299: What if your only hope for life was choosing death?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Hi listeners, a couple announcements before today's episode. First, this episode features someone who is actively pursuing M.A.D.E., which stands for Medical Assistance in Dying. This is a program in Canada where people can receive assistance from a medical practitioner to voluntarily end their life.

Currently under Canadian law, MAID is only available to those suffering from a terminal medical condition based on a physical illness. Extending MAID to those whose underlying condition is a mental illness is currently under consideration by the Canadian government, but is not yet available. As a precaution before you listen, be advised that this episode involves intensive discussion of a severe eating disorder and suicide, featuring a woman who is actively pursuing a medically assisted death.

Also, a special announcement about next week's episode, which will be number 300. To mark and honor our 300th episode, we've decided to go back and re-interview the first storyteller ever on the show, from episode 1, What If Your Boyfriend Lit Himself on Fire?

Just yesterday, we re-released episode one for all listeners. So if you want to hear her original telling of the story, you can find it on the public feed as episode one. Or you can stay tuned next week as we feature her full journey, including all the details of the original story, more about her background and growing up, and what has happened to her in the over 10 years since we first recorded. So stay tuned for next week, episode 300.

But now we turn to today's episode. What if your only hope for life was choosing death? I feel like my mental illness, this prison that I've been in, has changed my internal being, my soul. So MADE to me is opening up that prison and letting my soul in some way be free for once. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 299. What if your only hope for life was choosing death?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. My mother was born in Poland. Her background is Russian. But after World War II, my grandma met my grandfather. He was Russian as well.

And then they both immigrated to Poland. She spent a lot of time visiting her cousins in Russia. Her family wasn't wealthy. It was just post-war, trying to make ends meet like everybody else. From what I understand is there was a lot of mental issues going on at home. My mom was sexually molested by her father. However, my grandma dismissed that when my mom revealed it to my grandma.

I think there was a lot of control issues between her and my grandma or her mom, whereas my mom wasn't able to live her own life. My father was born in Poland. His father served on the German army. My father was pretty much raised by seven females, his sisters and my grandmother.

I don't know exactly how it is that my parents met. What my mom has told me is that she was desperate to get married. And so she married my dad and they stuck it out for close to 50 years now. I know my mom has regrets for marrying my father. She often will mention, even in front of him, saying that I could have done so much better than you. And what was I thinking marrying you?

It seems to me like the marriage was just out of necessity as opposed to actual connection with somebody else whom you want to spend your life with. And the fact that she's so vocal about that is very hurtful, not only to me, obviously to my dad, because he stuck it out for 50 years. He supported the family, but just very ungrateful on my mom's part, I find. I was born in 1980, January 22nd.

I was born very ill. My bones weren't forming correctly in my legs. I had kidney failure. I couldn't keep anything down. My body wasn't absorbing any of the nutrients that I was being fed. And I was constantly walking around with infected bladder and infected stomach. In preschool and kindergarten, I remember being in and out of the hospital a lot. Those times where I would spend weeks in the hospital and go home for like the weekend and go back.

I don't remember feeling like I was being healed of anything. I was constantly scared of the nurse coming and poking me with needles and just hearing the sounds in the middle of the night, not being able to sleep and just wanting to go home or be with my parents. It was a horrific experience. I think that also has led to a lot of control issues with my mother, being that I was so frail as a baby.

She tried to protect me, and the only way that she knew how to protect me was to have this full control over me, but not physical control, mental control. In her eyes, I wasn't good enough, but then again, I didn't know what good enough to her meant. So it was always me guessing, trying to please her in different ways, but her not really telling me what it is she wanted.

So I tried to please her by excelling at school and being a perfect student and doing exactly what she said. But that also meant that I couldn't partake in any social activities with my friends. Going to birthday parties or going to a school dance was something that I wasn't allowed to do. First day of grade school was a big celebration. I was not able to participate in that.

First Communion, I wasn't able to participate in that either. I felt suffocated as a child. I felt like I was in prison. The one thing that's really unique is my mom never said outright that I can't go.

It was just this internal mental manipulation that I just knew that I wasn't able to go. It was never communicated to me verbally, but it's through way of actions and through ways of how she treated me that I've learned that that was the expectation.

