PINKY PROMISE

On 29 July 2018, I met a girl. A real girl. Due to the vagaries of distance and finance, we couldn’t meet in person – until 44 days ago. That girl has changed my life.

While journalists reported on a whale pushing her dead calf around, I was busy getting to know a girl starving herself to death. After sharing my story in a writing community, a fellow writer reached out to say she was afraid for her friend’s life and would I contact her. Of course I said yes. That’s what women do – we look after each other. Just as females throughout so much of the natural world have done for millennia.

Up to half a dozen female orcas gathered in a cove in a close, tight-knit circle, staying at the surface in a harmonious circular motion for nearly two hours, in the hours after the calf died.

When I first contacted Kiki, all I knew was she’d stopped eating and lost a dangerous amount of weight in a short space of time. I popped my teacher hat on and started dishing out all the advice I’ve collected. It’s jolly good advice. I discovered a profoundly intelligent and funny young woman – highly sensitive, compassionate, amazingly talented, and very, very broken.

Over the past 530 days, we’ve shared everything – no topic off bounds. I’ve witnessed her mental health improve. Plummet. Improve again – a little wiser and smarter. I’ve felt intensely frustrated at the thousands of kilometres separating us and the absence of psychiatric support she’s received in the UK. I’ve been consumed with sadness at the trauma she’s been subjected to, and overcome with awe at the fruits of her creative talents.

Above and beyond all else, I’ve found someone who truly understands me.

Throughout my years of mental health ignorance, collapse, recovery, relapse and recovery, I’ve been blessed with a support network of beautiful people – with no lived experience. They’ve saved my life with their love and care, but they don’t fully understand why.

Kiki understands.

She understands the contradiction of knowing exactly how and why to eat in a healthy and sustained manner, while simultaneously starving for weeks on end, then binging on cake until you spew.

And she understands how destructive eating disorder behaviours are to mind, body and spirit, while fear and anxiety overcome all reason and suck us back into the gnarly depths of self-induced misery, swinging wildly on the eating disorder pendulum.

She understands why we run a blade across soft white flesh, in search of release from the emotional turmoil that threatens to overwhelm. Or spend months fantasising how to plan a permanent exit from life, while striving to inflict minimal pain on those we love.

Over 17 months, every morsel of truly outstanding advice I’ve relentlessly bombarded her with has bounced back and taught me the same lessons I’ve valiantly endeavoured to ignore.

Emotions come and go – ride the wave
Reach out, because silence = shame
Journal, blog, paint, draw – whatever’s needed to let the pain out
Eat well. Move well. Sleep well. Be well.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
Feelings aren’t facts
Blah blah blah

On 28 November 2019 I flew to Sydney and met Kiki’s flight from the UK – she came to stay for six weeks. That’s a long time for any house guest – let alone one you’ve never met. But I was confident we’d get on like a house on fire.

What could possibly go wrong?!

My motivation for inviting Kiki was to help her. I knew reprieve from a Welsh winter and the monotony of day-to-day life would do her mental health the world of good. Plus I wanted to wrap my arms around her, hug her tight, and tell her how amazing she is.

It was the beginning of one of the most life-changing six weeks of my life. Kiki brought love and laughter, acceptance and understanding. Meeting Kiki has given me a daughter I never knew I’d lost.

We spent the Christmas season playing tourist. We’ve holidayed up and down the east coast of Tasmania immersed in nature, meeting and greeting pademelons, wombats, quolls, wallabies, kookaburras, cape barren geese, echidnas, penguins, huntsmen, Tasmanian devils – and my chocolate brown Burmese cat, Coco.

I’ve learned to navigate the confronting reality of mental health issues far more complex than my own. I experienced the fear and frustration of watching someone you love inflict pain and misery upon themselves. I’ve listened to my own words reflected back with unflinching determination and insistence.

And we’ve made promises to each other.

A pinky promise is a binding, non-negotiable contract – forged in the same spirit as the wizarding world’s unbreakable vow. When we make a promise to each other it’s not just a commitment to ourselves, it’s a commitment to another person. If I break my promise to stop any of the myriad ways I’ve artfully developed to dodge emotional pain, I’m giving permission for Kiki to break hers. Which I will never intentionally do. Now I have to jolly well sit with my emotions because caring for Kiki has become inextricably linked to caring for myself. Something I don’t understand. So now we’ve pledged to:

Never self-harm
Never compensate for eating by vomiting, restricting, using laxatives, exercising etc
No excessive doses of prescribed medications
Follow a food plan

It’s terrifying. I do it for her and she does it for me. I’ve come to really love this new daughter of mine and I want to care for her in the ways she can’t care for herself – and now it affects my behaviour as well. I can’t just dish it out – I have to take it. I have to walk the talk.

Kiki returned to Wales on Tuesday. We cried a lot. This highly empathic, beautiful girl with the curly red hair and limbs full of tattoos, has burrowed her way into my heart and changed me from the inside out. I’m not the person I was before. Now someone knows and accepts me.