To this day, I still don’t believe I suffered from an eating disorder. Even though I have been on hands and knees, face to face with the porcelain queen, heaving into the basin and going on seven day fasts- I never quite managed to reach my nirvana; the goal weight I was aiming for; my nothingness, my destruction.

I didn’t intend a slow, sadistic suicide. In fact ‘it’ crept up behind me before I even realised it had taken me by the throat. What really flung me down the rabbit hole was my dad walking out and my mum having to cope alone – and the niggling thought that it was possibly my fault.

Before I reached my peak, I was aware I was altogether too much. Too loud, too tall, too fat. When I was a child I overate, biscuit after biscuit from the tin. I remember finding photographs of myself, hunched over a fire roasting marshmallows on a stick, fat as a baby piglet. In pure disgust I ripped all of the photos up.

I managed to get down to about 7 stone (I know, not that skinny you’re probably thinking) and living on a diet of an apple a day. Still the intense energy I attained from this, the ability to swim one hundred lengths and still keep going, was an attractive thrill. I would stand up, the world would spin and go dark, I would clutch and rub at my protruding collarbones and hipbones, and I would feel safe.

I experience insecurity nearly every day. I hate looking in mirrors. And I can’t lie, I do miss the control. I played with fire and although like a phoenix I rose from the flames, I am still singed.