Back in October 1988 I started a degree in Russian and French at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. I felt like a total fraud who didn't deserve to be there, and wasn't as intelligent as all the other students around me. I had to find something to control, as my life was spinning wildly in all directions. So I started to diet. And after a few weeks, I was down to 200 calories a day and feeling great. Unfortunately that didn't last too long - by early February the control was snapping and I was eating.. not huge amounts then, but more than I had planned. To get rid of the feelings afterwards, I tried to vomit but couldn't.. so I started cutting my arms instead.

The cutting originally began after the first loss of control. I really did want to die. If I couldn't starve then I couldn't live. But all I had was a blunt knife which just left scratches on me. Yet the scratching.. the redness, the sensation was somehow calming. And that's how it all began. Pretty soon I graduated to razor blades, and seeing the blood was all important. I was cutting rather than bingeing, as I would far rather hurt my arm than put food into my fat and ugly body. Sometimes up to 3 or 4 times a day. As I've healed from that, I've created my own set of pages about it. Go visit if you need to. http://www.self-injury.info

At this point, my friends and tutor stepped in. I'd been lying to my friends about the bingeing, in the hope that if I didn't tell them, then it wouldn't be real to me either.. the same denial coping mechanism I"d been taught so long ago by Bill. And if by some chance, Stephen, Miriam, Jane, Diana you're reading this now.. I again send apologies, and wish you could know how much your love and support meant to me then.

So I started seeing a psychiatrist. Then took a year's break from Oxford to take some time to get better. That time was a continued nightmare. I moved back to London, saw a psych there, who helped me keep a food diary and get my eating slightly more stabilised. At the same time I worked at a mindless office job, and binged and spent my whole paychecks away, so I was running up debts left right and centre. I was attending a charismatic church, where I prayed and was prayed for for healing and deliverance.. but somehow, God was letting me work on this myself. I needed to learn to live, and that couldn't be done by any quick "zap" from above.

Slowly.. very slowly... things started to stabilise. I re-took the exams for Oxford, but, as I had done no studying during the year, I failed, and hence couldn't return there even if I wanted to.. which I decided that I didn't. Things were moving along very slowly. And then, around the beginning of 1991, they could have completely fallen apart again. I became involved with an almost cult-like sub-section of the church I was attending, and had moved in with two women and their kids. I was being prayed for and seeing their leader for counselling, and was generally being made more and more like them. This is a scary time for me to think about even now. I was on the verge of throwing in everything, going to train as a nanny and then joining their healing ministry to look after children. Luckily, some household arguments over rent and the way I was treated, outcast unless I agreed with what the leader said made me come to my senses and ring my parents and ask them to come and get me and take me home.

I needed to re-ground and re-find my feet.. I returned to Holy Joes (see my journey page) and started looking realistically at my potential. With some sound and patient advice from friends (thanks Maggi!) I realised that nannying would bore me rigid, but I did like the idea of working with children. A few searches in the careers library later, knowing that I did NOT want to teach.. and I came across speech therapy. Wanting to stay in London where I had friends and a base in Holy Joes, and was doing a lot of music meant that I ended up applying to, and getting accepted at University College.. where, hesitant of failing again, but knowing that I had come a long long way.. I began in October 1991 and for more of how that went see the next page.

It's kind of hard to sum up the factors that helped me get back to university. I was writing a lot of songs, and had begun to perform them with my best friend Katherine - I am sure that being able to express myself that way was a good thing. Going back to Holy Joes, the people who had seen me through the worst of the psychiatrist time but who I had left while involved with the healing cult also helped.. seeing their acceptance of me. And then learning to take that in and apply it to myself. I was on my way... by no means healed and recovered - in fact, I had hadn't even begun to look at or talk about the abuse.. but I was no longer out of control, bingeing or cutting. Time in fact, for me to start looking at those long past issues...

Back to "I Have Survived" or on to next page in my story...