Our world is on edge. So many things are out of proportion. So many of us no longer have families, no longer eat together, and are no longer satisfied with enough stuff. Many people have too little and many have more than they need. We're wrapped up in having clothes and cars. Young people pay outrageous amounts for a pair of jeans or invest in nurturing an iPod over real friends, generosity, and love. Priorities continue to shift from qualities like leadership, kindness, and honesty to the extremes of ownership, personal property, and being thin. 

I have noticed this, and it has greatly affected me. For a while I just observed and pondered. The world looked sad, suffering, tortured, judgmental, and unrelenting. I was at college beginning my sophomore year when the situation began to get out of hand. 

Going from a fit, healthy self, I lost nearly a third of my body weight. I no longer wanted to eat, especially with people. I dreaded the cafeteria and each meal. I started going when I knew it would be quiet, for fresh fruit or a salad. I would only sit with friends who had been proven not to notice (or at least not to comment on) what I ate, or with people I didn't know at all. I counted calories frantically and was constantly on the verge of collapse or tears. I ate less and less until it was just half a banana in the morning and some stewed vegetables or lettuce with vinegar on it in the evenings. The vinegar gave me stomachaches and acid reflux, but it was the only thing I would put on stuff anymore, because I knew it to contain no calories and no salt. Eating salt would mean gaining the weight in water my body would retain to metabolize. 

I felt unworthy of everything I had or needed, including food. My heated room, my expensive pairs of jeans that kept getting looser and looser, and my chance to study at a college where everything from my laundry to my meals were taken care of were all luxuries that I didn't deserve. I withdrew into my single dorm room, studied, exercised in the gym, or went out running outside, running for hours, even when I was exhausted and my joints were hurting all the time. In the dead of winter, I would go on three-or four-hour hikes alon the country roads around the campus in snow and on ice. I'd be falling and freezing and getting sick all the time.I couldn't relax enough to sit down and have a really nice, open conversation with a friend. I couldn't sleep at night because of hunger, nausea, headaches, and heart-wrenching dreams of loss, pain, and sadness. I was running from the past and myself constantly. I felt a core-deep confusion and despair.

No amount of weight loss was enough- any flesh or soft spot was too much. Part of me wanted to obliterate myself-- becoming smaller was sometimes not enough. I would pick at any perceived body imperfections, like a freckle or bug bite, until my thighs, upper arms, and face were bleeding and never got a chance to heal. I was out of control. I suddenly understood why people hated themselves, or destroyed their bodies.

Many of my relationships suffered or died because of my inability to be part of life. My friends got worried and started hovering, judging me and what I ate, which changed what we did together. I no longer wanted to have parties, to watch movies and eat popcorn, go out to dinner, or even just stay up late hanging out.

Everything hurt-- physically and emotionally. Just sitting on a chair without cushioning was torture. By Thanksgiving, after a semester of teetering, I was at the bottom. I had no love for myself, for my family and friends. I was completely removed from life I'd known, and worse, I had no idea how it changed so much so quickly. My mother sent me to doctors who could find nothing seriously wrong.They said I was really thin and they could feel a lot of things that you couldn't in other people (like my vertebrae through my stomach), but they let me go. They did blood work, which came out borderline, or low in some cases, but nothing to be really worried over.

I was missing my menstrual cycle, my skin was yellowing, and my hair was falling out. Everything ached, and I was cold all the time. I insisted I was fine, didn't tell or show anything that wasn't demanded. My mother threatened to not let me go back to school if I didn't get better. She said, "It's nice to be thin, but not this thin." My father tried to talk me out of the place I was stuck in and told me that I was "not a very nice person to live with," meaning I was no longer my old bright, happy kid-self. My parents had raised me to know what society expects of a young lady: thin, pretty, smart, but not sticking out funny, not in disagreement with the three. I remember little things they'd said and done through the years, like telling me to hold in my stomach and not to make faces that weren't attractive, to reinforce those messages. They had always wanted me to succeed in the world, to have an easy way, to be prepared, and now it had all back-fired. Perhaps, I reasoned, gaining control over my body, growing smaller and withdrawing, would help. I wanted no one and nothing except a way out of myself. Sometimes dying felt like an easier path than facing life.

Being at home that Christmas broke the pattern and gave me a chance to reevaluate. My family had all meals together, I could cook again, and I got to take care for the animals on our farm. I had many friends and got a lot of attention because of how I looked and the rumors that had circulated that I was sick. I started wanting people to see that something was bothering me. I was so tired. Maybe someone else could fix this for me. I struggled, thought,  and listened to others for a while. Could I maybe be somebody with a laugh and some love again? I tried the smallest spoonfuls of chocolate and peanut butter, and they tasted so good! I switched colleges so that I could start over. I made new friends, and ate better. I thought it was over.

Then I began to have a different problem. Every once in a while I would binge on sweets and other foods I loved and craved. The binging got worse and I started finding ways to hide it, to throw it up, and to fast later to make up for it. At first it wasn't too bad, but I got into a pattern and it felt horrible. Compared to how I'd been eating, even, this seemed extreme and terrible. I gained weight back and felt less in control than I had before. The problem was still there, but now it didn't show as much outwardly, so I no longer got the attention or support.

