CORNER BROOK — For almost four years Belle has been fighting a war with herself and with food.
A war the 18-year-old young woman from a small community on the Northern Peninsula is finally ready to end.
Belle, not her real name, has bulimia nervosa.
She believes her eating disorder, which started when she was 15, was triggered by stress.
“I had a lot of issues going on,” she said. “And I didn’t have a lot of confidence at the time, plus the stress I was going through wasn’t much help.”
After a while it became about control for her. Everything else that was happening in her life was out of her hands.
“I felt that what I ate was what I could control. But I was definitely wrong.”
Belle was able to keep her illness from her mother for about six months.
An aunt, who is a counsellor, was the first to really figure it out. When it came time to sit down and talk with her mom, her aunt was there for support.
“You’re kind of nervous of how they’re going to react, even though you know they love you. But this is something different than going out on a weekend and partying.”
Belle said her mom was really worried because she didn’t know a lot about eating disorders.
“She was really confused with it, not knowing where to go from there.”
Where they did go was to Belle’s pediatrician and from there she was referred to a psychiatrist.
Her treatment included trying different meal plans, coming up with meals she would be comfortable with and ways to occupy her after she had eaten.
Belle said none of it did much good.
“Because at the time I wasn’t ready for change and I still felt at that point it was hopeless to change and that there was no hope. Because there was no magic pill to get rid of this.”
Over the next three years Belle’s weight would go from around 140 pounds down to 100 pounds.
Last year at the age of 17 and still looking for help, Belle and her mom got involved with the Eating Disorder Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Through the foundation Belle learned of the HOPE (Healthy Opportunities for People with Eating Disorders) Program run by Eastern Health at the Renata Elizabeth Withers Centre for Hope in St. John’s.
After going through a referral, assessment and intake process, Belle began an outpatient treatment program this past September.
The group sessions she participated in finally gave her a chance to express what she was feeling.
“You didn’t need to feel like you had to hide it because all these people knew what you were thinking.”
She said in school her friends were talking about the shoes they bought or the party on the weekend.
“And here we could talk about our eating disorder the same way and feel comfortable.”
But Belle still felt hopeless and didn’t think that she was going to get better.
She left the program in December, and now says leaving then was a big mistake.
“I should have put my health first,” she said. But instead but her focus was on other things.
“I wasn’t prepared to make that huge adjustment and I was in Grade 12, it was my senior year and knowing that I could fail or have to do it over and not graduate with the class I grew up with, it was so much to try to deal with and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
“I was an 18-year-old girl who wanted to graduate and didn’t care if I had to use a wheelchair to graduate, just as long as I was there.”
In January she went back to school and in June she graduated with her class.
But still every day is a struggle.
She describes herself as a “teeter-totter,” and said one good week will be followed by a bad month.
And now after almost four years of battling, Belle said she is ready to do what is necessary to fight and control her illness.
She’s putting off going to a post-secondary institution until the new year and will head back to the centre later this fall to continue the treatment process.
“I don’t think you can ever recover,” she said. But, she said, there is a point that’s the next best thing to recovery and that’s where she wants to get.
On Aug. 28 the foundation will be holding its Hope Always Walk in communities throughout the province, including Corner Brook. For more information, call the foundation at 722-0500 or email info@edfnl.ca.
