Hi Jane...I've been reading along and just wanted to say that although I am a bit older than you, I can see similarities in our stories: I, too, never really "matured" physically (remember having a fight with a college housemate who screamed at me, "Get your 10 year old's body out of my room!" and that was really the first time I realized how people saw me), and just recently realized that I'd been pretty much waiting for someone to notice the amount of fucking pain I was in and rescue me for, oh, 25 years? So let me serve as a horrible example to you!
I started cutting when I was 12 (and this was before it became known as a "thing" in the media; I thought I made it up myownself!), taking a rusty nail to my face and digging deep bloody furrows down both cheeks. Kinda hard for a parent to ignore, but my recollection is that not much was done about it (and my mother was a mental health nurse!). I've been cutting ever since, and it is a FANTASTIC stress-reliever, but ultimately unhealthy, I know. People just assume I wear arm-warmers because I'm cold all the time.
But re: being noticed: the wish-fulfillment fantasy of someone noticing the pain you're in, the horror of your situation, etc. and finding a way to fix you? Never happens. A few years ago, a situation came up where I was forced to admit my years of cutting to my mother. We were going away on vacation together, I had been cutting up a storm, and there was going to be no way to hide it. On the bus on the way to her house, I remember entertaining this fantasy that we would finally talk about all the shit that led to me cutting in the first place (child sexual abuse by her various boyfriends when I was growing up, mainly) and voila! I would be cured! We sat in her kitchen and I confessed all to her, and do you know what her reaction was? She screamed "I'm going to kill myself!" Yeah. It's almost funny in retrospect, the fucking narcissistic fucking
splendor of that reply. Anyway, there was no tenderness, or concern, or 'what can I do to help you?', just her own guilt and indulgence of her own feelings.
The point of all this (and forgive the disorganized thinking/writing; I haven't been sleeping well) is that when the time came that I finally said "Notice me, here's what's wrong," nothing happened. No one saved me. It took another couple years for it to really sink in that if I want to be saved, it's only me who can do it. I know it sounds trite, but it's just the cold truth.
re: the anorexia/bulimia, etc. As I've gotten older, I've realized that a huge part of the problem for me is that I get such constant, massive, and sustained positive reinforcement for being underweight, everywhere I go. I end up in the ER, and male doctors treat me like a frail child, while they treat the chubby woman in the next bed like shit. I go shopping and am fawned over by salespeople ("Oooh, you HAVE to try this on, it won't fit anyone but you!"). I get off or on a bus and someone's always smiling, taking my hand, helping me down the steps, asking if they can carry my bag, etc. while -again- the normal-sized woman behind me is roundly ignored. Constantly being coddled, faux-rescued, treated as fragile...it all feeds the need for one to remain a child and have someone fucking save you from the horror of your life and the powerlessness you had back then to change it yourself. I don't know if you've addressed this here, but I don't think a self-described crackwhore (it actually makes me physically cringe to hear you call yourself that) had a happy childhood.
I hope, really genuinely hope, that you can learn some of these lessons experientially far sooner than I did. You are your only knight in shining armor, and there is great power in that. Be fierce. Make a tiny change and see how it feels.
. That said, Im sorry to hear that you're not connecting with your family as you would like to, we bluelighters care, trust me
