PrettyThin

First of all I want to say that I left the names, places, and details out of this story for the most part, and I did that because I've only ever told three people about my ED and don't want people to read this later, maybe someday when I'm famous or whatever and know all the personal details of those years. Here goes...


    When I was 14 I decided that I needed to go on a diet. I stopped eating sweets and fried stuff, basically anything really unhealthy. This failed to produce any weight loss and I became more determined to lose weight. Why? Well one, if you look at pictures of me at 11 I was chubby and when I was 14 I still saw myself as chubby, even fat, even though I was 5'5 and a half inches tall I weighed 115 which is a perfectly healthy weight. Also, now that I was a high school student I really felt like I needed to be normal, to fit in. The fact that I was home-schooled and had been since 1st grade didn't help me feel like I was normal or fit in, I felt like a fat, nerdy, freak. Some home-schoolers have a normal social life but I didn't. I quit swim team which was about my only social activity besides art classes and church. Needless to say I didn't have a lot of friends and the ones I did have were church kids or other  home-schooled kids. I wanted a normal
 life so badly. The other reason was that I had been taking Zoloft for my anxiety disorder and quit taking it cold turkey. This was bad because 1.) the anxiety came back and 2.) Zoloft is an antidepressant and not taking it made me very depressed. Depression runs in the family so I might have gotten depressed anyways but not taking the meds really didn't help.

  I started eating smaller meals. Then lower calorie smaller meals. They just kept getting smaller. I could tell you the calorie count of almost anything and found creative ways to eat less calories. My best one? A stomach ache. I would develop a sharp pain in my stomach randomly sometimes but usually around lunch or dinner. Sometimes it was real and sometimes it wasn't. Nobody could tell the difference, I was good at lying. The real one felt like acid or a gunshot wound. The fake one distracted people and just like the real one it kept me from eating. I also had an acid reflux problem, again real and made up. It kept me from eating things with acid. I would also hide food in napkins, throw it away, say it was to spicy, or claim I already ate some of it. I loved to cook. I liked making cookies because I could see them and smell them but not eat them. When they were done I would say I ate a bunch of cookie dough when asked why I wasn't eating the cookies.

 My parents were worried and decided to take me to the doctor. I prepared my self by putting on a sweater and memorizing the food pyramid so that when they asked how much I ate I could have a normal answer. When we got there we discussed my "stomach pain" and the doctor determined I had acid reflux, gave me some pills for that, and ordered blood tests to look for other problems. My mom told the doctor that she thought I might be depressed and anorexic, so she asked me how I felt about my weight. I smiled and said something to the effect of "it's pretty good". She asked me if I felt hopeful about the future or not. I said "hopeful I guess".  She also commented that my weight had dropped and went to talk to my mom. She came back and said "good news! Your not anorexic or depressed!". I smiled and said something nice (don't remember what) and was glad she hadn't figured out my secret.

 I also had to get an X-ray.  I looked at the picture of my guts up on the screen. The X-ray lady commented that there wasn't much there. Well duh, If you don't eat much and abuse laxatives there's not going to be much there. I was abusing laxatives but the really weird thing is I'm not sure it was on purpose most of the time. My brain was pretty screwed up and I really thought I needed them. I would panic if there weren't any around. The next doctors visit was even better. Again, the doctor asked me if I was trying to lose weight. I said no. He asked me what my favorite food was. I said apple pie. I failed to mention that I don't eat pie because it's high fat and has lots of calories. His comment was "that's not that bad". "What's that supposed to mean?" I thought. I was wearing a sweater to this appointment too. He talked to my mom for a while and when he called me back into the room he addressed me as princess. I was not amused. He felt my stomach, I
 said it hurt. He ordered an upper GI and a colonoscopy. What!?! He had better be kidding. How was I going to get out of this? I tried to talk my way out of it but they insisted.