She made me believe that I was too frail to live my life to its full capacity. Almost like I had to believe that I was crippled, that I wasn't good enough, that I just couldn't. Even though I wasn't physically disabled, I felt like my mom made me believe like I was crippled or I couldn't do anything without her. Like I needed her for everything.

She shaped me early on to be dependent on her and her only. I remember my mom saying how, I'm so skinny, nobody's going to want to hug me except her, even though she never really hugged me. Or you need somebody to help you because you're not going to be able to walk one day. Just making me feel like shit, making me feel like I cannot do anything on my own.

Seeing how concerned my mom was about my health, it felt almost like a burden. I didn't want to worry her. And nobody has told me that it wasn't my fault. I just felt like there was something I could have done to prevent it, knowing for a while that I can't.

Early on, I became a good actress at hiding what was going on inside me. I could put on a brave face and pretend like everything was happy. But yet inside, I was either in pain or I was not feeling worthy of anybody's love.

I don't remember having that warm touch that I see sometimes in films or I see small kids being hugged by their parents. I didn't have that. I try to justify that by means of, well, my mom didn't give me that because she was afraid I was too frail or she was afraid she would hurt me.

I think my mom treated me like a possession. I felt like a toy that she could take out and play with when she wanted and then put away when she didn't want. I wanted for her to notice me for what I was able to do, what I was able to achieve, or how great I did something at school. And I always felt dismissed.

When I turned nine, my parents, for wanting a better future for their kids, decided to emigrate to Germany.

My dad was involved in politics in Poland, and this was during the communist time. So we immigrated to Germany from Poland. We sold everything we had in Poland. So moving to Germany, we started out with nothing. I didn't know the language. My parents didn't know the language. Our intention was to obtain German citizenship.

After three years of living in Germany and really building some friendships at school, I was really happy at the time. I loved the small circle of friends that I had, how I was doing in school, the goals that I had. But unfortunately, we weren't able to stay in Germany. We were nearly deported as Germany changed the immigration rules and we couldn't obtain citizenship. So rather than going back to Poland, it was a last minute decision to emigrate to Canada.

We immigrated to Canada in 1991, and we actually chose Calgary just because of the 1988 Olympics of what we saw on television back in Poland. We came with just a couple of suitcases, literally no savings. The first two years of living in Canada were a challenge, to say the least. When we moved here, I was in grade 6.

I remember going to elementary school with like bread and ketchup for lunch and trying to hide that from my classmates was kind of difficult. But I didn't think much of it. I don't think it had any negative impact on me. If anything, it shaped me to be independent and to really fend for myself and to know not to accept charity from anybody.

We actually had no furniture for the first few months. We had nothing. We just lived in an empty apartment. And anytime somebody tried to help or knocked on our doors to bring in either a food hamper or offer support, my dad refused. His words were, we came here on our own and we're going to do it on our own. We're not going to accept any charity from anybody. And if we don't learn how to be independent, we're not going to survive.

My dad is a very hard-working individual, so his focus was on providing for the family and working several jobs to make ends meet. I have a lot of respect for him for doing that, but it was very difficult at the beginning. My mom fell into a deep depressive state. My mom actually tried to take her own life the first few months we arrived in Canada.

There's a term in Polish where you have like an Eastern European relative who is all decked out in like fur and wanting to be something that others admired. I think my mom really strived for that. She wanted others to be envious of what she had and how she portrayed herself.

And so when we moved to Canada and she realized how dire the situation was, I think she felt ashamed maybe. And so the only way that she knew perhaps how to deal with was to attempt to take her own life. She was in bed in the morning as I was leaving for school and she was moaning in bed and I didn't know what was going on. So I went to school. I came back from school.

And she was still in bed and she was kind of out of it. Like she was sleeping, but she wasn't sleeping. I didn't know what was going on. And I felt like this pit of my stomach, almost like I did something wrong. Like I should have known or I should have saved her or I should have done something. And I remember she finally woke up towards the evening and she went to a neighbor's door in the apartment and

and she got him to drive her to the hospital. She never said what was going on until after she came back from the hospital. And she blamed my dad. She said, "You see, if we had moved earlier, we wouldn't be in this situation." Meaning that apparently she tried to convince my dad to emigrate from Poland early on. And had he done that earlier, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation.

