Overshadowed

I haven’t posted in the last year. For what it’s worth L is ok. She has many dark days. Her illness still weighs heavily on her, isolating her from her friends and while she maintains a reasonable weight, food still feels so difficult. Food and mood – some days she is so sad and withdrawn and she hardly ever tells anyone. But I am so proud of her. She’s still here though. She passes her exams, she holds down a job, she studies a subject so complex I have no idea how she does it.

Tonight I watched Overshadowed, a BBC3 drama about a young woman developing anorexia to the point where she is completely in its grip. The illness appears as a close friend, always in the background, whispering poison and inciting her further into the disease. The distress of friends and family is shown so well, along with the girl’s increasing alienation from them as she only listens to ‘Anna’. It’s pretty harrowing, but if you have friends or family who don’t understand, this might explain it. The final words are written by the author, a former anorexia sufferer who tells the viewer Don’t Give Up.