Fifty Facts About Me

I think it might be time for a get to know me post. So here are fifty interesting, mildly interesting and probably even some boring facts about me.

1) I’ve always consistently wanted to write books. I wrote my first story when I was three, it was about a girl who dances naked in a field and dies of a fever. I must have been a really twist child!

2) I wasn’t taught to read, I simply picked it up as I went along and could read before I started school.

3) Despite this I was diagnosed with dyslexia, very late on, just after my twenty-first birthday.

4) I don’t know what my favourite book is. It depends on the day.

5) I am a huge huge Jane Austen fan, my love of the internet started with Jane Austen fanfiction.

6) I had a story plagiarised, I still can’t get my head around the idea that somebody was making money off something I wrote when I was sixteen.

7) Although Mr Darcy is of course Mr Darcy, I have a literary crush on Henry Tilney.

8) I have a degree in Medieval History, I’d been meaning to read English until I started studying Chaucer.

9) I also have a masters in History Theory. It was probably the poorest financial decision I’ve ever made.

10) I wish I’d thought about becoming an architect, but then I remember that I’m useless at drawing and I don’t really like maths much either.

11) After I’d finished university I became a cliché working in a coffee shop.

12) I still hate coffee. It smells so good, but it tastes so different.

13) I neither love nor hate marmite. I can’t be the only person who is indifferent to the stuff, right?

14) I have been putting together a world carbonara ranking since I was ten years old. It’s my absolute favourite food ever.

15) I’m allergic to tomatoes (mildly) and coconuts (hideously). Aside from food allergies I’m also allergic to chicken pox and penicillin.

16) I’m lactose intolerant, but not very good at it because obviously there is pizza and tea and chocolate in the world and I have zero self-control. And of course there is the aforementioned spaghetti carbonara too.

17) The only food I absolutely will not touch is beef. Although I wouldn’t eat pork after watching Babe.

18) Pigs are my favourite animals.

19) I claimed to hate sushi for years and year, but I’d never tried it. I’ve only just learnt I love it and now I can’t believe I’ve deprived myself of it for so long.

20) As a kid Disney was largely banned in our house, although we were allowed to watch anything we were given.

21) I still haven’t seen Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, but I know that Belle is my favourite princess anyway.

22) I watched The Little Mermaid for the first time in an A-level history class, my teacher was honestly concerned I hadn’t seen it yet.

23) Even though I’m not an avid fan of the films I’ve been to Disneyland Paris four times, the most recent this summer.

24) I haven’t travelled as much as I’d like, but I loved Egypt when I had the chance to go there.

25) Going on holiday with me is quite hectic, I get a bit obsessed with site seeing, and I really want to see it all before I leave. I’m not one for lazing around by the pool.

26) The one place in the world I’m desperate to visit in Venice.

27) I have a twin brother, who is my complete opposite in personality. He was like my human security blanket when I was little.

28) I’m related to Samual Morse, the inventor of Morse Code, which is cool, but would be better still if I was also related to Inspector Morse.

29) My Dad has one hundred and twenty first cousins, but I only have one half cousin.

30) To this day I’m convinced I once levitated around my house when I was eight. Sadly, the rational side of my brain knows I must have dreamed it.

31) I love Harry Potter so much I thought that was a sure fire sign that I’d get my Hogwarts Letter.

32) I believe in ghosts, and have lived in two houses with a spirit. One was friendly and the other ceased her hostilities eventually. I swear I’m not totally crazy.

33) I am a cat person, and have always lived with cats. I only have one right now, I call him Bear.

34) I’d like to keep chickens and goats for pets too.

35) If I was really really rich, the most extravagant thing I would spend money on would be wearing new socks every single day.

36) I absolutely love clothes, but somehow I can’t figure out why I keep running out of storage space.

37) My biggest fashion gripe is that a lot of clothes are made for women without women’s shapes.

38) I wear a GG bra, they’re all real, and it’s quite a burden. Should I even be telling the internet this?

39) I wasn’t interested in makeup in my teens. I didn’t really wear it until I was twenty-one.

40) Like a lot of people, I got into makeup watching YouTube Beauty Gurus. I found it relaxing watching makeup tutorials, I used it as a way of calming my anxiety.

41) Somehow I’m still not particularly good at applying it myself, I guess I just lack any sort of artistic talent.

42) I love dancing, I started ballet when I was three years old, and even though I’m pretty clumsy I’m sure it would have been ten times worse without.

43) As well as ballet I’ve studied tap, modern, jazz, latin and ballroom.

44) I can play the piano and clarinet, but only where there’s nobody around to hear me.

45) Everybody thought I would become an actress, despite being painfully shy.

46) Whenever I meet a famous person I don’t have a clue who they are. This includes, but is not limited to Prince Charles and Camilla. More embarrassingly I once told Jasper Carrot I thought he was a black man (I was nine, my parents still love to tell the story).

47) My friends all call me giraffe, because of my skinny legs. Each different group has come up with this idea independently.

48) I lived in London for five years, I used to think I’d be there forever, but I’m happier in my field in the country now.

49) Sometime I feel like the only person who’s lost and confused by live. But other days I think I adult quite convincingly. Does everybody feel as at sea as me.

50) I’m sorry I cannot think of a fiftieth fact! So I lied, it’s only forty-nine semi interesting facts about me.

Stress and Starvation: A Mental Heath Note

I am not a stress eater.

Are you? Usually when people discover this unusual quirk they want to know how I do it. They also express how jealous of me they are. But to me it’s a bit like the straight haired girl lusting after the curly haired girls locks and vice versa. Or the girl with big boobs longing to be something smaller, like a B cup. I can’t tell you how to stop yourself stress eating, but I am going to bare my soul to any stranger on the internet who might stumble across this, because I can, and because, generally I hate speaking about it.