To me, it seemed like an excuse on her part to justify her actions. I felt incredibly bad for my dad. I couldn't help my mom, but I felt double guilty for her shining my dad in this negative light where all my dad was trying to do was make ends meet.

I think it was at that point where I came to realize what was going on. It was almost like I opened up a new chapter in my life and I didn't want to be associated with my mom anymore. I wanted to be there for my dad and I had a lot more respect for my dad than I had previously. Growing up, I felt awkward. I felt like I never...

belonged anywhere. And even when I tried, I still felt awkward. I felt like I was different and I just didn't have a full grasp of what this life is supposed to be like for me. The symptoms of my eating disorder started probably when I was 10, 11. I remember being hungry and I liked being hungry. I liked that feeling because it felt like I could feel something

I always masked all my other feelings, feelings of love, anger, frustration. I've always hidden them. But when I felt hungry and I felt almost that hunger pain, I liked the feeling. It felt raw. That feeling of hunger to me feels like a real emotion. When I feel it, I know that I am me, that I am alive.

And I just continued doing that. And I didn't realize until I've lost a lot of weight and people around me started noticing. When I was 13, 14, I very briefly did an outpatient program at the so-called eating disorder specialty clinic in Calgary. So a lot of the focus during the treatment was on body image and self-care.

But I think it's the disease and the whole area of eating disorders and their origin is so complex. And the developed treatments are very, very old fashioned. I wanted to understand the root cause of my disease and not to listen to what others were telling me the root cause of my disease was.

My eating disorder had never been linked to any sort of issues with body image. I've never felt like I was fat or skinny or that I was ugly or tried to fit some sort of a social norm. It was just really more of a control mechanism.

I couldn't talk to my parents. My dad wasn't really there. He was working full time. I couldn't talk to my mom because she was too emotionally frail. So the only way I knew how was to do it via means of restricting food and having that feeling of emptiness.

As isolated as I was during high school, I was really good at school. I was excellent at math. I was independent. And it didn't bother me as much that I didn't have friends in high school, but it drove my life forward. It made me ambitious. It made me hardworking. It made me commit to anything I was doing. And I took pride in that.

It didn't bother me that I was somewhat of an outsider in high school because I was so involved in sports and my focus was only on sports and school and nothing else. I didn't have time to think about my emotions and how to deal with my emotions.

I never made a close connection with another individual. I never went out on dates. And I justified that by the fact that I played sports and I was too busy. But deep down, I knew it was an excuse because I really was scared to open up to anybody else. It felt weird to me to envision myself being loved by somebody because I've never experienced that as a child.

Maybe I was loved, but I personally don't have an experience of feeling genuinely cared for by another human being. When I finished high school and I was going into first year university, my mom sat me down and said, you know, water polo, it's never going to pay your bills and you're never going to get to anywhere if you're going to play water polo. And I'm not going to pay for your team events and I'm not going to support you if you're going to keep doing that.

And even though she didn't tell me to quit, I knew deep down that that's what she intended for me to do. And that's what I did. I quit cold turkey one day. I went to practice and I told the team that I wasn't coming back. I moved out of my parents' home shortly after I started university. And I started my first year in university on my own.

I didn't have any sort of guidance at my first year of university, and I was on my own. Missing that sport aspect of physical activity, I started working out on my own. I remember going on a treadmill or something and just thinking about my feelings and using that as a way of coping with my emotions. So for example, if I was thinking about a problem that I was solving at school that I had an assignment to do, I would go on the treadmill and I would focus on that assignment.

And then at the end of the workout, I would feel that hunger again. I'm like, oh, yes, this feels really good. And I would just continue doing that. The physical activity that I was doing at the time had nothing to do with anything else other than dealing with those feelings that were building up inside me during the day.

And I kept doing this, almost robotic, without any sort of attachment to physical well-being. It didn't matter to me. I didn't care. It was almost like me crying out at the top of my lungs, but doing it through means of that physical exertion on the treadmill.

It was almost like me wanting to be heard in some way. And people heard. Yes, they heard by noticing how skinny I was getting, but not really hearing what I was so much in pain with.

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One day I came to the gym and the owner of the gym, he worded it really funny. He said something along the line of, patrons at our facility have noticed that you're not well and we don't want this to negatively impact our image. So we've decided to refund you the money of your past, but you're no longer welcome here.

