Background
By: Ale Adreta
Tags: Mental Illness, Background, Eating Disorders, Mental Health, Eating Disorder Recovery

As a High School student living in a small town, my life was fairly routine and boring surrounded by the same people daily. I had always been extremely confident in my physical appearance as a product of my family’s seemingly endless compliments. Around eighth grade, my body image became outstandingly more apparent, as they seem to do at that age. Although I was more conscious of my body and how others were perceived it, I was still fairly confident in my attractiveness. It wasn’t until the end of my freshman year of high school when I started to point out apparent issues with my body that I thought needed to be fixed.

I had previously gone through a break up that I prided as healthy and clean (although I come to find out that was not the case), and I was beginning to become even more confident with my body, athleticism, and academic ability. Come sophomore year I had begun talking to someone who seemed to only be able to compliment me based on my physical appearance rather than my personality. Unfortunately, these red flags ran subliminal to me and I unknowingly became fixated on my body and all of its “flaws”. My immediate response to my credence of unworthiness was to turn to social media platforms to search out all of the weight loss miracles. After looking at fit moguls and “healthy” dieters for about two weeks I began doing more and more adding and label reading in order to track my food.

My original excuse for tracking my intake and excessively exercising was to prevent myself from over-eating. I now know that was my way of justifying what I was doing because I knew deep down that if I told my parents I wanted to lose weight they would make me stop. After a few weeks of tracking how much I ate, my daily caloric intake began to drop. Drop significantly. In an effort to change the shape of my body I deprived my body of over half of its minimum nutritional requirement. I lost so much weight so fast that my own head felt too heavy for my body. I was depleted of any energy both physically and mentally. My brain was exhausted from constantly fighting a war with itself whether or not to eat to survive or to achieve my “body goals”. Between my body and mind barely even functioning and my ever high pile of burdens, I developed a depression that sucked the last bit of energy I had.

The next couple of months dragged on until I was confronted by my parents and their demand for me to see my doctor. To save me and you, the reader, from the long, sad, and draining time in between me visiting my doctor and eventually getting serious help, I will skip right to the moment where I chose to live.

After the first appointment with my counselor, Colleen (fake name for the sake of confidentiality) I broke into tears because of all of her tasks for me to fulfill. My mother held me for a long time after that meeting. I still can’t begin to imagine the isolation and helplessness she must have felt holding her sobbing child. I felt as though it was going to be impossible to complete even one of Colleen’s assignments. I was then faced with one of the most important decisions of my life. Was I going to never make another appointment and deny all of my problems once again, or was I going to own up to my illness and fight it for the sake of my life. Obviously, I chose the latter given I am here writing this.

My intention in writing this is not to become popular or get an “x” amount of views. It is solely to inform on the effects of an eating disorder from the perspective of a victim and to help those who are lost and confused because of their, or their loved one’s illness.