another day goes by

it seems like high school is getting exponentially harder. i cant take it. its so hard and no one understands what is really going on inside me. all they see is my face and my body and my expressions. no one understands. my mom keeps getting on my nerves, telling me that i need to exercise more, i keep skipping soccer practice and leaving halfway through the games. she doesn’t understand either. being anorexic and usually somewhere around the 100lb mark makes it hard to play a sport. most people would say that someone as skinny as me would be good just because im not fat but iv destroyed my body. my muscle mass is gone and i if a keep playing its going to become obvious that there’s something wrong with me. i dont want to stop and iv tried several times but every time i get close to getting my period or going somewhere special i back out. i don’t want people to see me fat and not having my period just gives me one less thing to stress about.
at school people try to be nice to me and im sure they’re my friend but deep down i fear that calling them a friend means they know me. i know they dont. i dont think i really have “friends” per say just people who can understand me better than anyone else in the world. but even as much as they understand me they dont realize the depth that i go. i am a Marianas Trench and they’re just standing on the closest sand bar. im changing and becoming deeper as time goes one and even if this extended metaphor doesnt last i know i will, and so will this pain i feel. the depression is all that keeps me from being normal. one of the biggest questions i seem to ask myself lately is whether the depression is what caused the anorexia or whether having the eating disorder caused the depression. sometimes i cant remember that far back. four years. sometimes i see my whole life as clearly as if i had just lived it. right there. in front of my eyes. replaying in my head. taunting me.

Anorexia

Iv been anorexic for about two year now. I know it doesn’t seem like that long buy to me it’s been eternity. I can’t remember the last time I was so carefree about what I ate. It all began one summer in late august. I was visiting family in louisiana. I never meant to become anorexic, it just happened. I had quit swimming that summer after six years of being on the team. I didn’t excercise as much and I ate just the same and I started gaining some weight. I wasn’t fat. I was easily within a normal BMI. Nevertheless, my dad started to tell me I was fat. His way of telling me I shouldn’t have quit swim team. My sister was right there with him. I jokingly told them that they shouldn’t say things like that to a pre-teen with fragile psychological structure that wouldn’t shield her from the dangers of peer pressure. I now only realize that this was most likely a foreshadowing of my disease. I started to secretly diet, restricted a little bit here and there. I told myself I wasn’t going to become one of those freaky anorexics who eat like one grape for their entire week. Too late. I was getting thinner and it made me feel good. I had a better body than my twin sister, who has always been more popular than me. Then our trip to louisiana came. I packed a snack bag for the car, I just had to blend in. Hardly touched it during the eight hour drive. Threw out themccdonalds lunches and dinners claiming that they were gross or not what I ordered. Eating salads instead. Once I was there I would suck on my sisters mints all day, eat a pancake and some millk and a small bowl of gumbo. After maybe a week of this I started getting sick everytime I tried to eat. I wasn’t bulimic and I didn’t know I was anorexic then. I was 12 and I had no idea what was going on. It would run right through me and I was skinny so I didn’t really care. At home I continued this until one day I passed out from dehydration. For the next three or four days I stayed in bead eating nothing but oyster crackers. I felt so weak. Then I came up with all these conclusions. I must have scurvy or something so I started eating pears and oranges. Then I was still weak and it was still making me sick. Then I was sitting in my bed, searching the web from my iPod and I had a revealation. I might be anorexic. At first I thought that it was an obsurd idea and I just kinda laughed at it. My ribs weren’t showing or anything, how can this be anorexia? I thought. It slowly got comfortable in the corner of my mind never leaving me. I thought about it day and night those few days. Everytime my mother came into my roo to check on me I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her so badly. But I didn’t, for many reasons I think. What would my dad say? My twin is going to think I’m done kind of freak and that she’s better than me, the kids at school are going hto label me as weird and an outcast, that girl with the eating disorder. What if they institutionalize me or put me into a hospital and force feed me? I didn’t want those things, so I kept my agonizing secret quite. I didn’t tell a soul.

I haven’t told anyone in my family to this day and I wouldn’t dare. They wouldn’t understand. So that’s my story on anorexia.