I packed up my bag and I left and I stayed in my car the entire night and I just, I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to worry my parents or anybody else about what I was suffering with. Feeling so ashamed of what has happened and not wanting to be a burden on anybody. I think I bought like cookies or something and I just started eating them and then I threw them up and it felt good.

So the more I did that, the eating and purging, that gradually replaced what I previously had done via that physical activity. It was a substitution for my going to the gym was now me going to the store, spending $100 on shit, shoving it down my throat and throwing it up over and over and over again until the point of complete exhaustion.

I just went from one extreme to the next of all or nothing. In the meantime, I was still going to school and still working full time and living with this secret that I didn't want anybody to find out. The bulimia, the eating disorder, it became my driving force. So it was what I preoccupied myself with the entire day.

Anytime I messed something up, I would turn to food and purging because I didn't know how else to deal with that frustration or with my failure or whom to talk to. I got really good at hiding stuff. Like I would go to my second year engineering courses. I would go to class, but nobody knew I had a shit pile of food in my backpack instead of books.

And I would go to all the bathrooms that were empty and I would just spend a half an hour eating and throwing up, eating and throwing up. And then go back to class like everything was great. And then after school, I would go back to my job and then do the same thing over in the evening and then sleep maybe two hours, wake up in the morning and start the day off again. I did three and a half years at the University of Calgary and I didn't finish my degree until

I ended up homeless. I lived out of my car. I must have been probably 21, 22, but I was determined. I didn't want any help. I remember going to like shopping malls and spending the night in a bathroom. They usually have like a facility where it's for like handicap and you can lock the door. I would sleep on the floor in one of those handicap washrooms and nobody knew.

One of the biggest impacts of bulimia is my teeth started falling out. It was incredibly painful.

for about a year, was walking around with massive headaches. When your teeth rot in your mouth, they get infected and it creates pressure in your gums. It was so incredibly painful. I dug my back teeth out using one of those pointy nail filers you can get. And I dug them out. And that pain was nothing compared to the pain that I was walking around with during the day.

It was embarrassing. I had no teeth. I couldn't eat. I was drinking soup and the teeth that I had left would fall out. When this started happening, I was working full time and I did some research on what I could do to get a sense of looking normal.

I found a surgeon in Calgary. What it involved was removing however few teeth I had left and then replacing those with a massive implant. So I have a non-removable denture. And that whole surgery was over $50,000 that I was unable to get any sort of funding for. I finally managed the courage to go back home and ask if I could stay with my parents.

To avoid contact with my mom, who was very controlling at the time, I ended up getting a job working overnights at a hotel. I was working alone most of the time, overnights, and I was the so-called night clerk.

My job was to deliver meals to any sort of overnight guests. And I had the kitchen to my own disposition. So any sort of scraps or what garbage was there, I would eat and throw up. And then I would sleep during the day and do the same thing at night. The good thing about doing that over and over again was that I managed to save enough money to actually buy my own first small condo. So I moved out.

Once I got used to the day in and day out of my routine, I gradually started looking for better jobs. And with the education that I did have, despite not having credentials, I was able to get better income, better positions, which helped me as I was able to sell my first condo. And that's the only reason why I was able to finance my dental implant.

Other than that, I don't think I would have survived those years because had I not been able to have the surgery, I probably would have taken my life then. I just didn't see it worth living, being ashamed and not even working full time and always hiding from everybody else because of the way that I looked.

I mean, your smile, your teeth are a big part of a person when you meet somebody first time. If you see they have rotten and missing teeth, you kind of paint an image of them in your head. There's a bias. Without that surgery, I don't think I would be able to propel in my career as I did. I didn't know at the time, but I suffered several strokes where I collapsed and I didn't know until after the fact what had happened. I've lost my ability to speak at times.

I have a difficult time forming sentences. It's becoming more often now than it was before. Inability to remember things. I'm losing my eyesight at times. I don't eat. I either eat and throw up. So I'm extremely skinny. My joints in my jaw are so damaged from the purging that I often experience hearing impairments, almost like twitching in my ears, and it's incredibly painful.

