Anorexia Nervosa is the deadliest mental illness there is. Only thirty to forty percent of sufferers will fully recover. I am beating these odds every single day.
I remember looking down in Kindergarten and thinking, “I’m fat.” I looked up to my big sister for the first time and wished I was her. She was tall and slender, and I was short and chubby. I hated my body already. And of course, this was the start of a very long journey. It was an on and off thought until middle school when it became a constant voice in my head. This was when I started to put on the weight most girls do when they go through puberty. I got a little thick. But I was by no means “fat.” However, in my eyes, I was huge. Then, in my freshman year of high school I had my first boyfriend. I constantly felt the need to go overboard to impress him, and I felt as though I was constantly compared to his ex and it killed my self-esteem. I had become depressed. I felt inadequate. The way he treated me didn’t help either. I was never pretty enough, skinny enough, or good enough. Even HE compared me to his ex-girlfriend that I felt inferior to already. I know all this sounds petty and high school, but that’s exactly what it was. High school. I went days without eating because I wanted to make myself worth something and this, unfortunately, was the way I went about it. I felt that looks were something I could control. If I had the right clothes, the right haircut, enough make up, and a perfect body, I would finally be happy. Didn’t happen. I became utterly depressed. "When you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them..." (Taylor Swift) This song proved itself to be true in my life at that time. I loved this boy with all my heart, or so I thought. I clung to him. I made him my best friend. And then he dumped me. I felt as though my whole world had collapsed. I threw tantrums, I cried, I didnt eat, and I fell into an even deeper stage of depression.
I went through stages on and off throughout the next couple of years where I would lose a little weight, and then put it back on. Be a little up, and then get a little down. Be in a meaningful relationship with my heavenly Father, and then be totally and completely wrapped up in the world around me. And when I entered in my junior year of high school was when it all went downhill for me. In August of 2009, my mother’s best friend died unexpectedly of heart complications. She was like a second mother to me for nine years and her death hit me harder than I expected. I started having anxiety attacks and became depressed yet again. I entered into, what began, a very dark phase of my life. I still looked up to my big sister and wished I had as many accomplishments as she did. She was extraordinarily talented and beautiful. I also refused to get close to people in fear that they would leave or die, and felt like my looks were the only thing I had going for me. While my sister always got “You’re so talented and smart,” I got, “You’re so pretty!” And while that’s wonderful to hear, it also gets old when no one really tells you that you’re talented, smart, and worthy. I started modeling my junior year and started playing around with the starvation game. On days of my shoots I would not eat a morsel. I would exercise compulsively and HATE my reflection in the mirror. In late August of 2011 I was accepted into a huge state pageant, and that’s when I experimented with self-induced vomiting, and my starvation game became deadly. I tracked every calorie that I consumed and every single one I burned throughout the day. And I wasn’t consuming much. By November I had lost 17. I began exercising even more, weighing multiple times a day, and obsessing over food. I had lost even more by December, and it wasn’t good enough. My thighs were still too fat, and my stomach was still not flat enough.
My values went straight out the window. I didn’t care what I did anymore and had no emotion. I was stone cold and by February, at a dangerously low weight. This was when I couldn’t stand up without blacking out. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without weighing myself afterwards (and restricting depending on the number). I couldn’t look in the mirror without finding something wrong. I couldn’t eat without feeling guilty and I was living on about 500 calories a week. My parents finally sat me down and told me that what I was doing was deadly. I didn’t care. All I could think about was food. How was I going to get out meals now? They took me to the doctor, and within a week I was scheduled to go into a program for eating disorders in Birmingham. I had been diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. The week before my entrance into the program was when my values were truly tested. And I failed the test. I hid food, purged, pretended, lied, and cried my way to an even lower weight by the time I entered into the eating disorder program. This, to me, was my biggest accomplishment. Congratulations to me. However, it was STILL not good enough. I wanted to lose just five more pounds.
I started the partial hospitalization program and was threatened with a residential program within my first week. I was severely underweight for my height and they didn’t think that I could continue in a partial program. That was when I started kicking it into gear. I did what I was asked to do and started gaining the weight they wanted me to gain. I stayed out of residential, miraculously, and nine weeks later I graduated from the program and returned home. To relapse. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to lose weight again. And that’s exactly what I did. I lost seven pounds within two weeks. The things I did with food were deadly. I experimented with bingeing and purging for the first time. But I also got to the point where I would purge anything and everything because I had an unwanted appetite. I was then admitted into the program once again. However, I cheated and manipulated the system. I hid food, poured out my Ensures, purged, did laxatives, exercised, and broke just about every rule in the book just to lose weight. I was terribly depressed on top of that. I wanted to die. I wanted lightning to strike me, a bus to hit me, or someone to shoot me. I didn’t care how, I just wanted to die. I wanted to evaporate. When I was almost admitted into the psychiatric ward by my therapist was when something changed in me and I did a 180. I started working the program and gaining the weight I needed to gain to be healthy and happy. And I did, in fact, start getting happier. I realized that this disease that consumed me wasn’t just about food and body image. It was my escape. I restricted and purged my feelings, not just food. I learned that I starved so I wouldn’t feel anything. It was something I could control when I couldn’t control anything else. I couldn’t control who left me, who died, who liked me, or who hated me. But I could control how I looked and how much I weighed. I thought that would help. I thought being thin would make me more desirable, more talented, and more beautiful.
Today, I’m not recovered…but I’m recovering. That’s enough for now.
