My Eating Disorders Destroyed Me

I’m a 16, girl, and this is my 5-year journey.

6th Grade-

I’ve grown up as a fat, obese child: in 6th grade, I began skipping meals to lose weight and it worked, but it wasn’t noticeable. It was overlooked as me just growing and slimming out, but I was still overweight at this time. Mental Health- This was my first year in public school. Before, I went to a private school: I was so happy there. In my new school, I began the year with 0 friends, no confidence, and was really shy. I was desperate for any friends and joined a toxic group of girls. I was lonely most of the time.

7th Grade-

Towards the middle and end of the school year, I really was losing weight. I taught myself to eat better and to exercise. The scale kept moving down, but I became obsessed with the numbers.  Eat healthily! Don’t Forget to exercise! You’ll have friends if you’re skinny! That boy will finally like you if you’re thin! Stay Hungry, that’s good! Beauty is hunger! Don’t eat that, it will make you fat! You’re worthless!… Those thoughts ran my mind. I ended the year with a healthy weight. I was healthy skinny, but my new size didn’t stop me. I still thought I was fat, but I wasn’t! It was all in my head! My dad would make fun of me being an anorexic. He was joking, but I hated it. I didn’t consider myself an anorexic. I convinced myself I was doing everything healthily, but obviously, I wasn’t. Hunger became my best friend. I was starving myself to lose weight. Over the summer I kept up with my over-the-top strict diet and exercise. I was skinny now, size 0 shorts too big on me. My family became concerned with me. I even reached underweight and still, I thought myself to be…fat. At one point I almost blacked out from being so unnourished. I would lie to my family about how much I weighed because I thought they would force me to gain weight. Mental Health- I still felt lonely at times. My anorexia gave me worry and anxiety. Depression was forming. I thought I would be happier being skinny, but in reality, I was worse than before. I was sadder, only had a handful of “okay” friends, and felt tired, I had no energy most of the time from not eating enough. My mental health, happiness, gradually deplenished.

8th Grade

I started Skinny, but during this year my baby sister was born. All of a sudden, the time criticizing my health went to caring for my new sister. I stopped exercising and began eating normally again. Then up went my weight, but not my happiness. My body was starved for so long so when I finally ate normally it hung to whatever and I gained weight really quick. At the end of the year, I basically gained everything I lost, but since I grew taller I looked normal. I was at a healthy weight. Mental Health- I was drowning in depression. My weight gain made me more sad, insecure. This year is when I felt the most lonely. I had no close friends. I had no one to talk to about what was happening, no support. I had suicidal thoughts because I thought I didn’t deserve to live. I thought my family would be better off without me. Every time my parents would get mad at me I would hide in my room and search up how to kill myself. I knew what would pop up each time it’s just a routine I developed. One time I made a video of me crying and talking about how I was so lonely in school, but I deleted it. In school, my resting face was sad because that’s what I felt after every emotion I had.

