My story

I was about twelve when it really started. It was right after I was raped by a man I don’t even know the name of. It was right around the time when Mom went away for a few years and my little brother was born. It was when Dad mentioned that I had a tummy and when Grandpa said I was too “big” to tumble. Grandma helped too, when she told me to eat sweets all the time and then came around ten minutes later telling me to be healthy, watch my figure. I think all of these things helped develop my insanity. However, I was always a bit insane. I remember standing in front of the mirror countless times before age twelve telling my mom that I was fat and I was dieting. I remember I wanted control. All I wanted was control. I couldn’t control who touched me. I couldn’t control where I wanted to live. I couldn’t see my mommy and my grandmother controlled every little aspect of my life. I went from age ten to age sixteen seeing my mom about as much as you see a family member from a different state. I missed her, I hated her, I needed her, but she was too busy getting high. I was out of control. I longed for control.

I’m not sure if you would call it an eating disorder, I would call it more of an obsession. I cut myself often, I did everything I could to control something. I channeled the control to my thoughts, I controlled my own thoughts. All I thought about was food, what I was going to eat, what I wasn’t going to eat. What if I did eat? That’s when purging came into the picture, I think it was after my dad and step-mom got married. She was so perfect, so skinny, and so beautiful. I HATED HER! I remember after the family dinners (where I spent an hour just picking at my food) I would run upstairs into the shower and puke everything I could possibly puke out.

When Mom came back into the picture, I was so happy. She gave me a necklace for my 16^th birthday. It was a locket with my name engraved in the front and “happy sweet sixteen” on the back. I love that necklace. I still wear it every day. I ate when I was with my mom. She had problems too. We would go to Dunkin Donuts and eat an entire dozen in one sitting on top of a carton of ice cream each. I gained weight, a lot of weight. Mom did too. She was 200 pounds. Soon her eating habits became strange, like mine were before she saved me. She barely ate anything; before I knew it Mom was skin and bones. I was jealous. Onset #2?

My senior year was a hard one. I wasn’t eating much at all, or I was eating too much and throwing it up or slitting my wrists for it. In the summer I starved myself. I would go weeks without food only eating when Mom started to notice something was up. I remember one day she told me my toes were blue. I said I was just cold from being in the air, even though we had been outside in 90 degree weather. I went into the hospital a week before I came out to school. It was the second time I had been hospitalized, but the first time I was ever in an adult unit. I went in a dual unit, drugs and mental illness. It was for zanies and other substances I was using. (Also because I tried to kill myself HAHAHA) In the hospital, no one was watching my eating so I didn’t eat the six days I was there. I lost weight, I remember everyone congratulating me on my weight loss when I came home. I was happy.

When I got to college it was easy. I could eat whenever I wanted (never). I starved the first few weeks. I did great up until about a month ago. Lately I’ve been eating like shit. A few days ago I had sex with a guy who called me a fat ass, during sex. This turned on ANA again. So here it goes again. I’m on the never ending roller coaster of binging and fasting. Will I ever get off?