So some of you may be surprised that you are currently reading this now. Let me tell you I never thought I'd tell anyone about this. No one has ever known about this, and I have been able to hide it for a while now. However, its time you know what I've gone through.
You might think that a skinny girl like myself should be prone to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. However, this is not the case. Mental disorders, such as depression, anorexia and others do not care about your outside life. It can take the most able-bodied person and slowly infect itself into the mind. Much like depression, eating disorders do NOT care about you and your life. You could have a largely privileged life and still get depression. It is a serious disorder and not a quirky little personality trait. On to my story.
This started before many of you all knew me: In the horrors of 7th grade. This was a bad year for my life. I was constantly in a state of deep and low depression, and consistently made fun of. However, I had a good outside life, and was naturally skinny. It was a pretty good life for me, at least on the outside. This was the year my Transition of male to female started to become serious. I has buried it under mountains of walls and masks. It was successful, no one even had a clue. However in my spare time, I was consistently suicidal and doing a lot of self harm. This was, admittedly, a short phase. I realized it was getting me nowhere, and stopped. Sadly, however, bulimia wasn't the case. I had high standards for myself that year, and so did my parents. I kept thinking what I was doing wasn't good enough and that I had to try harder and harder. It was like a staircase where the last stair is always two steps ahead and constantly growing, as well as the ball and chain on your foot getting heavier and heavier. It was a very vicious cycle. Eventually, it spread further. It wasn't just what I was doing, it was ME that wasn't good enough. I started to eat less and less, pushed myself to limits My body could NOT handle. Some days I ate less than a bag of chips and a cup of juice. This was not good for my maturing body.
This was already bad enough. When you go through this (at the time, it was anorexia), you set rules and limits for yourself that you can't consciously break. And when you do break them, you feel like an utter failure and you delve deeper into self hatred. This went on for months. Eventually, I decided I would eat nothing during the day, eat a bunch at home, and get rid of it. I had developed bulimia.
This was easy to hide at home, as I was constantly sick and coughing, so I would head to the bathroom and start coughing and gag myself. You know what happens from there. My parents nor my sister ever found out. I felt awful doing this, and I hated it, but there was this awful voice in my head telling me to keep going with it. "This is what you want! Your ugly, and need to be more attractive!" It kept screaming and screaming. Over and over. I had become frail and low energy. It was common knowledge that I wasn't the most healthy person around school at the time.
Then the worst was to come: High school. A pool of unprocessed thoughts and hate. Where no secrets can be kept, and you are judged for every single act you make. Needless to say, I was NOT looking forward to it. I was still vomiting night after night. My cheeks had become swollen From bile and stress, my grades had plummeted, and I was eating less when I did eat. I felt like I was chained down to the bottom of the ocean, barely swimming above water level, getting breaths between each wave. The problem was, after one wave was finished, and I felt like I had a chance to breath, another wave pushed me down. I was trapped. I felt hopeless. The voices in my head screaming louder and louder and never stopping to take a breath, screaming in my head, eventually drowning out the weak voice telling me to end this suffering I was putting myself through. But for some reason, I stayed around. I don't know why I did, but I still chose to stay. I hid my pain. No one even batted an eye, and no one noticed. I went through Peter Pan, and no one noticed. I had kept myself in this cage for so long that I had perfected my cover up to a tee, and things continued from there. And here we are now. Surprisingly, Im not sure how, but it has mostly died down. I'm still going through rough relapsed, but Im getting better. And thats where I am up till now. Thank you. ~Ell~
