is called Ana, is 32 years old, is in Madrid and seemingly has it all: it is pretty, nice, has good friends, a good job, a a family that does not pass economic hardships… But beneath that facade, it has also other less attractive things. From adolescence he suffers from bulimia, an eating disorder that leads her to give large binges then feel guilty and induce vomiting. In addition doctors diagnosed personality disorder limit, a clinical picture characterized by self-destructive behaviour, impulsive actions and chaotic relationships with other people. A year ago, unable to overcome a loving break and a long list of problems that will enable him unsolvable, Ana tried to commit suicide: pulled into the void from the top of a bridge. He managed to survive, but the fall caused him serious injuries in the foot. They had to operate it several times, giving him thirty stitches at each end.
Yet he did not know if someday would walk when, in a wheelchair, they entered a psychiatric hospital in Madrid, where he remained for 37 days. I had a notebook, and there Ana was scoring on a daily basis the most important events of the day.
When they gave him the high decided to turn these brief notes in a journal in all rule over his 37 days in the psychiatric.
When he began to write her notes, she thought that these would be transformed into a book. A story full of tear, humanity, of pain, of hope, of black humor and especially sincerity that day was publishing through a thread on ForoCoches, an Internet Forum.
Its absolutely true story, became a huge success: managed more than 200,000 visits and more than 8,000 comments from users.
Now the newspaper has become a book entitled “How I flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, released by the Publisher Plaza & Janés and that, in order to preserve her privacy, Ana signed with the pseudonym Sydney Bristow, name that has borrowed from the heroine of the series of TV sets ion “Alias”.
“One of the phrases that Sydney more repeated is: ‘Ask too many questions’.” And how she, to me I don’t like the questions,”says Ana. However this Spanish has agreed to answer questions from BBC world.
How was you girl?
It was a girl with values very marked, inherited from my father. A girl who believed in loyalty, sincerity, the importance of knowledge…
It was a great lover of animals and I liked to learn: writing, reading, math, computer science…
His family has a good social position, right?
Yes. My father is an engineer and works for an American company. My mother is a biologist, although time ago does not exercise.
My father have gone well things professionally, so when I was little we were moving us tiny homes to increasingly larger houses as it was ascending in his profession.
And each time the House was accompanied by a change of school. The first move and the first change in College was to half of course. I was 11 years old. And it took me to adapt to the new school.
It was a public school, only had 7 girls in my class and all others were children and very gross. I then placed such great importance on my notebook of dictation and spelling, had always clean and pretty, with a perfect calligraphy.
On the second day the notebook appeared nailing, literally nailed, at the table of my desk. At the beginning I had a very bad, came every day crying home, my parents did not understand it, told me that he didn’t case the children who got with me.
But I I faced them and managed to mark my territory and already had no more problems.
At what point did then to twist his life?
He was 13 years old when I went back to change school and House. We moved to our present House, a House with five bedrooms, seven bathrooms… And to me I put in a pretty elitist private school.
And at that school the values that I had, that my father had taught me, not worth a shit. That I take care of my hamsters, which pointed me to the Math Olympics, that there didn’t care, was cause for mockery.
What was there was have breasts, have branded clothing, be the prettiest and being thin. It was right there, in that moment, when everything is twisted. Because there were only two options: adapt or die.
And I decided to adapt myself, gave up all that in what was believed to be changing one more, be accepted. My priorities now were to have designer clothes and be thin. If I could give it reverse and correct the biggest mistake of my life, it would be that.
And began their problems with food, isn’t it?
Yes. I started to give me food binge to, then put me fingers in your mouth and cause me vomiting.
ANA has that never stopped stuffing is and vomiting. People believe that bulimia is vomiting. But no, bulimia literally means ‘ox hunger’, and I is what he did and unfortunately I still do, although to a lesser extent now: eat like an ox and then vomiting.
I’m eating binges of food for four people, I’ve eaten dog food, I’ve eaten food from the garbage, I’ve eaten me even my own vomit…
Eat me calm when I feel anxiety eat reassuring to me, food is my refuge. With 16 years old I had my first hospital admission by underweight (weight below what is considered healthy and which is therefore a health hazard).
However, in spite of all that, he got a Bachelor’s degree in law and became a lawyer, right?
Yes. I found employment with 24 years in a Bank and the same day that I signed the contract and started working, on the same day, became independent and went to live alone.
Apparently everything was going well, but it was a lie: I never stopped stuffing me food and vomiting. In fact the real reason why I went to live alone was to do what give me the wins with the meal, without having my mother and my father back.
I’ve done real nonsense. I’ve vomited and I thought: ‘ Um, this has a second round “and I’ve taken my own vomit with the hand and I’m back to eat.
And then she met David…
I met him in January of 2014, when I was 28 years old. It was a gorgeous, spectacular computer. We started going out, and I committed myself in that our relationship had to be perfect.
David did not you none of my problems with food, not it was telling that he vomited.
When we had dinner and I was a binge I said that it was cold and I was going to take a hot shower. Opened the shower, protected by the sound of water falling, vomited in a bowl and then, very slowly, pulling vomiting by the bathroom and cleaned the bowl.
Did it start to become obsessed with this relationship?
