HI, my name is Pale. I use he/him pronouns, I am FtM (female to male) transgender. I first started my eating disorder almost 6 years a go. It was the beginning of the 6th grade and I just started to go through puberty. I noticed something in my head said this was wrong. Growing these female parts just didn't feel right, and the only thing I could think of to fix it was to lose weight. I started slowly cutting out junk food and snacks. I did that for a couple of months. I started to grow weak and hungry. I binged and purges for the first time. After I did that for the first time, I thought about self harming. My older sister, a year older, started self harming in 6th grade. So, I decided to do it for the first time because it felt right. When 7th grade came around, my older sister kept going in and out of hospitals for her depression, self harming, and suicidal thinking. My parents would go to visit her every day so for most days my mental health and health where ignored and forgotten. This had allowed me to restrict, purge, and self harm with out being noticed. Close to the end of 7th grade, I was forced to wear short sleeves in gym class. This made everyone see all the way up and down my arms. My self harming. I told everyone it was "because I had a pet porcupine" they knew I was lying. They told my school counselor and I got called down to the office. She wanted to send me to the hospital too but I committed to "safety" and got away with it. I kept on getting away with my restrictions and harmings. The rest of 7th and 8th grade is just a blur to me. I don't remember much because of the restricting and just having really bad depression. When high school came a long, I felt like this would be my chance to start over and have a better life. I met this girl who was my first true love. When I was dating her, I ignored my depression and tried to act fine for her. As we dated for longer and longer, she became slowly more and more abusive to me. She would make me feel bad for having emotions, ignore me when I was having a hard time, manipulation, ect. The day I woke up after my birthday, I read the text that she wanted to break up with me. The day after my birthday and it was because her mom didn't want us to be together. I was heart broken. She manipulated me so much that I could only feel happy with her. I was devastated. I would cry day and night as I begged her to take me back and date in secret. The week after she broke up with me, her friends started cyber bullying. Saying things like "you are worthless" "you should just kill yourself" "faggot". I started to become suicidal. What really pushed me over the edge was I found out she had broken up with me to be with this other girl she kept telling me to not worry about. She told me not to worry about her, she was just a friend. She would never date her. But that is exactly what happened. I felt worthless and gross. That night, I decided that I was going to take my own life. I waited for it to become night time. At around 8 o'clock I pulled out my hoodie string and tried to strangle myself. I kept pulling it tighter tighter but I passed out. I woke up and started crying to my mom telling her what I had done. She didn't get me help, she just put me to bed. The next morning she acted like nothing had happened and sent me to a gun control protest with my sister. The next couple months are a blur to me again because of heavy purging and self harming. in April I decided I wanted to really get down and start losing weight. I started with trying to eat only 1000 calories a day. After a couple months, I started to eat only 500 calories a day. Then I started to not eat at all for days on end. My longest time was 3 weeks without solid food. I dropped down to 77 pounds. My friends where worried and forced me to tell the school about my eating disorder. They put me in an alternative school program to try to control the exercising and skipping class. my mom took me to the doctor and was horrified when I stepped on the scale. I had to go to the doctor almost every day because I almost passed out and my blood work was really unstable. I did that for about 4 weeks and nothing was getting better. So, I went to a pediatric eating disorder doctor. She gave me 3 days to live and admitted me to an eating disorder unit the next day. It was about 45 minutes away from my home. I brought all of my baggy clothing, my special unicorn stuffed animal, and 3 blankets because I was so fucking cold. I met some of my closest friends there. But, it was horrible. I was forced to gain weight. I had to eat 3,000+ calories a day. I was there for about 10 weeks. that was when I finally got to a healthy weight , my insurance company dropped me and stopped paying for the treatment. I was forced to a lower level treatment before I was ready. I started in the PHP program. I hated my new healthy body. I started to self harm again and not eat dinner, breakfast, or evening snack. Because of my self harming, I was moved to another PHP. This PHP program was an hour away and was all types of mental health hospitalization program. I was there for 3 weeks and got discharger early for good behavior. I got moved to IOP and I started self harming and restricting again in secret. I lost a little weight and started to feel really empty inside so I started bingeing. And that is where I am now, I started to try to lose weight after gaining a significant amount of weight and that is where my journal starts.