9th Grade-

You see, I technically had no eating disorders when I began 9th Grade, but my view on food was and is terrible. Occasionally I would skip breakfast and sometimes lunch. I would come home starving and formed a binging habit. It didn’t stop there. At this time my parents were traveling a lot for business reasons for 2-4 weeks at a time, leaving my siblings and me for my grandparents to care for. I hated it. I’m not the type to get mad, but they irritate me greatly. In October my parents were out again, my grandparents were here, I was completely skipping breakfast and lunch every day at school now, and would sneak buy a big bag of chips to fill me. I was breaking internally. One day after school I was home, alone, and ate a lot of junk food. I immediately regretted it afterward. I never have thought to do this, but I had the idea to throw it up, make myself purge. I grabbed this orange bucket we had and sat in the middle of our cold tile floor in my home. I was scared. I didn’t know what to expect. I was second-guessing myself, but I did it, slowly When I finished I cleaned up and sat down, crying, holding myself. An attempt to try and make myself feel better about what I had done. I began purging more after this incident. After all, I thought I was controlling something because I couldn’t control my grandparents coming, so I made this my cope. Which wasn’t coping and actually was me losing more control. I felt so broken. Tired of surviving and wanting to live. It started very slowly. I would purge maybe once every week or so, but then I did it more often. It swept me up. I began doing it every day. My routine, starve at school, eat at home, and purge. Sometimes more than once a day. Once, I did it at school. Mental Health– I became a school cheerleader and would call myself the “depressed cheerleader”. My friend’s situation got better this year and weirdly, my depression was a little less than the year before, but my suicidal thoughts worsened. I began writing my suicidal attempts on paper. Breaking, chipping, was my will to live. In February, I finally snapped. One Saturday I was grounded to stay home and clean while my family was out. Once they left, I was determined to kill myself. I thought car exhaust, easy and painless. So I turned on the car in the garage and sat there for a few minutes, but it wasn’t fast enough. Throughout a few hours, I would return to the garage and sit there for a few minutes and leave. It wasn’t working! I then found a sharp blade in the kitchen. I was going to slit my wrists. I first searched it up because I didn’t want to make a mistake. You cut horizontally. So, there I kneeled. On the brown wood floor, blade in hand, hesitant, but ready, letting tears trickle as they pleased. I grazed the blade down my arm, only creating scratches, tiny drops of blood-forming. Fear ran through me. I was delaying to cut deeper. I wanted to get used to the pain first. 10 scratches later, I finally spoke, repeated, through tears, out loud. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” I couldn’t stop myself confessing the truth. I wasn’t ready for death to take me at 14. I let myself cry until I couldn’t. I cleaned myself up as with the house and acted like everything was normal when my family arrived. I told them I fell and hurt my arm if they saw the scratches. This was the worst day of my life. It’s the most terrifying feeling I never want anyone to possess, wanting to kill yourself. In the summer, in May, one night, my older sister caught the sounds of my purge. Forcing me to confess my eating disorder. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I needed to release it. I told her everything about my past and present eating disorders. When all was said I debated on confessing with my suicidal attempt. I knew I needed to. She kept saying something about telling her everything or telling her the worst of it and in my mind I was like… no it’s not. The worst hasn’t been said. So, I broke. Suicidal thoughts, my attempt flowed out of me, roared, like a waterfall. More tears, an unending stream kept pushing through. I finally released the beast to someone. She tried her best to comfort me. Saying how I was so valuable, important to this family, unreplaceable. We cried for what felt like too long. My sister even told me how she battled with Bulimia as well when she was my age and told me I should tell our parents about this. I reluctantly agreed. The next night started. My sister first told our parents her past bulimic experience and then it was my turn. I did it. I told them! Was I relieved, a weight lifted off my shoulders… no. I felt no difference, but the second hardest thing in my life was confessing my issues with them. I wanted to talk to a therapist to help me, but I never discussed it with my parents.

10th Grade-

I had a full-on binging eating disorder and Bulimia Nervosa. I couldn’t stop myself, I felt compelled to eat everything and purge it. I made food my happy time. I felt so lonely for too long and needed time to be happy. Which is what I found in food. I knew it would be a little burst of happiness every time I binged, but to not gain weight from it I would purge it. You see. A toxic cycle. Food gave me my absent enjoyment in life. Late at night, I would trudge to the kitchen, which was conveniently right outside my bedroom, and take whatever I could to redo my cycle, binge-purge, binge-purge. I give in almost every time to my bulimia, but I’m tired of it! I don’t want it anymore! I never did want it. I wish I never initiated the beginning the year before, from my relationship I formed with food, I let it almost kill me! I let it drag me down to the darkest depths of myself. I hate myself for it. Mental Health- My depression is better now. My suicidal problems are little to none, but I still get so lonely. I’m terrible at making friends. I just don’t know how to anymore. I don’t have any close friends, where it’s just natural to tell everything to.

It’s summer now. I still have these disorders, but I’m getting better. I’m starting a weight loss program in the next couple of days to help me sort myself out. Just to be clear my last 5 years weren’t 100% bad just 60-75%. I had good times which were rare, but I let my demons claw through to the surface. I’ve thought about this for many hours, my wrongs and rights. I only wanted to share how much I hate this teenage stage. How I will not miss high school. How I’ve been learning and will grow from this awful not yet ending experience. I’m learning how to become ok.

I could definitely go into more detail if needed.