Yes. A lot of times a day, calling David sent you a lot of messages. So you can see the level of obsession that had with him: it was a month to the United States with a friend and I offered to go pick you up at the airport on his return.
I was super nervous, and before going to the airport went to my parents House. There, my father caught me off by inserting a knife into the bag and asked me to what I wanted it.
I replied: “by noto phone distant David. And I thought that if when I get tells me that let me, I cut off my veins at the airport with this knife”.
Of course, my father made me leave the knife. And David that day not left me. But he ended up leaving me.
And what happened when David decided to end their relationship?
I felt that the world ended. I thought: “How will I survive this?”. In fact, already has been four years since I left and I still pass it evil. These four years have been a shit.
As the account in his book, after the rupture began to consume drugs…
Until I let David vomited a lot, but drugs took only occasionally, very occasionally.
But bulimia is sharpened me once I let David, and drugs were occupying more and more space. He smoked cocaine and heroin.
Ana was obsessed with giving food binge, vomit and keep me thin. He left work at 6:00 pm, I went home and had two routines. The first was to spend the evening eating and vomiting, eating and vomiting, vomiting up to five times a day, had knuckles on living flesh of both rubbing them with teeth to put my fingers in the throat to cause me nausea.
Another routine consisted of stuffing me sleeping pills, took me six and I slept until the next day. But I discovered that I could add another third plan: work and getting high, working and getting high.
And then it exploded?
Yes. On the one hand spending a lot of money: in food, drug, to pay my house… I started to apply for quick loans, a spending binge with credit cards.
It asked for loans to repay other loans. It became a snowball that kept growing. A time that was a lot of money, around 20,000 euros.
And on the other hand remained obsessed with give me food binge, vomit and keep me thin.
He ran 10 kilometers a day, he vomited more than ever. I got to weigh 42 pounds. I spoke with my father, he took over paying the credits and I voluntarily entered a clinic.
While I was there I became eternal, was a hell. I fattening, I looked horrible.
nAna has her bulimia started at the same time that was changed to a school where the values were very different from the one instilled by his family. It was a tough adaptation process for her. And out I had to go to live at my parents House, so these will ensure that it remained healthy habits.
Back to live with them was awful, I couldn’t stand it. And one day, returning home from work, I found out everything.
What he realized?
I realized that he was fat, was living with my parents, that David had driven to run and was still running, that he was 31 years old and had nothing.
My only motivation in life was vomiting. So I took 20 refill, sabiEndo that would destroy you the liver and kill me.
I texted my sister and my mother’s farewell. And my sister, who is a doctor, told me that Yes, that was going to die but that he would take a week and that was going to be a superdolorosa death.
She was telling him to be home and be able to help me. But I what I did was parking the car and jump over a bridge.
They were then admitted to a psychiatric Center, where he was 37 days and whose experience was narrated on the internet and now in a book. What did you learn there?
I learned from patients. I’ve always been someone who was let go by the first impression.
And in the psychiatric hospital I took a surprise: people who looked like some hanging from life, which if it had crossed them me down the street I would have changed from curb to avoid them, turned out to be admirable people, people with a special sensitivity, people splitting you the soul.
As Rhino, a kid that all he wanted was to know where his mother was buried.
Has that income in the psychiatric hospital changed it?
Yes. It has made me more compassionate. I’ve noticed that there are many people who are mentally ill and who, in many cases, all you ask is someone who listens to them.
And no one wants to hear: do not have time, because they don’t trust them. And they only want that, be heard. And I heard them, by force, because he could not go to me. And then I realized that listening to them had been lucky.
Entered into the psychiatric hospital with the idea of writing about what lived there?
No, not at all. What it did on that occasion was keeping a journal, I do not know very well why.
It carried a notebook and I was writing what I ate, to who knew. Small annotations, 30 words a day.
Leaving the psychiatric hospital a day I was with some friends and told them many stories of my stay there. And one of them, a psychologist, told me that I should write it, that the story was really good and would help me.
I said that no, never that of takes them. But one day at home, lying on the couch, bored, with the foot badly and unable to move me, I grabbed the phone and I started to write my stay in the psychiatric.
Every day I was writing how it had been a day there and hung chapter in an online forum. It was a relief.
Can writing be therapeutic?
Yes, totally. I now am recommending it to a lot of people. That is sad, people that have problems. “Writes, writes,” I say.
His story became a success, with more than 200,000 visits. To what do you attribute this?
I don’t know. I have no idea why they had that success.
Perhaps because despite being a story stark and tough you the recounts with humor?
Maybe. I wanted not to be sappy, I didn’t want to be a victim, poor me, with my broken little feet…
I wanted to tell the things as I felt them.
But I have not endeavored to put a touch of black humour, is that I laugh all, and inside there were things that I laughed much.
It maintains relationship with some of his psychiatric colleagues?
Yes. I tell him at the end of the book, I don’t want to reveal it.
Continues to write?
No imagine stories, but I dare not write them. I’m very perfectionist.
This book I wrote it because I never conceived it as a book, never imagined that it would be published.
If I had known it, I would have not written it.
How is it now?
Regular.
I went to vomit and I still do. I went back to get sad.
In fact, last may I went back to entering the same psychiatric hospital for a time.
But what of the book makes me happy.
