Little mix - our world {ON HOLD}

The beginning

Jade
DOB:
26 December 1992
In three words:
Thoughtful, peculiar, loving
Most likely to say:
' Anyone can achieve their dreams if they have the courage to pursue them.'

Growing up, it was me, my mam and dad, and my big brother, Karl. We were moving class, what I'd call a typical normal family, living in a terraced house in a little cul- de - sac in South Shields, in the North East. My dad, Jimmy, is a taxi driver and, when I was little, my man, Norma, worked as the business manager at the school I went to. I absolutely loved primary school and with my mam being around I couldn't go wrong. My brother's five years older and I idolised him. I still do! I always wanted to be like him so everything he did, I copied. If he was into a certain type of music, so was I. If he played football, I wanted to too. I'd go with my mam to watch him play every weekend, cheering him on. I worshipped him. I was quite tomboyish as a child, but was also into tap and ballet. It was a really lovely childhood.
When I got to secondary school things changed. All my friends went to a different school so I was on my own with no mates. I was a bit of a swot, painfully shy, and didn't stand a chance really. I got bullied quite badly. I'd get pocket on by the popular hand and there was this one girl who really had it in for me. She was in my year but she was a big girl and would push me around and tell me I was ugly. This particular girl used to corner me in the toilets, shout things like 'p***' and throw me bleach powder at me - once she got her mates to hold me down and drew a bindi on my forehead. They would point and laugh. I'd never experienced racism or prejudice before then. I had no one to talk to about it so it got to the point where I wasn't really going into school, or I'd turn up and hide in the toilets or in my drama teachers classroom and stay there all day, waiting for the bell to go, then I'd run. What was weird was that outside school I was quite confident, going to drama and dance classes and singing in musicals and stuff, but at school I was an absolute mess. Just walking into the building would fill me with dread
Eventually, my mam found out what was going on, stormed into school and told the head of year to sort it out. I was mortified, not wanting anyone to know, thinking I'd be even more uncool. The school suspended the girl who was bullying me, then she got moved to another class and from then on things got better. A girl called Ruth was told to chaperone me and that's how I got to know her best friend, holly. To start with holly hated it because she was lumbered with the geek, taking her friend away from her, but as time went on we became close and we've been best friends ever since. We look back now and find the whole situation hilarious, especially since we're so inseparable now. My other best friend, Anna, I used to sing with. She moved to my school in year 8 and thankfully I then had a few friends around me.
I was about thirteen when I got anorexia. I think it was the culmination of a lot of stuff, not just the bullying. My mam and dad were arguing a lot and my Granda Mohammed, who I was really close to, died. He was everything to me, the nicest man ever, and so calming to be around. He lived at the bottom of our road, so I'd always be around there, every day. Then he got ill and went into hospital. A couple of weeks later he died of heart failure. I'd been in to see him and, looking back, it was as if he knew what was coming because when I was leaving he kissed me on the forehead and said, ' look after yourself. I love you.' It seemed weird. I said, ' I love you, Granda.'thinking I'd see him the next day, and left. That night he died.
It was the first time I'd lost anyone I loved and I found it really hard to deal with.
At thirteen, you're at that age when you don't really have control over anything and I felt as if the only thing I couldn't control was what I was eating. I started skipping meals and stuff like that. I would look in the mirror and it wasn't that I'd think I was fat., I just had it in my head that I wanted to be really skinny, really skinny. I used to find out what foods would work as a laxative and that's what I'd eat, if I was going to eat, or I'd take ages over a plate of food, have minuscule amounts on my form and, when no one was looking, I'd hide it or throw in in the bin.
For a good couple of years nobody really knew what was going on because I wore baggy clothes and managed to hide the fact I was losing weight. My periods stopped and things were getting out of control but I don't think I really cared about what was happening to me. I felt so depressed at the time that I just wanted to waste away and disappear.
