Anorexia: It started with teasing

The anorexia began when I was thirteen. I was teased at school for being chubbier and more muscular than my female peers. I was very involved in athletics.

At age thirteen, I became hyper-aware of my appearance in my swimsuit for the swim team, and my leotard for jazz class.

The prospect of puberty and menstruation was daunting to me, because I knew everything would change. I would not be daddy and mommy’s little girl anymore. I would be entering the world with the responsibilities of a woman, not a girl.

When it was time for lunch at school, I would seclude myself or lie to my friends, so I could escape the pressures of eating in front of other people. My plan was successful in that my restrictive eating patterns delayed my period until I was sixteen years old.

By this age, my bouts of anorexia had fluctuated in severity over the years. At sixteen, I began to develop a more healthy relationship with food. As I started to begin to view food in a more functional way, my personal life began to spiral out of control.

At seventeen, I was raped. This difficult occurrence triggered the beginning of my bulimic episodes.

I entered college as a freshman, throwing up about three times a day. I would sneak into the rare single bathrooms at college, to throw up excessive amounts of cookies, cakes, brownies, or ice cream. Comfort food was my weapon of choice in my bulimic episodes.

I am now recovered from my struggle with bulimia and anorexia. I am grateful each day that I have escaped the dark and tumultuous tunnel that my eating disorders represented in my life.

I now have resurfaced into a brighter phase of my life. I have learned that life is a precious gift. I get one body in this lifetime and it is fragile.

It seems, in life, that so many of us do not have the opportunity to have second chances. I have had many close encounters with serious health issues that developed from my eating disorders, and I got a second chance, to live life, in a body, that is healthy and not abused by self-inflicted starvation or vomiting.

I want to live life to the fullest without being inhibited by destructive thoughts about the idea of food.

My goal, is to one day, professionally help young women overcome the adversity of eating disorders and emerge as the young women they can become without the mask of eating disorders.

- Anonymous