anorexia – Jennifer Thomson

April 27, 2020April 29, 2020

Panic.

In an effort not to panic about Covid-19 and social distancing, I panicked.

And while I didn’t overstock on toilet paper (although, as someone who admittedly goes through a lot of toilet paper, I was tempted), I made sure my fridge, freezer, and pantry were fully stocked just in case I wouldn’t be able to get back to the grocery store anytime soon. Which, in theory, doesn’t seem like a bad idea…

Unless you have a history with an eating disorder.

Even though I’m the type of person who would rather stay home in sweatpants than stress over getting my makeup just right and putting on tight jeans, I still like having the option of leaving my home and spending my time elsewhere if I want to. Sometimes I like working from bar tops while I people watch or in the airport lounge before a flight or even in the office just because I need human interaction with cool people. And sometimes, I just want to get out of the house and wander the aisles at the bookstore, or my favourite clothing store, or catch up with friends over a cocktail.

But there’s a difference between choosing to stay home and being forced into the confinements of your home.

Before, I was busy enough with work that I’d eat while also simultaneously responding to emails or only be able to step away from my computer long enough to put together a meal before feeling the pull back to my inbox. Before, there was motivation to get work done immediately so I didn’t have to work a second longer than my 8 hour commitment, and I could rush off to run errands or meet up with friends for drinks and possibly a better dinner than I could ever cook myself. Life wasn’t this repetitive routine of waking up and wondering if I should choose the couch, the kitchen counter, or even the bed as my workspace that day. There was a greater sense of purpose, a sense of urgency, distractions.

But now? There’s nothing but space for a eating disorder to flourish.

The worst and best place for an eating disorder is isolation.

It’s when I’m all alone that my eating disorder finds it’s strength, because there’s no judgement from anyone else to put a stop to it’s ravenous destruction in times of discomfort. No one’s going to see me shoveling an entire bag of chips, followed by half a bag of jelly beans and a bowl of ice cream into my mouth with an uncertain and slightly concerned “ummm… maybe that’s enough?” look. I only have to face my own shame when I immediately feel bloated and ill afterwards, which is easily fixed by sleeping it off and pretending that what just happened, didn’t. And when I get so desperate that I want to purge it from my system, no one has to witness it – and well, that means that it pretty much didn’t even happen.

All the times my eating disorder has peaked, it’s been when I was all alone with nowhere to turn for comfort, except my kitchen. I was living in cities where I had no close friends or family and the only thing that brought me a moment of familiar joy in moments of stress was eating the things I loved. Everything, from handfuls of sugared gummy candies, to handfuls of ripple chips, to multiple servings of my favourite meals – even though I was already close to full. And right now – even though I do live in a city with close friends, chosen family, and my partner – it’s not much different. We’re not allowed to be close to the people who bring real happiness to our hearts, and my partner’s been sent out of town for work most of the week. All the while, the world seems to be falling apart and we’re losing our sense of freedom and our jobs and we’re worried about what the future holds, and there’s really nowhere to go to release that stress, except to walk around the block for the umpteenth time while waiting two more weeks for an opening in my therapist’s schedule.

And so, I head to the kitchen.

Food has been a source of comfort for me since I was a kid.

Almost every day when my mom would arrive home from work, I’d run down the stairs to greet her knowing she’d likely have a ‘treat’ of some sort to offer me that she’d picked up on the way. When I visited homes of extended families, it meant that there’d be available junk food that we didn’t keep in our own home or eating out at restaurants we normally wouldn’t go to. My ‘Lola’ – my sweet Filipino grandmother – was famous for serving up rich, traditional soul food and the occasions where our massive extended family would gather around were something to look forward to. Plus, there were always guaranteed leftovers to take home and enjoy when the celebrations were over.

I associated eating with good experiences, mostly. And now when life feels hard, I default to food to bring back those distant moments of innocent happiness; to being a kid again who looked forward to another bowl of Froot Loops and only really worried about “what are we going to have for lunch / snack / dinner today?“.

I’m no longer a kid, but I still find solace in eating food that tastes good, when everything else doesn’t feel good. And nothing feels good right now, so I’m eating… more than usual.

And that’s just the beginning of my problems.

What’s a girl, who didn’t love her body for a majority of her life and did everything possible – from waist shrinking corsets to spending 8 hours a day just sucking in her stomach to crash diets to juice diets to working-out twice a day to restrictive diets to bingeing and purging for years – just to love herself even a little bit, supposed to do when life feels unusual and stressful and the rest of the world (and the voice inside her head) is still screaming “but you can’t let this take you down! you’ve got to survive, thrive, and come out untouched!”??

I don’t know the actual answer to that question, but I can tell you what I have done.

PANIC.

It wasn’t that long ago that I actually started to enjoy food again. It didn’t scare me as much; I didn’t worry excessively about what would happen if I ate a little more of something delicious because… well that’s what you should do when something is fucking delicious. I looked forward to going out for dinners, I even started teaching myself to cook new recipes. Actually, my favourite part about getting drunk was the fact that I would likely find a way to devour an excessive amount of salty carbohydrates (possibly covered or paired with cheese) in the process! I barely recognized myself, but I liked it. Life was so much easier not hating myself for indulging every once in awhile and eating food for goodness – and not just because it was good for me in terms of fueling my body and keeping me alive.

And then, the pandemic exploded. All of the sudden, the gyms are closed and I can no longer take 2 hours of my morning to myself to drown all my stresses (food related or not) in sweat and the good feels that come with tough challenges and body movements. On top of that, I really have nowhere to go and I’m moving less. I sleep in. I stay up longer and sit on the couch and binge-watch TV shows or binge-read books. I take naps, even though I slept in.

I’m burning less energy, and yet – I’m putting more calories into my mouth out of boredom, because of stress, for no other reason than it tastes good and it brings me joy in a time when anything remotely exciting feels out of reach.

And that frightens me.

Because, while I’m not the greatest at math, I do know that if you put more calories into your mouth than you’re burning off throughout the day, those calories stick to your body and are interpreted by a few extra pounds on the scale and a tighter fit inside the clasps of your bra, your jeans, your favourite t-shirts. When I indulge in more sugar, more fat, more simple carbohydrates – my face, my stomach, my thighs, my butt – they all expand. And despite them only expanding ever so slightly in a small amount of time, that little monster inside my brain digs out it’s little magnifying glass and convinces me that all those body parts have expanded in monumental amounts from the extra bits of goodness I’ve shoved into my mouth.

“Jen. How did you let this happen?!” – the monster inside my head, and then me to myself after staring and dissecting myself in the mirror.

Food has become scary again. Despite it being a necessary ingredient to my survival, food is my enemy. I am afraid to eat it, to satiate my hunger and give my body energy to function. I am afraid to enjoy it, to allow myself to find delight and comfort within it.

I need to eat, but I don’t want to out of fear. And my home is overloaded with food because of a pandemic, and I cannot escape it. The two experiences cause me stress, and food is one of the ways I cope with my stress.

Do you follow the unbearable cycle?

—

I wish this story had some uplifting, happy ending that would maybe inspire you. It’s still in progress, and I don’t yet have the ability to predict the future. Who knows, it might not end well!

What I can tell you is that not every day is a nightmare of me staring at myself in the mirror with sad eyes. Also, I don’t fight myself every day on eating chips for a meal or having ice cream for dessert. But there a lot more days than there used to be of worrying about those kinds of things, and it’s incredibly annoying. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed – especially with everything else going on.

To relapse after finding safety and freedom, to fall prey to demons that dwell from the darkest corners of my soul in a time of vulnerability and anxiety, to feel like I’m being pulled backwards when I’ve worked so hard to move myself away from the worst moments of my eating disorder is depressing. It sucks and even trying to just find a way to stay on top of it still preemptively exhausting.

The only really slightly solid piece of comfort I find in it all (aside from the taste of my favourite foods) – is that I am not the only one. We’re all feeling burdened in this unexpected turn of events where we’ve lost the ability to throw ourselves into the multiple experiences that can distract us from our deepest fears. For some, those fears include gaining weight or losing muscle. For others, it’s having to indefinitely give up the career they’re so passionate it about or relinquish their position, and possibly their role as a bread-winning caregiver for themselves, their household, their entire extended family even. Parents aren’t just parents anymore; they’re daycare, elementary, and high school teachers too – while possibly still trying to get their own actual work done as well.

So many of us were on our ways to living our best, fulfilled lives – and now, we’re stuck just trying to keep our heads above water and soften the rumblings of the fears we’d been suffocating for so long, as they find their way to the surface where we’re trying to stay afloat. And maybe one of the worst parts: we don’t have an end date. We’re already growing tired, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

So… what the fuck do we do now?

Some days are better than others. On the good days, I float on without a thought of pulling open the snack drawer. Or, I open it without guilt to satisfy whatever the craving of that moment is. Sometimes those manageable days are followed by harder ones, where I hesitate to reach into the cookie jar one. more. time (again) to find the slightest bit of joy amidst my suffering. That’s the way… well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, so they say. Good days, bad days — they all happen completely out of our control. And on some of those days, both good or bad, all I want is a damn chocolate chip cookie. *because, hello. there’s really no substitute for the sweet, familiar childhood flavour of a chocolate chip cookie!

In times like this, it’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other – even if they’re just baby steps.

The process of navigating life through a pandemic is hard enough without extra shame or self-punishment, so I’m trying really fucking hard not to incorporate those into the mix and practice being real with myself.

It’s okay for me to eat. Actually, I have to eat to survive, especially now as I navigate unprecedented times without my familiar distractions, while my worst demons are creeping out from the shadows. Life’s changed, which can only mean other changes are bound to happen – and maybe that means I eat a little more, move a little less, and my body changes.

But the one thing those changes don’t affect are who I am or my value.

Food is not the enemy. My body is not my enemy.

I am my own worst enemy.
We are our own worst enemies.

This world is not trying to ruin you or me; it’s those villains somewhere in our brains telling us that we’re just not enough as we simply try to find our way through an immediately new, completely unexpected ‘normal’. As everything changes and feels way out of our control, the first instinct is to panic and send ourselves into a spiral of absolute self-destruction.

This is me telling myself (and you): Don’t do that. It’s not a good idea.

But, even I know that that’s way easier said, than done.

October 6, 2015January 25, 2017

Let’s Talk: Me and My Issues

I like meeting new people.

When I meet them, I introduce myself as Jen: writer, panda obsessed, jelly bean fanatic, only child, dedicated gym member, lover of love.

I never introduce myself as Jen: woman recovering from her eating disorder.

But that is a part of who I am.

Jen: the Anorexic/Bulimic

I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t self-conscious about how I looked.

I have constantly worried about how my body appears in (and out) of my favourite clothes. I have spent a lot of time, over so many years, criticizing every inch and curve of my skin in every mirror and window and other reflective surfaces that I pass by.

I have told myself that I’m not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not as beautiful as everyone tells me I am.

I have convinced myself that I need to be perfect*

I stressed so hard about how I looked, I made myself very sick.

Jen: Shy, Silent, Scared.

There was a time in my life, just a few years ago, where my eating disorder ruled my life:

Wake up, binge, purge, cry myself to sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

It was an endless cycle I couldn’t find my way out of, and it turned me into a miserable and incredibly depressing human being.

I was keeping this huge secret of bad habits, and holding this guilty obsession about achieving perfection. It filled me with a toxic energy that horribly affected everything in my life.

I was scared of myself and my addiction, and potential judgement of everyone. I didn’t want anyone to know about all of it, so I hid my fear behind fake smiles and false positivity.

Therefore, no one seemed to fully understand why I was so unhappy.

My parents worried. My best friends were concerned. My boss knew there was something wrong.

Eventually, all that bad energy put a halt on my career. My sense of hopelessness contributed to a crushing breakup.

All of it completely changed my life.

Let’s talk about it.

I spent a lot of time struggling alone.

I was too scared to say anything. I was ashamed. I was so embarrassed. The thought of telling someone about what I was going through was extremely daunting.

In my head, I thought: “You did this to yourself. YOU have to fix it.”

THIS IS NOT TRUE.

I truly believed that this awful ordeal was my responsibility, but I also knew that I was incapable of turning it around by myself.

I had tried, and had always fallen back into the cycle: Binge, purge, cry, sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I decided that I could stay silent, and likely put myself into the express lane to my ultimate death. Or, I could try speaking up… and hope for the best.

^ that sentence makes it sound easy, but it was not. AT ALL.

I decided to tell an old friend. It was someone I didn’t talk to all the time, but trusted and held a special place in my heart for. I remember standing in his kitchen, looking into his eyes, and taking a deep breath… then pausing and debating not saying anything at all.

But, as much as I wanted to be skinny and beautiful and look just like a flawless magazine cover model…

I wanted to be happy. And healthy. And enjoy my life, rather than put an end to it.

It took 4 years, but I found the courage to tell one person. The next day, I used that courage to tell three of my best friends. A few days later, I still had enough courage left to tell my mother.

And to my surprise, none of them judged me or shamed me or told me how disappointed they were.

Being honest with those 5 people was the turning point, and the first step in my recovery. It was followed by a few more baby steps, where I started to be truthful with other people and soon realized I wasn’t the only one who struggled.

I found out that friends, old coworkers, acquaintances, and so many other people were fighting the same battle. There were so many people I crossed paths with at so many points in my life who struggled with anxiety, depression, and toxic addictions to food and their body – just like me.

I quickly learned that I wasn’t alone.

By connecting with them, they weren’t alone anymore.

None of us are alone.

I don’t make a point of publicizing my issues, all the time.

That doesn’t mean it’s not important to me to talk about them.

If I never chose to open up to even just one person about the downward spiral I was stuck in, I might not be here to write this blog post and share my story with you.

If you’re fighting yourself, inside your head > this is for you:

I know that it’s scary to open up about dark secrets and demons that haunt us from the inside. Being vulnerable and honest about your biggest fears is terrifying.

But trying to fight your battles alone, and inevitably killing your soul in the process, is a frightening thought.

No one should have to endure that. Life is too good and too short to suffer this way.

Those monsters in your head – you didn’t put them there. This is not your fault.
You are not responsible for battling this all by yourself.

If I’ve learned anything in my journey to recovery thus far, it’s that exposing who I really am – good and bad – has improved my life immensely. It’s allowed me to connect with people (many who I now consider great friends) that understand and empathize with my struggle. These are people who inspire me, who I admire, who I can talk to when I’m feeling good, bad, happy, sad, or just absolutely frustrated with the tortured thoughts inside my head.

Talking about my troubles has always been one of the best decisions I have made.

Let’s keep talking

A few years ago, I made a choice to tell one person: I have a problem. I’m struggling with an eating disorder.

These days, when it really matters, I tell people: I am in the process of recovering from anorexia and bulimia.

It matters today.

You and me. We’re going to be better, stronger, and we’re going to be okay.

We just need to keep talking about it.

August 12, 2014February 7, 2023

“Perfect”

I am a perfectionist.

When I was a child, I liked having things go ‘my way’. I had expectations that my sanity and ultimate happiness relied on. When things didn’t go according to plan, I freaked out. In fact, I still do this – but I’ve learned to ease up on my demands and keep my tantrums to a minimum.

I like a sense of organization. Even if it’s a sort of organized mess, I prefer having a general idea of where everything is. I’ve developed personal routines and there are many methods to my madness.

I like straight lines and even numbers. I like situations that are easy to make sense of. I have a low tolerance for even the smallest flaws. It’s the way I’ve always been; mess with it and I’ll quickly escalate into panic mode.

Putting myself into panic mode because things aren’t perfect: It’s been my lifelong obsession and personal faux pas. It’s a decision I’ve made over and over and over again, and it’s changed my life in dramatic ways.

Because for as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted was to reach and maintain some level of ‘perfection’. On paper and in person, I wanted to be everything that anyone could ever want or be proud of. I had this ideal image designed inside my head and I wanted to reach that level of excellence.

*See that part where I wanted people to be proud of me? That was my second mistake – doing it for the people, on top of trying to reach perfection for myself.*

Hit the rewind button again and go back to when I was little kid – I remember myself with what I considered a ‘mini beer belly’. To be honest, I’m probably the only person who ever considered it a significant physical detail; others probably don’t remember much obsession with the Little Mermaid, Barbie dolls, and pandas.

But as far back as I can remember, that tiny protruding belly was always something I worried about. Growing up into a young tween and then a teenage girl with raging hormones, it was a part of my body that I obsessed over. I preoccupied myself with the fact that my mid section wasn’t totally flat and seemingly flawless like some of my classmates or the celebrities in the trashy magazines I read. I was so focused on that tiny, extra roll that appeared when I bent over in my too tight clothing. I didn’t like it.

I spent so much of my time at high school reminding myself to keep my stomach sucked in so it looked a little flatter. When I got dressed, I strategically trapped myself in extra tight tube tops that highlighted my ample bust line or chose crop tops that showed that small lower strip of mid section I didn’t mind. I agonized over the way the middle of my body looked all the time, while comparing myself to every other girl at school or at the mall.

I was your typical teenage girl, being dramatic and silly.

Around the age of 20, I discovered the magical effects of working out and nourishing my body with healthy meals. With a little hard work and dedication, I finally managed to make that little pouch of skin almost disappear and replaced it with almost visible abs. Finally, I was happy to wake up every day to the flat stomach I had always wished for. A side profile of my body showed a nice straight line under the perfect curve of my breasts and I was ecstatic.

In the mirror, I saw perfection. This made me smile.

But reality eventually sunk in and I became increasingly aware that ’perfection’ is a pretty high standard to meet. Okay, it’s actually impossible – but I didn’t realize that then. I was infatuated with keeping my body in that physical state that made me happy, and even if it wasn’t easy, I was determined to keep that feeling alive.

Except life got unexpectedly stressful and keeping up with ‘perfection’ was harder than I could handle.

I was 22 and heading back to school. I didn’t fully prepare myself for the adventure ahead of me, and was caught off guard by the intense amounts of homework I was responsible for and the long hours that came with completing it. I was at school for most hours of the day with limited access to the healthy meals I’d been eating for months. I was too busy and too exhausted to work out. On top of it all, I was living in a house with an entire pantry dedicated to junk food and an excess of vending machines taunted me from every hallway at the school.

The stress got to me and I turned to food for comfort. Food had always been a symbol of good feelings in my life (this is a whole different story in itself); when I needed to feel better, it was a sensible solution for me. In my mind, jelly beans and sour cream potato chips and fries smothered in gravy always provided that same, deliciously warm feeling inside me no matter how frustrating or hard life got.

They call it comfort food for a reason.

My stress, lack of sleep, and the development of my overall laziness lead to bad choices. My bad choices lead to my weight gain. All of the sudden my body was squishy again. You could see my face getting rounder. The little buddha belly thing I had despised my whole life came back.

One day after eating almost an entire box of cookies, I took a good look in the mirror and sat with the reality that I had just inhaled an entire box of cookies in search of solace. I freaked out, and then I freaked out again. Then I panicked.

I tried to fix it. But I did it all wrong.

I vividly remember telling myself it was only going to happen the one time; that that quick fix of purging my digestive system was a one time thing. I was going to change my ways and fix my problems in a healthier way. But it happened again. And after another build up of stress, another box of cookies and another panic attack just one week later, I promised myself again that it would be the last time. Four years later, I was still stressed, still panicking, and digging myself a deeper grave with my consistent binging and purging behaviours.

My health was deteriorating at a rapid pace. I became anaemic and I was really depressed. I sabotaged romantic relationships and lost sense of my true self. I was unhappy all the time and I cried more often that not.

The cycle of my depression and my poor behaviour was vicious. I was extremely miserable with myself, so I literally stuffed my body with mass quantities of food that tasted good until there wasn’t any room left to fit anything. Oddly, I never really felt satisfied; I felt sick, ugly, and disgusting. And so, I would go and purge my system… again, and again. And again.

My life was falling apart.

I was a mess. I hated my body and what I was doing to it, but I couldn’t stop. Every day for years, it only got worse because I was too scared to tell anyone. I didn’t want them to be ashamed of me or make me feel ashamed of myself. I didn’t want to disappoint the people I loved and lose the love they’d always given me for appearing like a better version of whatever this was.

For way too long, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know how to tell the world I wasn’t perfect. I just kept trying to fix myself in all the wrong ways, feeding my addiction and my obsessions, giving into the monsters. For so long, I was too scared to say anything.

I was too scared, too ashamed, too frustrated with everything I was. I was exhausted of being sick and tired, and sad. In my tiredness and my inability to feel anything but hopeless, I fell asleep in the hallway of my apartment, curled up on the floor. When I woke up, I looked at myself in the mirrored closet door and stared at the horrific reflection of the worst version of myself.

Looking back at me, I saw someone who was completely defeated; someone who was sad and stressed, lost. As I sat there, I thought about the bigger picture and realized that so many people in my life were sad and stressed, too. I knew they all loved me and could tell I hadn’t been myself for so long, but they didn’t know my secret which meant they didn’t know how to help me; they could only watch me fall apart.

I sat there for a long time, feeling disgusted – because I didn’t like the way I looked or felt, but also because I had made myself look and feel this way. Even though I knew that I didn’t mean to and that I hadn’t been myself, I couldn’t help but be miserable about my own actions. I felt sorry for myself. I was sorry that I had no control over my bad habits and my damaging addiction. I was sorry that I was hurting myself and my relationships with all the people who loved me and believed in me. I was sorry, because I felt like I had let them down. I was sorry because more than anything, I had let myself down.

I was sorry that I didn’t realize how bad it really was and that I let it go on this long.

I was afraid of myself. I was afraid of my future. I was also afraid of telling anyone, and the possibility of everyone leaving me because I wasn’t perfect.

This whole experience of self reflection lasted awhile, before I curled back into a ball and cried, then fell asleep on the floor again. When I woke up the next morning, dehydrated and worn out by all my emotions, I knew I was too sick and too tired to continue feeling sick and tired.

I had several choices, all of them terrifying and definitely life changing. I could go on living my life this way until I sent myself to the hospital or killed myself in the process of my torturous ways. I could take my own life before it got worse. Or, I could take a chance and tell someone about what I was going through, and see what happened.

To be honest, I just felt like the last option was the least intimidating out of the three I had given myself. What if I tried to die by suicide and failed? What if I got so sick and only caused my family more stress – them having to take care of me, monitor me, babysit me for the rest of my life? My fingers quivering, I wrote an email to my best friend and confessed to the biggest secret of my life. I waited with baited breath… and then she wrote back and she called me with nothing but her unconditional support. This gave me the courage to tell another best friend, with the same results.

Telling my mother that I was struggling with an eating disorder was the hardest and most frightening moment of my life. When I told her, she cried. Then she hugged me and we cried together. When she pulled away, she looked at me and she told me that she loved me, and she said “Jen, everything is going to be okay. You are okay.”

All of that is severely compressed; speaking out loud about my suffering was not as easy as I just made it sound. Telling people about my struggles, exposing my vulnerability, and asking for help was really hard. My life drastically changed because of it.

Putting myself and my recovery first meant quitting my job and relocating back to my hometown so I was surrounded by a solid support system. In doing so, I’ve put a suspicious red flag on my resume and caused people to question my decisions regarding a career I was working so hard for.

Personally and professionally, I’m not where I expected or want to be. It’s a new struggle I face while trying to recover from a previous one. I have days when I feel really good about myself, and days when my demons still haunt me in the worst ways. Every day is an adventure and a roller coaster of emotions, and no two days are the same.

In my process of recovery and understanding myself, I’m slowly starting to embrace the fact that there is no such thing as perfection and we, as humans, aren’t designed to be anything even close to that.

We are allowed to make mistakes and poor choices. We’re allowed to misunderstand, go the wrong way, and fuck things up every once in a while.

We don’t have to be right all the time. We don’t have to be flawless.

It’s okay to not be okay. And it’s okay to ask for help when you feel broken.

It’s absolutely unfortunate that stigma, discrimination, and general misunderstanding and poor judgement encourages an overwhelming fear of accepting the reality of mental health issues in our world.

It’s sad that people, myself included, feel the need to suffer instead of ask for just a little bit of help and often end up dismally spiralling their life out of control. It’s heartbreaking to hear about lives ending too soon because the monsters of mental illnesses torture poor souls to the point of hopeless states.

If you don’t feel like you think you should or if you feel like life’s being too hard on you, please do not be afraid to say something to even just one person. Just because you struggle with some form of mental illness, it does not make you any less worthy.

It means that like everyone in this world, your life isn’t perfect.
And that’s okay. It’s part of what makes you human.

As a little girl, I dreamed of being grown up and having this ‘perfect’ life. I’d be as beautiful as women on the fronts of magazine, with a handsome husband and adorable little family. I would have a wonderful job and we’d all live happily ever after in our lovely home, with everything we could ever need or want.

As a teenager, I fantasized about having a perfect hourglass figure. I wanted to easily fit into any fashion trend, look good in anything, and have all the boys drool over me the way they did over the women in the magazines they hid under their bed.

I had created this ideal image in my head of what I should be and I became obsessed with it. It took over my life and changed it dramatically. I didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not a bad person.

My mind just got mixed up along the way.

Even as I write this, I’m worried about how to end it. I want it to be just right and maintain the good rapport I’ve created with previous pieces I’ve written. I know it’s not perfect. It never will be and it doesn’t have to be, because more than ever before, I’m being myself.

I am not perfect.

I know that accepting your flaws isn’t easy. I also know that admitting that you’re scared, helpless, and hopeless is fucking intimidating.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard to open up. I can’t deny that the aftermath of me being honest with myself and the people who cared about me has definitely had it’s own sort of struggles. I have good days and I have bad days; I have really bad days and even worse weeks. But none of it is as excruciating as feeling as sad as I did when I tried to fight my battles on my own.

None of us deserve to be a slave to the monsters inside our heads. Being vulnerable is scary, but I promise you – it’s not as scary as what you might be going through all alone.

Don’t be afraid to break your silence. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Speak up and let’s talk about it. Let’s make mental health matter more.

We deserve it.