“I am not my anorexia”

I try to forget the years when I was 5’7” and 90 pounds. I try to erase all those angry and depressed thoughts that filled my head. It hurts me to think about how I would spend every day of summer 2009 crying. My anger and hatred for myself pushed away the people I truly loved. I try to forget the weight-in’s where I would chug gallons of water and put coins in my jean pockets to make me heavier. Every night as I’d lie in my bed listening to my heart pound, I thought I was going to die. I try to forget how scared I was about what would happen to me. I try to forget how I was destroying my body with one doctor visit at a time. I try to erase those panic attacks that I would have about food and socializing with others. My Friday nights would be spent in my bed crying myself to sleep. This is the past I tried to forget until now.

Over my years struggling with my eating disorder I tried to push my past behind me. It was like I almost forgot it happened. I would bottle away my emotions into a jar and never release them until they would burst. The fake smiles always fooled people but inside I felt ugly, fat, huge, and angry. All I wanted was my life to go back to normal, the way I was before this vicious monster of a disease started controlling my life.

When starting college, I promised myself that no one would know my past. I erased every trace of my eating disorder. I deleted photos on Facebook of me weighting 90 pounds. I pushed some of my best friends away from me. I was trying so hard to come off as a normal person in college because I was afraid of the judgments.

Until just recently I have embraced my past.

Honestly, WHO CARES what you were like in middle and high school?

This is me and accept it or not, I am not going to change myself. The past has made me who I am. Without my eating disorder, I would not be as determined, strong, and confident as I am now. My eating disorder was by far the biggest obstacle that I have overcome. Now nothing is too big for me to conquer. I realized that my true friends do not care about my past but they accept me for just me. My past has shaped who I am today and I love myself for who I am and where I have come from.