I don’t know what you, as a reader, expect from me. Perhaps a Flawlessly articulated description of your problem or a foolproof solution. In fact, I don’t even know what me doing this means. What am I doing? I mean i stumbled upon an opportunity to share my deepest darkest secret w the world and happily accepted it like it was a noble peace prize. All i do know is how i felt when it all started. When the dark thoughts at the back of my head became unbearable. When the tiny whispers of doubt became insufferable shouts. When my reflection became my worst enemy. I felt an excruciating pain that kept eating at me until i gave into it. And give into it I did. For months. At first it wasn’t too bad. Until simply tiptoeing across the master bedroom floor to use the only scale in the house became something worse. I took it farther. I was Counting every calorie meticulously. Tirelessly measuring my exercise. Sneaking around all the time. Soon, I realized that I wasn’t just tiptoeing on the floor of my house, I was walking the tightrope between life and death. But that didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was the number on the scale. All that mattered was making the monster that stared back at me in the mirror go away. All that mattered was numbing the pain. I took the toxic concoction of voices in my head and unified them into one. Her name was Ana. With that, it was only a matter of spiraling down. Ana was all that mattered to me. 24/7 it was me doing what she said and being punished if I didn’t. The punishment was the return of that ever familiar pain. There was a constant feeling of foreboding in that time of my life. A fear (more of a phobia) that I would turn back into the fat worthless piece of junk I started off as. No, that couldn’t happen. The only option was to make my weight go down. That three digit number became my identity. And when three digits became two digits and I was a thread away from falling off the tightrope I got a wakeup call in the form of the worst week of my life. It plunged me so far down into my disease that I the thread broke just for a moment. I went to go get blood drawn, and suddenly I started to see black. Like an unstoppable wave the black consumed my vision until I felt my head pound on the concrete floor of a parking lot. I didn’t exactly stop after that, but eventually I realized who I’d become. Just a one dimensional number. Nothing more. That’s all I was. All Ana had done for me was bring me misfortune, loneliness, and despair, and all I got in return was a tinier waist? It wasn’t worth it. It just wasn’t. So, I got help. Now I’m fine. I haven’t relapsed in almost a year, and life is definitely so much better. I know some of you reading this have been visited by the same dark thoughts and succumbed to them. Not every situation is binary. There is no guarantee that you’ll get better if you get help, but there is a guarantee if you try to help yourself. No, you don’t have it under control. And no you can’t just stop whenever you want. You have to commit to making it stop and tell those around you so that they can help. It’s all up to you. Don’t say you aren’t capable because I know you are. You’re human and you CAN change if you really want to. So please it’s time to tell Ana to shut the fuck up.
Standforeatingdisorders