PrettyThin

I'd say it was bound to happen, as I have all the makings of the type of girl that one day sits down and decides that she has had it, and wants to finally be perfect. I'm from Russia originally, moved to Canada when I was 12, and my whole family (especially, mainly mom) are very judgmental and looks oriented. It was ingrained in me from a very early age that not being pretty, and especially being fat is just about the worst thing in the world. I fully believe that, and still fear it. I admit. I wouldn't want to live if I wasn't pretty, and no matter how much I hate only ever being seen for my looks, I still couldn't imagine living without it. Even after all this time.

I always ate a lot as a kid, and though I was never fat, I did have chubby cheeks and my tummy always seemed to stick out more than other girls (Russian girls tend to be very skinny). I was a tom boy, and heftily built. It didn't bother me a whole lot at the time, but I still felt "never thin enough". Skip over to when he ED actually began, or else this is going to be a VERY long story.

I was 17, about to enter grade 12, and that summer I had my tonsils removed. I couldn't eat for quiet a while, and then there were complications so the time was prolonged even more. I ate soup and very low calorie things, because I couldn't swallow anymore. After it was over, I realized I lost a heck of a lot of weight, and it was completely effort free. I was already trying to lose weight that summer, but my eating habits weren't working for that no matter how much I worked out. Then there I dropped a bunch of weight, and that's when I decided this had to continue.

Then, the tragedy happened. One that messed up my whole life and still continues to do so. I got into a car accident with my family, got a blow to the head that turned out to result in a brain injury, but I didn't care because I lost even MORE weight from that. It was only a couple of pounds or so, but still it motivated me.

After that, I decided to "recreate" my tonsil sickness diet, which most in the community would just call the anorexia way of eating. But I didn't think of myself that way. I continued losing weight, I felt high, weighed myself every day and marveled at the fact that I saw a pound less every day. I finally saw my hipbones and was smaller than I was in grade 7. I felt AWESOME. The weight loss started to slow, but at that point I was already a twig. Until hunger got the best of me and I binged for the very first time. It was all healthy foods, but a lot of it, and I just couldn't have my dream ruined. So I started throwing up. That was when I started seeing that I actually had a problem, and the solution in my eyes was to get back to starving.

I was starting therapy around that time, for something unrelated at first, but they quickly transferred me to the eating disorders treatment because that as they said "was the most immediate concern".

That was how I met the woman that changed my whole outlook in everything, and helped undo a lot of my family's conditioning. (I was in treatment with her for 2 years, before I turned 19 and could no longer attempt the youth services.) She taught me a lesson that only recently truly stuck with me, that being healthy does not mean being fat. I listened to her because she had an ED herself when she was younger, for 10 years in fact, and she looked like a Barbie. In my mind, if a beautiful skinny women was telling me I could be healthy and still be thin, she must know something. Everyone else I thought were just disgusting plain people who wanted me to join them in being ordinary. I wasn't having any of that, I wanted to be an actress. In grade 12, I started feeling the effects of the car accident and grow really depressed as well as increasingly involved in my eating disorder. All I cared about, the only thing that brought me any joy or meaning to my life was working out and keeping tabs on my food intake. It was a constant battle of binge/eat too much, then starve/work out/make up for it any way I could. I had a best friend at the time and we were anorexia buddies, a very toxic friendship that eventually ended.

I've gone through it all, I gained and lost weight 100 times, each time believing that it will bring me that amazing life I've always wanted. I decided to major in psychology, because aside from an ED I've suffered and still do suffer from intense depression, anxiety, social phobia, and a million other things.

I've gone through guys like underwear to try and feel loved. I tried my luck at a singing career, but the stress overtook me. I don't want any of those things anymore, but the truth is I still want the thin. I'm not a recovery story yet, but I'm much better than what I started out to be.