Then my mam started noticing I wasn't ever downstairs to eat dinner. At school, I was seeing a counsellor to try and help me deal with everything. I was about fourteen or fifteen by then. I think I told her I enjoyed feeling hungry and being in control of what I was going to eat and she told my mam, who had already spoken to her as she was so worried, and the teachers. I was furious. I was absolutely livid at the counsellor, because I'd told her in confidence, but obviously they can't keep something like that to themselves, not when your healths at risk.
I was tiny by then, really skinny, and pale and gaunt. Awful.
I wouldn't go out anywhere, didn't want to see anyone. Anorexia is a self - destructive thing and you become stubborn, so when people are trying to tell you something you get it into your head that they're against you and you're not going to listen. I remember sitting in my bedroom, I wouldn't come out, and my mam lost the plot. She didn't know what to do, so she rang holly and she turned up with a pizza. She was like, ' You are eating this!' But after trying to argue and reason with me, I think she realised there was nothing she could do either. I'd turned into someone I didn't know anymore. I was horrible to the people closest to me and didn't care whether they liked it or not. I was at that age where I hated everyone, hated the world - and hated not being able to control my life.
I'd hear Mam and dad arguing and shouting and blaming each other for what was going on with me. It really broke them. I think it must be so hard for parents when all they want is for their children to be happy and healthy. My poor dad, bless him, didn't know what to do. I think I take after him in the sense he's really shy and doesn't know how to cope with emotions. One night he came upstairs to see me and broke down, saying it was all his fault, he'd done everything wrong. It was the first time I'd ever seen him upset and it broke my heart. My mam was beside herself - she was already ill herself with lupus and I was making it ten times worse. Karl, my overprotective big brother, felt like he was failing me and I could see he felt helpless. I was looking at my family, thinking, ' I'm destroying everyone here.' I thought I'm not a bad person and I'm not doing this anymore.
Mam took me to Australia to see family there for weeks, which was nice. It was like a retreat, a chance to get away from everything and sort my head out a bit. When I got back we got proper help, and I started going to a clinic for eating disorders in Sunderland. Me weight had dropped to around six stone by then. It took going to hospital to make me realise what I was actually doing, hat it wasn't a game, it was something really serious. They sat me down in the clinic and were quite tough at first, spelling it out: ' You're destroying your body and if you keep doing this you will die'.
It wasn't easy to turn things around and I was stubborn to start with but I had a friend going through the same thing, only much worse than me, and she ended up in hospital, in a specialist unit, in a bad way. I went to see her and she was so ill; her poor parents were devastated. I thought, ' Fucking hell, I can't do this tommy family.' It shocked me into making a change.
From then on I went to hospital every week as an out - patient and they weighed me to see how I was doing. There was always the threat of being admitted if my weight dropped to a certain level. I hated the staff at first but as time went by I loved them for helping me. I had therapy sessions, and my Mam got help as well with how best to react if I didn't want to eat, what kind of meals to cook for me, all that kind of thing. Everyone always had an eye on me to make sure I was eating.
Towards the end of secondary school things picked up for me and I didn't care as much if I was in the popular gang or not. I had a good core group of friends who were there for me and that was all that mattered. I was singing a lot outside of school, and in year 9 I sand in assembly and people were going. ' Oh, she an sing!' In 2008, when I was fifteen, I did The X Factor for the first time and got as far as Boot Camp, and I think that helped give me a bit of street cred and a confidence boost at the same time.
It took a couple of years to recover from anorexia but I gradually got better and just before I went in for The X Factor in 2011 I was discharged from hospital. I feel I was very lucky to get help before things had spiralled too much out of control. Now, when I look back, I can't believe I did that to my family and friends, and to myself. I'm so grateful to everyone around me at that time, who had patience and love to help me through it all, and so sorry that I behaved so badly to them. I would never, ever, get myself in that situation again. Lots of young people go through anorexia and not enough of them talk about it, I'd hate for anyone to think that because I went through it, it's OK. It's not. I want people to know they can get help. Like I did, and that there is a way to get better.