In 2018, my biggest fear was recovering from my eating disorder. Food, weight gain, life outside of hospital all terrified me. If I had the strength to overcome the all-consuming grip of anorexia, I have the strength to free fall from 10,000+ feet in the air to raise life-changing funds for the charity which played a huge role in saving my life.

Being in a stable place in recovery, a sky-dive feels admittedly petrifying. However, it is still not the most terrifying idea... The thing that scares me more than anything is the rapidly increasing cases of eating disorders paired with the fact that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. Eating disorders kill - every single day. I could have so easily, and almost did on various occasions, become a part of this heart-breaking statistic.

To put it bluntly, there was significantly more chance my eating disorder would have killed me than a skydive. And that is horrifying.

It is the severe lack of funding, poor understanding, and abundance of harmful stereotypes portrayed in the media which fuel this fire. People are on their knees begging for help, but are often dismissed, put on what seems to be a never-ending waiting list and allowed to deteriorate. People are suffering, and it's negligent and traumatic.

I was lucky enough to receive rapid intensive support, but only because my weight was below a dangerous threshold. Eating disorders are mental illnesses, not physical, and nobody should be turned away because they are a "healthy weight". It's ridiculous and incredibly invalidating. It's terrifying to think of what could have been had I not received the help I did when I did.

Not only is treatment scarce, but available treatments are typically traumatic and unhelpful. At 16, I was sectioned for the first time, removed from my safe place and thrown into an inpatient unit. You'd think this is where I'd get better, but you'd be very wrong. I was scared. I was alone. Yet, I was receiving no psychological therapy. Told my weight was too low and I'd get help when I was at a weight at which I could engage. So here I am, being forced to gain weight, yet having no psychological input to help me process my biggest fear. Every single day I would be restrained by up to 8 members of staff to have a tube forced down my nose and throat. Sometimes they would miss and it would go into my lung, leaving me struggling to breathe. I'd be left sobbing for hours alone in my room, because there wasn't enough staff to comfort me and all the other struggling teenagers. I turned to self-harm as a coping mechanism, eventually having every single thing taken from my room, not even allowed clothes or wipes or deodorant due to the risk of my harm. Banging my head off the wall, just to rid myself of the pain and distress. Only to have an alarm pulled on me, tackled to the floor by several members of staff. Have my trousers pulled down for an IM injection in my bum, often by male members of staff. Having no privacy, being watched every single time I went to the toilet or for a shower. This went in a cycle for years until I turned 18, multiple admissions, each equally as traumatic as the one before. That isn't "care" or "treatment" - that is dehumanising. I was quite literally a child.

So whether it's no care at all, or the traumatic "life-saving care", too many individuals are being let down by the system. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Beat is a charity which push for change in eating disorder care. Beat provide free services to individuals who need it most. Care need isn't based on weight, or gender, or race, or any other discriminatory characteristics. Care need is based on providing help to anyone and everyone who is struggling with an eating disorder. Beat educate the public, offering free advice and support to families, carers, and health services. Beat pick apart stereotypes, advocating for fair and equal care for all sufferers. Beat save an unmeasurable number of lives, including my own.

I truly believe that without the support Beat provided me, the hope and courage they gave me on my darkest of days, I wouldn't be alive today.

So, yes, launching myself from the sky is undeniably terrifying. But the alternative is even scarier - Beat need funds to continue the amazing work they do every single day, and without this, more people will lose their lives to this horrible horrible illness. That could have been me. So, as I told my teenage self as I battled anorexia, I tell myself now as I prepare myself to jump feet first out a plane:

FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY.