So who am I? I’m soon turning 16.There are a lot of things I could say about myself, but this isn’t a personal homepage, about who I am on the outside, this is a page about how I am on the inside and how I’ve become who I am today. Where I’ve been and where I am now.. Here I will introduce my story in a short version. I will not focus on how I ended up with an eating disorder, because this is not a page about how to become sick, it’s about how to become better, how to become real, but I do realize that the years together with the ed is essensial for why I decided to let it go!

I was 13 when the ed really entered into my life, what started with low self-esteem, turned into a little diet, ended up with a deadly obsession.. I didn’t realize then how dangerous the game I was playing was. I didn’t realize it’s was something abnormal. I didn’t realize that it was more than a diet. I didn’t realize what this game would cost me. I just wanted to lose some weight… But after a while this game turned into a lifestyle, or more a way of dealing with life. When things got bad and life got hard I turned to the ed, I numbed my feelings by starvation.. I wanted the perfect body, perfect grades, perfect life, the perfect everything. The only thing I got was a perfect miserable life.. That year was also the year when my parents realized what road I had started walking on. I didn’t know me.. I only knew the voices of the eatin disorder.. The voices of “never good enough” “never thin enough”.. And I felt so alone, so unloved, so unworthy. I guees it was because I never let anyone into my world, I never let them see me, I never let them love me..

The year from 15 to 16 is filled with a lot of sad memories, of hours spent in the bathroom, so many thoughts about food, fantasies about food, the scale, frustration, .. When I look back I have a lot of memories connected to the eating disorder, but there are happy hours also… But they were never as happy as those I’ve had after I let go of the eating d.… Somewhere between these years I came to a realization that what I was doing was not “normal” and it was a dangerous way of living… But I felt very lost at that time, I had no sense of who I was. My identity had somewhere along the road become my ed. I didn’t feel like a unique person anymore, my uniqueness was in the ed.. At least I was something, I was an eating disordered person, and without the ed who was I then? I had no clue and I didn’t dare to find out. It was safer to cling on to the ed, it was my lover, my friend, my everything. At that time I thought I was nothing without the ed.. I thought I couldn’t live without the ed.

One year later I saw that I couldn’t live WITH the ed… The ed was slowly killing me.. When I saw in the mirror my bones was no longer beautiful. I saw death in them. I felt awful too.. Always cold, never sleeping, always feeling guilty, sad, dizzy, afraid, weak etc..
My body was so tired of following me on the road I was walking on.. You couldn’t see the sickness written on me anymore, I didn’t feel so bad, my parents thought I was doing better, so did my doctor, and so did I, my body knew better..

.. Death came knocking at my door when life was going better, my weight was going up, I was eating… Luckily I didn’t answer that call..

I still couldn’t believe that it was possible to live without the ed, but I had seen that it was not possible to live with it either. So I just had to dare to give it a try...

I don’t have the answers to how I recovered, I don’t even know if I am recovered. I still say I am in recovery, walking on the road to real life.. ... One day I just realized that I had to choose life or death.
I chose life... Recovery is not only having good days, but it is handling those bad days in a healthy way. It's knowing that the sun will come up again.
Even though it has cost me a lot of hard work. Even though I gained some weight and have had to throw away some of my trousers. I believe recovery is worth all it costs.
I am finally seeing the sunshine again. I have seen how it's like on the other side. And I am not willing to give up the colors in life, just to so my scale can show me a low number. That's too high a price for too low living. I am not willing to pay that price.. Not anymore. Life is so much more than the numbers on the scale.
Life can be fun!

Gosh, your story reminds me so much of my own one, and- just like you- I'm glad I also chose life and didn't answer when death was knocking at my door.
I wish you all the best on your road towards recovery, and don't give up even though there might be relapses....
Love,
Kismet