Hello World, Brave Girl Eating here...

So, you found me. You found me in a hole I have buried myself in. This hole is deep and dark and a secret... At least it use to be.

I grew up in a house with a family with friends and with food. Why did I get into this complicated relationship with all of them. I DIDN'T CHOOSE THIS. It chose me.

It snatched me up from the once solid ground I stood on. It turned me upside down and kept shaking and shaking until all the pieces came falling down.

I guess it started when I was 12. I was sitting in homeroom on the first day of the 7th grade, looking around at all these beautiful happy young girls prancing around the room and something inside me clicked. I realized I was different. I didn't look like any of them, I was fat.

I don't know what happened from there. Its hard to explain. At first I sat and ate in self pity until my heart and my stomach were about to burst. Then one day I just quit eating all together. I started by counting calories, never more than 350 a day was acceptable. Then it was carbs, never more than 50 carbs a day was acceptable. Then it was crunches, never less than 500 was acceptable. Limit after limit and rule after rule, and then FINALLY I started to see progress. I dropped 50 pounds between the 7th and 8th grade and I felt better, but I was never truly satisfied.

My weight went up and down between 200-140 pounds at a height of only 5'2. Never able to control my drastic swings from restricting to bingeing. At this point I was pretty much locked away in my room every day after school weighing myself 10 times a day praying the number would drop (literally). I didn't care if I was blacking out, fainting, or having heart palpitations, that number meant the world to me and I would fight myself to the death to get there.

Eventually I became run down, depressed, sick of being so manipulative, I couldn't stand being me. I quit restricting all together and floated my way on up to 300 pounds. How does that happen you may ask... I have no idea.

Two years passed of careless binges and complete ignorance and I ended up in college some how. Maintaing the gargantuous sum of weight, but always keep the past close to the front of my thoughts. I knew it was only a matter of time before the bomb would go off and my world would come crashing down to the feet of my eating disorder.

Summer 2010 came and I started a "lifestyle change" and tried to get my excess weight off and maybe live a normal life. I was wrong. First I was allowed 1500 cal a day, then 1000 cal a day, then 500 cal, then 300 cal, then just water. It worked! I was finally back in my ED mode and I could do this thing all over again. I lost 60 pounds in 2 months, but even a pound a day was not satisfying.

This is were it gets rough. It was a typical day, woke up went to therapy (for OCD), started to drive home and then I suddenly found myself in a Dunkin Doughnuts parking lot. Unfamiliar territory for the past few months. I  walked in, handed the women a 10 dollar bill, and asked her how many doughnuts I could get for that. I took the box home sat on the couch and stared intently into what looked the my arch nemesis. I was right, I closed my eyes and hoped it would happen quickly and I wouldn't feel any pain, but I was so wrong. The sugary sweets bore a hole in my stomach and my eyes teared up as I kept making the motions of lifting my hand to my mouth. By the time I opened my eyes to look at the damage I'd caused, I knew I had to do something about this. I bolted for the bathroom door and crouched down as quickly as I could once I had arrived at my destination. You might know what happens from here...

The pattern became a never ending circle, restrict, binge, purge. I realized there was no way I could continue on with College, and I decided to take the semester off. I got the guts to tell my therapist, my family, and my best friend what was going on, but what could they do? What could I even do?

I went to a residential program for 3 weeks, I learned to accept that I have an eating disorder. In my case Bulimia Nervosa because I binge/purge/restrict, and I no longer get my period. This was helpful to get me stable for awhile but it was not enough to fix me up.

I made it through the holidays (barely) purging my guts out and hiding like a mouse, extremely paranoid that everyone knew exactly what was up, my secret was no longer burning inside me like I wanted it to. I lied to EVERYONE including myself saying I'm fine, can't believe I am feeling better, etc.

Now I am here. Where is that? I'm not entirely sure. I told  my therapist today that I wasn't being completely honest always avoiding the topic of my ED in therapy being all smiles about life. I feel like I trapped in my body and my mind. I just want to be rail thin and I will be happy, but will I ever be satisfied? I don't know. All I know is my past and that I wanna be back to restricting, NO bingeing and no purging. Nothing else matters.

As Kate Moss once said:


NOTHING TASTES AS GOOD AS SKINNY FEELS.