderful and amazing people I would have given up long ago, and have died thinking that I wasn't worth the fight.


I agree that there are some forums that are pro ana, but this one is not one of them, and by branding these members with the same Pro ana label, the media seems so happy to throw around you may just be destroying the only thing that is holding many of us together. There are support groups for alcoholics, schitzophrenics, people with bi polar, drug addictions.. you name it. None of them are getting slandered across the news or media for creating groups to support each other. They are hailed for doing something positive and supportive for themselves. Why are eating disorders treated with such a lack of dignity?


To have the photos of my friends posted across the boards and accused of being something they are not breaks my heart. Why do you so feel the need to break us, when we are already broken? Aren't we entitled to the same privacy and dignity as everyone else? We cannot remove these pictures but if you think I wont defend the only sanctuary have from a world a hate, the only place where people actually understand what its like to live in hell, and not defend the people who give me the strength to keep fighting day after day even though I want to give up, and give me hope that one day I will be free from this illness, then your wrong.


These are beautiful and amazing people, who are already hurting enough. They are my lifesavers, they are the reason I wake up everyday... can you sleep at night, knowing that you are destroying that?

My name is Lauren... and I am bulimic