Story from Bee, age 20
High school started and i was Happy. I had friends and i loved that i was at a new school and could start fresh. But then grade 10 hit, about second semester i just started to hate myself. I hated myself more and more everyday. I got the feeling that i wasn’t good enough, that i was disgusting. I thought that if i skipped a few meals every so often i would lose a little bit of weight and that it would be better. More people would like me and i would be prettier. It was in grade 10 that it got really bad… i passed out in the middle of class. The rumours started flying. I made excuses as to why but the rumours still spread like wild fire.
Since then i’ve pretended like i was better. Like i was perfectly fine. I learned how to act like i was okay. I learned how to hold in all of the tears and how to avoid meals without people noticing. I also learned how to balance it with working out more when i did eat so it would still be negative calories.
I would drink to the point that i threw up so that it would take out any extra things that i had eaten that werent burnt off… extra weight , gone.
I also self-harmed. I wrote suicide notes and thought about it all of the time. It would be a better place without me here. I mean what good have i done for anyone?
I fought with this throughout grades 11 and 12. It would come and go for short periods of time. It would be gone and i would be happy and then the next thing i knew i was waking up to the voice telling me not to eat. I needed to control something… that was it. I controlled how much i ate, i controlled my weight and with this i could control how happy i was.
I couldn’t control anything at school, everyone thought that i was a huge slut… i had facebook groups made about me, videos to rip me apar.t People made events for certain days where they would make fun of me even more and break me down. It was like they were trying to make me crack… trying to make me end it all.
It ended up getting the cops involved because of everything that was said and done over Facebook and other social networks. I cried every night because i felt so alone. I thought that moving away to school would make everything better…
But I still fought with it through my first year of college and second year as well. Nobody knew my past life, nobody knew who i was in high school and i liked that. There was one person who did, because he was from somewhere near where i was from. He held it against me and said that he would tell people and shit like that. It hurt. I never for a second thought that it would still come with me to college but it did. First year of college and into the summer i was still fighting with it. I was at the lowest i thought i could ever be at. I tried to kill myself, but my friend stopped me. I never thought that anyone could ever care about me that much to actually come over after i told him that i was going to be gone for good. He cared. It was the first time that i had ever thought that maybe people did care about me. But by second year started i was getting better and i was finally okay with myself. I didn’t wake up and hate what i saw and i didn’t cry myself to sleep. I was finally getting happier.
I was diagnosed with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) in high school. Not very many people knew, but i would have freak outs and anxiety attacks because of it when something wasn’t right. I couldn’t control them either. I lost control in everything.
My eating disorder is triggered by control.
A huge part of my story that i had left out before … was my ex boyfriend. I never realized how much he actually had to do with everything. I met him the summer before grade 11. Every fight that we got in .. every time that he picked someone else over me i would fall back into the negative thoughts. I had put so much into trying to make it work between us that when it wasn’t there i needed something to control. Something to take my mind off of how much it hurt. We broke up for a year from march 2011 – 2012. It was when we first broke up that i tried to kill myself. He has no idea that i tried to kill myself then. The first time i tried to kill myself was a fight that we had, had in february. He knew about that one.. he has never brought it up. I don’t even think that he remembers it. When we broke up again this year … for the last time. It was the hardest thing that i’ve had to deal with. It went away for about a week but then i woke up one sunday morning and went to take a shower. I couldn’t look at myself i broke down into tears. I couldn’t take it anymore.. so i told him about it. I thought i was disgusting that nobody in their right mind would ever like me. He said that he would be there for me … but he left. I knew that i needed help i couldn’t hide it anymore. I couldn’t even fight the urge to cry anymore. It would just turn on and off as it pleased. I was out of control , i’d lost control of everything.
The control that i had once had .. was gone.
It was already bad… i’m still trying to figure out how to lose the search for control .. and to recover.
April 23rd 2012, i told my mom. It was one of the hardest things to do. I kept reassuring her that it was not her fault and it was nobodies fault. She found me a place for therapy.. and now this summer when i get home i start therapy.
There is help there and you’re not alone.
Story from Sophie, 16
My name is Sophie, and I'm 16. I have POTS, GERD, Autonomic Neuropathy, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Chronic Daily Headaches, Allodynia, Migraines, Severe Depression, an Anxiety Disorder, a Panic Disorder, OCD, Insomnia, Hyper Mobility, Rumination Syndrome, and i Self Harm. Im currently getting tested for EDS and Fibromyalgia. My story starts when i was 11 and i went to bed one night a healthy child, and woke up the next morning chronically ill. I don't live a typical life. I am unable to go to high school, i have at least one doctor appointment everyday, i see three shrinks, and I'm constantly nauseous. 6 months after i became ill, no one would believe that there was something wrong with me, and all the tests i was having done would come back negative. Thats when i became severely depressed and developed an anxiety disorder. The first month i was depressed i was suicidal. I almost drowned myself in the bathtub multiple times, and i would stand in the kitchen every night after everyone fell asleep, holding a knife in front of my heart sobbing. After i wasn't suicidal anymore i started harming myself. It started out slowly and then progressed to the point that i was cutting every night. Its been four and a half years and my boyfriend convinced me to tell my doctors and mom a few weeks ago. And now I'm trying to recover for him and my mom. I don't just self harm for relief of the stress from my diseases, its also because my dad is verbally abusive, and almost physically abusive towards me. For me, cutting is the only kind of pain i have control over. Im not going to say that recovery is easy, because i would be lying to you. Recovery will be the hardest thing you will ever have to do. Its one thing to battle against another person, but to battle against yourself can be almost impossible. The most important piece of advice i could give you is to not let others try to fix you, you need to ask them to be there by your side while you try to fix yourself.