My hair falls out. I've never had a menstrual cycle. I'm completely undeveloped. I have severe osteoporosis, very deep depression. So there's days where I wake up and I just cry without reason. They are all symptoms of that eating disorder and the years and years of going through that. I want to say it's almost remarkable.

to know how a body can become accustomed to something like this. In fact, I've never used my finger to throw up. For me, it's a physiological reflex. There's food inside me. I just have to think about it and it comes out. The energy that it takes for me to wake up in the morning and to put on a normal face and keep that up throughout the day is incredibly painful.

Sometimes I don't know how I make it through the day. After work, more often than not, I drive home in tears because I've been bottling up everything during the day and I just break down at the end of the day. And then succumbing to the eating and purging all through the evening, all through the night, waking up in the morning, going to work again.

There hasn't been a day since my teenage years where I didn't throw up. Not a single day. Living like this, I don't know what normal life looks like. What kind of quality of life do I have? I think humans have been meant to live in partnership with others.

To be alone all the time, not being able to talk to anybody aside from work hours. I don't know how you scale that on a quality of life level. Even stupid things like celebrating birthdays, having a vacation, doing something nice for yourself, smiling, being happy, laughing, being able to enjoy a movie or go out with friends, hugging somebody, touching somebody.

I went to get a massage done a couple of months ago and I cried because I didn't know what it was like to be touched by somebody. Is that a way to live? I don't think so. I don't have joy of this life. And living without that is more painful than any physical condition.

My first thought of taking my own life, it wasn't thought through. It was just almost like a reflex response saying, I'm done. Like, I don't want to live anymore. I'm tired of this. I don't know how to get out of the situation that I am in.

I was driving on a road that had an underpass and I thought it would have been so easy just to turn my steering wheel just a little bit and it would have been such a relief. But somehow I missed that opportunity. And ever since, I haven't thought about suicide in those terms. Like, I wouldn't do it this way. I wanted to at least make my dad proud of me. I didn't want to let him down. I knew how hard he worked.

how much he sacrificed, I thought it would have been real hurtful for me to do that to him. The thought of MAID, medical assistance in death, came to me several years later, probably when I was around 27, 28. And I took real interest in it. And I thought about it as being a very compassionate way of living this life now.

And it was knowing deep down that my eating disorder is only going to progress and deteriorate me physically and mentally. To me, it stood for someone being in a situation of living in horrendous pain and passing on in a conscious way without leaving any untied ends behind.

and not having it a painful experience to not only themselves, but to those who may still be around them at the time. I equate suicide to not a selfish act, but an unthought-of act, almost a spur-of-the-moment regret, hurting those who may have to find that person who takes their own life.

Whereas going by means of made gives me the opportunity to have the time to really leave behind what I want to leave. So whether it be through my knowledge, through my assets, through teaching others, through letting others know that I have no regrets, that I'm not doing it because I'm upset or I wish I could turn back time or that I'm blaming somebody else.

I think it's a peaceful way of going and it's a planned way. And it's something that's desperately needed nowadays. It's humane. I made the decision that made was what I am going to choose.

I am at the point where I am incredibly happy to know that this resource exists and that it's something that I'm doing because I want to show compassion for others, maybe in a way that I wasn't shown compassion. I made the decision over 10 years ago. However, I didn't say it out loud, neither to myself nor to anybody else until about five years ago.

I told my dad. He's a very rational person, so he kind of analyzed. He knows a lot of what has been going on in my life. I've had the opportunity with him a few months ago to talk and to really tell him all the details that I've been through. And he understood and he's supportive. So he's not telling me, no, don't do it. Like, this is wrong. We're here for you.

He listened and he accepted. He didn't try to change my mind. My mother, she's the sort of person where it would honestly probably just kill her if she knew. My dad and I decided not to disclose anything to her. So my mom does not know. I have no regrets making this decision. I feel like I'm loving myself making this choice. When I did that, I felt so incredibly relieved.

I felt like this huge stone was lifted off me. And now that I can finally live and enjoy life to the full capacity that I am able to, I feel that now I can really live my life and I don't have an excuse of using my physical condition, my mental condition to be helpless. I'm not helpless. I can still do a lot of things.

Having made and leaving on my own terms and on my own time gives me a full life. You know that there's a beginning and an end. If you know the end, you know what to do before that end. You're able to lead up to that end to the best capacity that you can. There's things that I've saved up over the years.