  I had been told that sometimes people talk in there sleep during procedures like this and I was afraid I would say something about calories, anorexia, or losing weight in my sleep because I was always thinking about that kind of stuff. If I did what would happen? I was laying in the hospital bed and the nurse walked in and said she'd grab a heated blanket. I must have looked cold. They put one of those oxygen things on my finger. They were nice enough to leave my nail polish on, I liked it because it covered the blue on my finger nails. They weighed me, 102, I'd lost 13 pounds! They put an IV in my arm. They gave up a liquid sedative. I was talking to my mom, then I was slurring my words, and then I fell asleep. Next thing I remember was pain in my stomach and seeing white worms on a TV. Oh wait those were my guts up on the screen. They said they hadn't found anything wrong. I wasn't surprised. Later I wanted to know what would happen next. My mom
 explained there was nothing else they could do short of exploratory surgery, which of course they didn't do.

 For my birthday my grandparents gave me one of those singing cards. I read it, listened to it,  and smiled : ) Then I cried because I realized I couldn't remember the last time I smiled : ( I still have that card and the song has been my ED song ever since.

  Later I went with a group of home-schooled kids and my mom on a field trip. About an hour and a half after we left I got dizzy. My head felt weird and everything went fuzzy. I said "mom!" and I could feel myself falling. The only reason I didn't hit the floor was that there was a desk right next to me. My mom freaked out and a nurse came. They sat me in a chair and my mom told me to lay on the floor. I wouldn't, I had already embarrassed myself enough fainting in front of all those people. Later they took me out to the car and made me eat fig newtons, which just made me mad.

  Later our whole family went on a camping trip. My grandma packed lots of food. I would wake up around the same time as everybody else but stay in my sleeping bag and not get up until breakfast was over. I said I was tired. We went hiking and even the short hikes made me tired and hungry. Lunch was sack lunches, great for hiding leftovers in the bag and throwing them away later. At dinner I would make some excuse and eat a few bites. I remember hiding chunks of beef from my stew in a napkin and throwing them away. We went to a restaurant on the way back and I just got a diet coke because I had a "stomach ache". My grandpa is also a doctor and he was trying to be helpful by asking some awkward questions about the state of my digestion system. I didn't answer and just glared at him. My grandma offered me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I was mad. Why on earth would she do that? I remember lying in the tent thinking that I didn't really feel
 depressed anymore, I felt numb. I went to the camp ground bathroom and washed my hands with the only water they had that was ice cold. Now my hands were numb too. I was mad all the time. Why did we have to go to their little museum? This is so freaking boring! Why can't I have a fun life?

  I also remember one day my mom asked me to set the table. I walked out on to the porch, saw the grill and cried. Not because of the grill or setting the table, I was just that depressed. I thought about death sometimes, and how a distant relative had shot her self. One day I walked slowly downstairs. I thought about the hunting rifles my dad kept there. I thought "no don't take another step!" but then I took one very deliberate step towards the guns. Then I turned towards the bathroom mirror. I said "no, No, NO, NO!, NO!!" to my reflection. Later I realized that my dad wouldn't keep the rifles in the house if they were loaded anyways. I guess around this time is when I hit rock bottom. I knew I was hurting my self by not eating enough, it was pretty obvious.


PART TWO, how I got better (sorta).


  My mom had also told me something to the effect of "if you don't gain some weight you'll be flat chested forever" and I didn't want that. I also knew I was good at lying and that if I didn't stop this I might do a lot more damage to my health before they figured this out, like serious damage. So I ate more and slowly gained a little weight. My size 0 jeans didn't fit anymore so I had to buy 1's and then 3's. I gained most of the weight back in a few months. People made comments about this, which made me mad but I guess it means I looked healthier. My Aunt came up for a visit and said I look healthier then the last time she saw me. People no longer called me "skinny thing" and pushed me to eat every little thing in sight. They said I was pretty, and that it was good I had gained some weight. Weight related comments still irritate me, but I know everyone meant these things in a nice way.


  The other things I should add to this story came years later. I would go on and off on diets for all the years to come. I'm planning a water fast as I write this. I found out that my sister was bulimic for about a year via a friend, and yelled at her for telling me this because she had no right to share that kind of personal secret about my sister. I also found out that several people I know, including my sister, used to cut. A while after finding out about my sister's bulimia I started purging too. I purged in an airplane, my room, and even an ice cream shop in Italy. I stopped this on my own and never told anyone.


There is so much more I could write about this, but of course that would take forever and most people would get bored reading it. If there's anything anyone really wants to know feel free to ask. Other then that, here it's is.