Anorexia Kills

I became anorexic when I was 16, and did not stop until my periods ended, and I weighed ninety pounds, which is thin for someone who is 5'7" tall. I never felt so good or free in my life as when I had anorexia, and still long for that feeling again, but I chose life instead.

It started out by me looking in the mirror and seeing a fat woman, me, who was one hundred fifteen pounds at the time. I didn't see what was reality, but I saw a fat, ugly person who needed a diet badly. I remember eating coleslaw before bed, and I was starving, but kept calling myself fatso and telling myself the coleslaw was all I could have. It was a slow start, not eating, but once I got the knack of it, I found I was really good at avoiding the calories. Luckily, my father was always gone on some trip, so I was able to get by with not eating, something that was difficult to do when both my parents were around.

On a regular day, I would consume a raw carrot, and a couple bites of hamburger. Some days I would not consume that much, and eventually I began to lose my appetite completely, which made it much easier to not eat. My father brought home some donuts one morning, and that has always been a weakness of mine, so I took one frosted, cake donut and took a bite out of it. I felt so guilty that I went out and walked five miles to work off the extra calories, and I didn't eat another thing all day. Soon, I was beginning to feel very much in control, and in many cases, anorexia is about power and control. When someone feels they have no power or control over their life, they control the one thing they have the power to regulate, and that is what they eat. Other times it is caused by peer pressure, to be the smallest and most popular girl in school. Mine was about power.

My parents did not seem to notice how thin I had gotten, and I spent all my days denying myself food, thinking about other things, and walking incessantly to work off calories. When my family moved to Colorado Springs, I had missed a period, and the one after that never showed either. I was sixteen, and I looked like a twelve year old boy. Sometimes I had difficulty breathing, but when I lost my periods, I knew I had gone to far. For whatever reason, maybe I am blessed, I did not need a recovery program to get me eating again. Once again, it was a slow process, and filled with a lot of guilt about calories, but I made myself slowly start ingesting food until my periods returned. I weighed one hundred pounds at that point.

Before I was anorexic, I was built round and all my muscles had a bit of curve to them, but once I started to eat again, I noticed the curves were gone and my muscles were straight. Anorexics who take it too far can reach a point of no return, a point where the body begins living off of its own organs, trying to find nutrition wherever it may be. That is when death usually occurs, and I don't know how I got so lucky, but I did.

The feeling that takes place inside you when you are anorexic is amazing, but you don't usually get to that point until you no longer crave food, or get hungry at all. At least that is how it worked for me. I have never felt so free or in control in my entire life, and have had to monitor myself closely as an adult to make sure when I diet I don't spiral back into starvation mode. I think one of the things that makes me not starve myself anymore is that I like myself. I feel good when I have a bowl of cereal in the evening, and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it, but most anorexics can go right back down that road at any time. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone. If you look in the mirror and see a fat woman or man staring back at you, and your instinct is to stop eating, even though others say you are not fat, then go get some help before you start down the same road I did.

Don't be fooled by the euphoric feeling you get when you can totally control your appetite. Any form of inflicting harm on your body, whether it is cutting yourself, anorexia, bulimia, or binge-eating, is a sign of other deep seeded emotional issues that need therapy to resolve. No person should want to inflict harm on themselves for any reason, although in the case of cutting, it relieves guilt and anxiety for the person doing it. In any case, it is a sign of low-self esteem, and feeling as though you deserve to be punished, which nobody does.