And leaving on my own terms gives me that power to gift all that I have to somebody who may not even expect it. It may perhaps make a difference in their life that they really need. And I really want to do that. And having made, being in that control of leaving on my own terms will allow me to do that to the full potential that I can.

independence and being self-sufficient is so incredibly rewarding to myself. If it got to the point where I was hospitalized and I needed 24-hour care, I would feel so dirty laying in bed there knowing that others have to take care of me and losing that sense of being independent, losing that sense of control of where my life is heading.

So if my condition is crippling me, I don't want to get to the point where now I am drawing on the resources that I so desperately want to leave behind. I don't want somebody to try to cure me or try to alleviate my pain. I don't want anybody to convince me that I can be cured. I just want to be left alone like that. I just focus your effort on something else. And I'm okay with that.

I think MAID gives me the control that I've been seeking, that I've never really had in my life. It's a way of living on my own terms and not wanting to please somebody as I do so. Now that I know that I can be in control of that, I can make the most of the time that I have left. The concept of MAID is very controversial and very sensitive.

Just because death is considered a negative term, it's not. It's part of life. The topic of dying in general needs to be a little bit more open for discussion, a little bit more in the forefront. To me, death is really just ending the day, feeling content and feeling like you're okay with leaving the way things are.

Medical assistance in death is currently catered to individuals with foreseeable or imminent death, meaning that someone suffering with a mental illness, however chronic it may be, unless there is a physical detriment to their condition where they're going to die in a foreseeable amount of time, MAID is not available to individuals like me.

I guess I'm in the line of individuals whose death is not imminent, meaning I don't have a terminal illness. But you need to realize that a mental illness, if it causes that much grief and is so debilitating to your everyday life, it's the same as a terminal illness. I need people to understand that because there's a lot of controversy behind tier two MAID and specifically for individuals with mental illness.

Yes, mental illness is an illness. It's a deteriorating illness. It's just as impactful as a physical condition. I would take physical pain any day over mental anguish.

To me, it's like I've been living in a prison for all my life. That's not a quality of life that I wish on anybody. I wouldn't want anybody to go through what I've been through in my life. It's not fair. And I need somebody to understand this. And I need to make those in power to make made available for people like me. Nobody's forcing me to make this decision. It's my own. It comes from my heart, my compassion for myself.

There is a concept behind MAID where it has to do with pain. However, what is pain? Is it physical or is it mental? And how am I, in my situation, going to prove to somebody how much pain I am in on a daily basis? I feel like my mental illness, this prison that I've been in, has changed my internal being, my soul.

So MADE to me is opening up that prison and letting my soul in some way be free for once. And I think that's the biggest compassion that I can have for myself. And it's the only way that I know how to unchain myself from this prison.

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March 17th is the date upon which the case for mental illness that made is supposedly going to be acceptable.

My plan of action going forward is I have an appointment coming up with my medical practitioner next week. So I'm going to try to convince him to send me off to some sort of physical assessment so that at least some of the symptoms that I am experiencing are documented. And I'm hoping that they will diagnose me with some sort of terminal condition that'll give me a boost in my application as I try again for MAID.

I don't think anybody goes to a medical appointment hoping that they have cancer, but that's what I can equate it to is I hope that something will come out of it where, yes, in fact, I am gradually declining to the point where it is very near foreseeable. So I can focus on my other plans of leaving behind some sort of legacy as opposed to stressing out about an application of when I want to pass.

And during this process, I just really hope that somebody can show me just a little tiny bit of compassion and regard me as a human being who has a conscious and who is clearly able to think for themselves. So let's say next year I go through the application and I get a letter saying, you can have made

I'm actually not even going to respond to that letter. I'm not going to follow up at all until I know that I've done what I wanted to do in terms of leaving a legacy and creating some sort of change in the system when it comes to mental illness and eating disorders.

So I don't have a date. And if it means that I end up living until I'm 80, 90, and I die in my sleep as an old grandma, that's great. Then that means that I've done something along the journey that had an impact, not only on others around me, but also on myself and on this disease. Maybe it'll connect me with an individual who is going to become my partner for life. I don't know.

maybe finding another reason, another driving force behind my energy and what keeps me going. I want to make sure that before I leave, the treatment for eating disorders is looked at a little bit differently. I really want to educate others about what it's like with living with an eating disorder. It's a disease that I'm living with and that I've accepted.