Also because there must be other people who react to stress and emotionally upheaval just like me, and who can relate to what I experience. Not just that, but I have developed ways to manage my self destructive behaviour, and I hope that I can offer up some wisdom to anybody else who has had similar struggles with food and stress.

Jokingly I used to refer to it as “stress starving”. It was a habit I first noticed during my A levels, and became increasingly more apparent when I was at university, when my weight yoyo-ed, plummeting around coursework deadlines and exam periods. It was almost a joke amongst my friends, something which we all made light of. But there must have been some underlying concerns too, I didn’t fail to notice my culinary challenged flatmate bringing me sustenance in the form of baked beans and potato smiles while I furiously typed away.

It wasn’t until I was finishing a Master’s degree I noticed my behaviour was alarmingly unhealthy. Disappointingly I wasn’t in a position to continue studying, I had been desperate to do a PhD, but financially I wasn’t in a position to continue. I took this failure, and the associated embarrassment and blamed myself. Therein followed a solid month, while trying to write my dissertation, in which I ate one lump of cheese a day and sweet tea, purely to stop myself collapsing.

This behaviour reared its head once more a couple of years later when I was simultaneously given a promotion and a new manager, and struggled to meet an entirely new set of expectations. I began skipping my lunch break trying to keep up with the new manager’s workload, which only seemed to make the situation worse, I was so hungry I couldn’t focus. When my new manager, stressed himself, left after only a few month, it fell to me to hold the fort until a proper replacement arrived.

That was the moment when I finally reached out for help, admitting to myself that my mental health was under no insignificant strain.  

The councillor used the term “punishment by starvation”, and looking back at the pattern of how these periods of hunger had arisen it seemed a reasonable assessment. The moments I struggled the most had been brought about when I perceived myself as not being enough. Whether I was panicking to meet a deadline after a week off with a chest infection, or I was disappointed that my lack of confidence had cost me PhD funding, or I wasn’t coping with my workload. On all those, and similar occasions I was disappointed in myself.

The armchair psychologist in me still struggles to comprehend why? I don’t remember being sent to bed without dinner as a child. I wasn’t rewarded for good behaviour with food. And I wasn’t bribed into good behaviour with the promise of a treat. There was no rational explanation to why I would punish myself by withholding food. And yet that was what I did. The only real guess I have is that I love food, and I love to eat.

Most people, when they think of an eating disorder immediately think of anorexia, and bulimia, and they associate them with negative body image. I have some hang ups about my body, I wish my boobs were smaller, and my stomach more toned, but nobody’s perfect, right? Eating disorders are, at their core, a mental health issue. The term “punishment by starvation” is often, not always, used in conjunction with anorexia. Like anorexia I have fallen off the wagon more than a few times, and I am accepting that there will be future occasions when this happens again. I know that the root cause of my problem boils down to the state of my mental health. I know that I perceive myself as undeserving, and that my self-esteem is often low. There is a lot of work still to go on my sense of self.

If you happen to be reading this and recognise some of these behaviours in yourself, I have some advice on how you can attempt to prevent spiralling out of control.

Snacks. Keep something to hand which is quick and easy to easy to eat. This is for the times when you catch yourself saying “I don’t have time to eat”. For me, I keep cereal bars in the office. This was the brain child of my old manager, who saw how hunger tended to make me underperform, and how I would continue to struggle and strive to get the job done. Now the minute I feel like I’m stressing and my energy feels low, I eat a bar. It’s amazing how a bit of energy can change your outlook.

Plan your meals and plan your time. This one works best when you’re on your own. At these times I regulate my day, allotting time for foo, time for study, time for chores and time for work. I regulated myself right down to setting alarms reminding me to eat, like some Pavlovian dog, because I know how easy it is to get caught up in the moment. Equally have a meal plan, if I know in advance what I’m eating then I not expending any brain power deciding what to cook. When you’re feeling low making a choice can be the worst. Because I hate cooking for one I make sure all my meals are quick and easy to prepare, so I’m not wasting any of my precious time. That way eating doesn’t seem like such a chore than I didn’t have the time for.

Treat yourself. Make the time for something you love. Ironically enough I love food, I’m a big fan of going out to eat, I like a catch up with friends where we cook a huge meal, and let’s not forget about takeaway pizza. Sometimes it can be hard to eat, particularly if I’m at my most emotional, but I will always stand by the opinion that food and socialising are a winsome combination. At one of the worse times in my life I was lucky enough to make an amazing friend, who already aware of my tendency to not prioritise food, was constantly inviting me out for food. To this day I am ever so grateful to her, for persisting in forging a friendship when I most needed support.  

Speak to somebody. It honestly helps. Having somebody spell out to me exactly what I was doing gave me a feeling of validity, this wasn’t just something silly I was over anxious about. This had the potential to be an actual problem. There are lots of people who you can reach out to for help. I’ve been referred to counselling services through my doctor as well as being able to access it anonymously through my employer. I’ve had group counselling sessions, one to one sessions, I’ve even been allowed to have a friend there to give me support. You have to try it out and work out what’s best for you. Personally I liked telephone counselling, I think I liked the anonymity of confessing everything to a stranger, where neither of us could see the other. I hate group counselling, there is literally nothing that can shut me up quicker than a captive audience looking at me while I bare my soul.

What I’m saying is there is something out there for everyone. I’d never dictate one approach over the other, you have to work out what suits you best. Maybe you’ve already tried a group counselling session and hated it, like me. Or perhaps you’ve felt horribly uncomfortable sat in a room alone with a physiatrist. Don’t give up on it all just because ones already let you down.

I hope this has helped somebody out there, or that somebody out there maybe has some suggestions on how they cope with a similar issue?