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Janna
March 27, 2000

I had an ed for seven or eight years. I am twenty now and trying to figure out a world I avoided for a very long time. I dreamt of attention once I got really really thin. And my experiences are probably not so different from other people with anorexia. I wanted to be great and special and admired. Today I look at so many girls starving themselves and think that it isn't so special.

I could write about the years of not eating and hourly running to the bathroom to weigh myself but it isn't as important as where I am now. I am recovering from many years in a completely separate world, a dark world controlled by the eating disorder. It tells you what to eat (actually what NOT to eat) and calls you names and says you are fat. School falls apart-it just happens no matter how hard you try to Do It All. And you get to an unhealthy weight and are threatened with being admitted to the hospital. This may happen, it may not. But nomatter what, nomatter how sick and wasted away you appear, you will never believe you are Sick Enough. The perfect weight does not exist and the longer you live this way, the harder it is to find your way back.

I find myself now without a clue as to what 'normal' is like. I don't remember before the eating disorder, and besides, I was twelve. I am an adult now having missed a crucial part of development. So here is my advice (at least what I did and continue to do):

You get mad at the eating disorder, whichever form it has taken. You have to see that it wants you dead and has no plans to let go until this happens.

Losing more weight will not make you more worthy and will not bring the attention you want. And then you eat. Something little, something safe. And you eat that and you run to the mirror to check if you suddenly look fat. You don't. This happens constantly for awhile. And it is scary and hard but WORTH IT. It's just the beginning. I got to a place where I could look back at the time when I was really out of control and heading for the hospital and remember being angry if I ate an orange, and sucking water off of my toothbrush because I didn't allow myself to drink (correction: the ed didn't let me have water)

I could write so much and perhaps this isn't getting my point across, perhaps you have to be in a place to hear it. I am back at school, working towards a degree, struggling and sometimes slipping backwards but I am living. I know that there will be good days that follow the really really bad ones. And I know that letting the ed take control over me again is a cop-out. I am finding life to be hard but interesting. I take little steps. My family is not perfect, getting sick did not bring them any startling revelations. I don't have a happy ending where I never think about weight and feel so happy and fulfilled with life. That is not realistic. Recovering is the hardest thing I will probably ever do. It is so much better though, than lying in my bed watching the world from afar, being very sad, losing friends. I did it to make a statement. That was one of the reasons anyway. I didn't prove any point, not one worth making. I am now though, proof that you can be completely helpless and controlled by the voice telling you not to eat, and proof that you can fight your way back.

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