The way that eating disorders are being treated, it almost seems like a standard operating procedure that you read. And it says, if patient A has this, then do this. If patient A has this, then do that. But not everybody can fit that one scenario that is so common in treatment.

I haven't found one individual living with the same condition that I have. The whole area of eating disorders and their origin is so complex. The focus is on changing. So you go into a facility and you're there because you want to change, which means that there's something wrong with you, right? That's why you're there to change. You become sort of a project for the team.

But why not make the individual feel like they're okay the way they are, they're good enough. And let's work on that first. Let's accept ourselves for who we are and then go from there. And if change happens, great. If it doesn't, don't make it look like you're failed.

I see it being a part of me. I've accepted the fact that I have an eating disorder. I've just come to the realization that I'm not going to waste my energy, waste other people's resources, and waste my time trying to cure me, even though I know fully that I can't be cured. It's part of me. It's part of my genetic makeup. It defines who I am.

And I don't want to change it. I want to make sure that others understand it and don't cripple me more than I already am. Why not accept me for who I am? That's all I ever wanted in life. The controversy behind MADE is so loud. But I want people to understand that MADE is a compassionate way for individuals to end their life.

When somebody is really struggling and at their last lifeline, why prolong that suffering? Why not show some sort of compassion? Let them go and let them rest. And then ask what that individual really wants. For individuals who are having a difficult time processing what I am saying or even trying to understand where I'm coming from,

Ask yourself this question. Have you lived with me for one day? Have you walked in my shoes one day? You're listening to what I say. You process it and you rationalize it in your own head based on your own life experience. So hearing from somebody that they want to die because they have an eating disorder sounds absurd. Like, why don't you take a pill? Why don't you fix? Why don't you go to a treatment program?

As a human, we always want to try to cure. We always want to fix or help or better somebody. But you're trying to make somebody something, but you don't. You don't know what that something is. We all need to realize that not everybody can be cured of something and not everybody wants to be cured.

the preoccupation of finding a cure for something or always wanting to cure somebody. Why? Why do we need to do that? Why do we need to always have a solution for everything? That I don't understand because I bet that a great deal of individuals who are suffering in pain, who maybe have not chosen MAID, has anybody ever asked them what it is that they want?

Are they only staying alive and going through treatments because their family wants them to stay alive? Or that they feel like they would fail if they pass? Whose life is it? Is it mine? Or is it yours? Or is it John Smith's who is working behind a desk somewhere? It's my life. I know myself better than somebody else.

I accepted my condition and I don't have regrets. I don't even blame my mom. I just, I understand where she was coming from and perhaps that's the way that she thought it was best. And I can't blame her for that. I don't have very many moments of where I was genuinely happy or where I smiled. I think most of the moments of happiness in my life came from me achieving something that I didn't think I was able to achieve.

It's what you put value on in life that drives you forward. So for me, knowing that I haven't had an easy life and that it's difficult for me to do certain normal things, I take pride knowing that I can still do them despite my condition.

being able to find a good job, being respected by my coworkers, being able to speak publicly about my disease and how I manage, and being somewhat an advocate for myself. I'm happy to say that I am my own fighter and I take pride in that.

I don't need somebody to feel sorry for me. And it's not like this at all. I am so grateful for this potential. And it sounds stupid, but I look forward to it because it'll be the one time in my life where I can fully just rest.

Today's episode featured Agatha. If you'd like to reach out to her, you can email at amgawron at shaw.ca. Agatha's story came to us by way of Todd Rennebaum.

She was originally featured on Todd's podcast, Bunny Hugs and Mental Health, which focuses on conversations with survivors, professionals, and families of those who have lost someone to mental illness and addictions. So please check out Bunny Hugs and Mental Health. And a special thanks to Todd for referring today's guest. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on the Wondery app to listen ad-free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes, you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Andrew Waits. And Aviva Lipkowitz. With special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westbrook.

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Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once a facade falls away.

We've covered stories like a Shark Tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills, an active lawsuit filed by Larry King, and no real product to push. He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

acts. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.