I remember taking ipecac syrup, and even swallowing laundry soap on one occasion, to make myself throw up. It was torture and I could no longer tell anything about what my body needed because it was so confused and poisoned. I would have terrible mood swings, blood sugar ups and downs. I blacked out at work once over the summer, and I could not sleep. And the weight didn't come off.

I finally had to lay it out honestly to some people I trusted. I told an old family friend who's a doctor, I told some close peers, and I told my parents enough that they could attempt to understand. Saying it out loud was a battle. Everything until then had relied on hiding and secrets, so the truth came out haltingly, painfully, in bits and pieces. So at the beginning some people, including me, underestimated the problem. Perseverance in bringing out the whole truth was the hardest part because it hurt me and those I was trying to tell.

However, once it was out in the open, the issue-- that I was suffering from anorexia and bulimia-- looked different. It wasn't solved, but it was no longer fighting me with myself and my body and the world all alone. It's a slow process to heal and change, and sometimes it's still so overwhelming that I don't know if its worth the fight.  The feelings and some behaviours are not gone, but they do not rule my life anymore. I still have harder days and worry sometimes what others think or that I am still not perfect. It does get better, though, through conscious effort, group support, and the desire to do something good for the world. On my path to recovery I threw away my scale, which used to be the measure of how worthy I was, and I vowed to never to own one or step on one again. I haven't yet.

I get strength from those who have gone before me and overcome this. I've had to stop trying to live up to the ideals that society sets for young people. There is no integrity in the clothes and makeup you wear. There is no true love in the TV scenes between the ideal cast man and the ideal cast woman. And, most important, who really wants to be miserable, weak, sick, and at risk of dying to look a certain way and get attention? Just think about how much more you could contribute to the world by being healthy and able to energetically pursue a career and a life doing something you're passionate about.

What makes me the saddest is to see the many others who struggled with the same feelings. Celebrities, models, my friends, classmates, so many people get and promote the message that you have to be thin to be beautiful, to be perfect, to be loved. Anorexia can kill you, seriously. Models faint on the runway and die from it. Celebrities cannot have time to think, heal, or bond with their new babies instead of their trainers. These are only the ones we hear about; there must be so many more.

The good news is that my eating disorder-- others are the same-- was an invading lie about what I had to do in order to feel better, be special, fit in. It was not my true self speaking, so it lost much of its power when I let who I really was step forward. The lie can be very strong if you feed it, but it remains only a lie. The truth is much stronger and makes for a lovely life.

I try to hang on to the high moments, when the old feelings are overcome and the world feels happy and hopeful. It takes time, sometimes years, experiments, and mistakes to find the right path. And it takes help. Trying to stand alone in this for so long, to spare others the pain or to hide what was going on, was probably my biggest mistake.

Now that I feel the freedom of living, I suddenly understand how wrong it is to be miserable. Deep, delicious inhaled of fresh air and a sense of gratitude for everything that exists are the best feelings in the world-- and they do come. I want to reach out so that someone somewhere will breathe more easily because I have lived. Then I will feel that I have succeeded, which is something my eating disorders have never and will never be able to do for me.

~bump~

Poured out my heart here, I'd like some critique please? </3

I'm not really sure what to say, RootBeer, but this touched my heart. I've never experienced much of what you mentioned, but nonetheless I feel as if I understand a bit better? That there's more to it than just "I want to be skinny". I don't want to critique because it feels like a very personal piece of writing, but it is beautiful and even heartbreaking to read. <3

Thank you Det, I really appreciate your comment. I've never talked openly about my anorexia, but I sat down and wrote what I felt. I'm much better now, I wanted to let people read my story<3

So dramatic I love it

I'm glad you did, despite it being very personal. It definitely opened my eyes and hopefully, it will do the same for others.

Res- Thank you. c: 

~bump~ <3

I know my one of my half-sister's friend went through eating disorders and died. ;-; But this really tells you how it feels, and I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that. This really got into my heart there. <3 I'm going into highschool next year, and I know atleast one of my friends is probably going to go through this. </3

This is just.. heartbreaking. I've felt the same way so many time, but I've never had the courage to tell anybody. It's so deeply personal and real; so much of what we read nowadays is total fiction. This make me want to go sell everything I own and donate all my money to people who NEED it. I want to hug you, can I hug you? -hugs- If you say no, too bad. I darn near cried reading this, beautiful <3

Clouding- Yes, it's becoming more common with the false belief that super skinny is attractive, sadly.

BlueBird- *hugs* I love hugs(: Thank you, it means a lot. I'm very glad I decided to post it, as I feel even more relieved. I have miraculously recovered from my horrible habits, and am fine now, but this story is what I went through. <3

Tried to post this 3 times. xDrnrnMay I have your email, RootBeer?

Shadow- Sure(: It's roootbeerlover@gmail.com

I'm hoping the three o's were intentional. xD I'll be emailing you my comments on this piece. <3

That must have been so hard for you to go thorough all that! You must be so brave!

As someone who has an eating disorder, this is a very accurate deion of anorexia. I've seen the family of a good friend deal with a death of someone dying from anorexia and outside forces. This piece is beautiful and agonizingly true. I'm happy you have gotten onto the path of recovery and I wish you the best on this journey. This piece is beautiful. Please keep writing and sharing your experiences.