Starving For Help

Chapter Twenty

   People who have never suffered from an eating disorder have this idea of what it is. They say it's a choice. We chose to suffer every day of our lives in pain, while trying to battle a demon that we aren't even sure we want to battle. What those people need to understand is the reality of just what an eating disorder is and how it affects every part of you, both mentally and physically.
Everyone with an ED has a different story. But their fight with their ED is very similar.
For me, it started out as a desire to be thin. Simple as that. I didn't plan on starving myself for days or vomiting every piece of the little amount of food I would intake. I just wanted to lose a few pounds. I set a goal for myself. When I finally reached it, I was so proud of myself. Then I looked in the mirror. I stared long and hard at every inch of skin covering my body. Suddenly, I felt like I hadn't lost any weight. I didn't look any thinner. At least that's what I thought. That's when it took a turn for the worst.

   Life was stressful for me at that point and I had no way of coping. I felt like I was losing control of every thing and I felt worthless. Those feelings turned in to rage. Rage turned in to determination. Determination spiraled in to danger. I never thought I had a problem. Ironically, that was my biggest problem. The deeper I fell in to Ana's trap, the more I craved the feeling of power that it gave me. I finally had something that I could control and no one could take away from me. I finally started to feel worthy, like I belonged. Little did I know, that feeling only lasts about a week or so.

   The longer I starved my body completely of all food and liquid, the more my body tried to fight back. It started trying to get calories from every organ it could, including my brain. My mind became so distorted from starvation and dehydration. I started seeing myself getting fatter and fatter every day, even when the scale told me I had lost 3 more pounds since yesterday. I became so irritable and paranoid. Reality no longer existed for me. My head was going crazy. The smaller I got, the more I needed it. Even when I had gotten 20 pounds lower than my original goal weight, I still had this image in my mind of what my body looked like. I hated it! I started to feel like I was failing again. I couldn't even get skinny enough to be happy. I knew that what I was feeling wasn't normal.

   Every time I passed a person on the street, I automatically assumed they were judging me. They couldn't possibly be thinking about anything other than my huge thighs and giant arms. I started comparing myself to other people constantly. Wearing baggy sweatshirts to cover the body that I was supposed to want to show now. No matter how thin I got, or what number appeared on the scale, I refused to believe it because I wasn't capable of seeing it. My hair began to fall out in thin globs. I could no longer stand for more than a few minutes without getting dizzy. I was always in pain. But I needed Ana. I needed to hold on to the one thing that I no longer knew how to live without. My ED played so many tricks on my mind. My brain became so starved that I would find myself struggling to get the right words out just to make a sentence. My organs were getting just as weak as my body started to feel. But my ED told me I was fine. My ED forced me to believe that I would never survive without it now. Every time I attempted to break free, I became so overwhelmed. So full of guilt. I would hate myself in to a state of panic until I stuck my finger down my throat and gave my ED what it needed. 

   After 2 years of suffering in silence, living with this pain day in and day out. I finally got hit with reality. Reality that I was killing myself and if I didn't get help soon, my family would be burying my body because of my desperation to perfect it.