The first day I consciously stopped eating was January 12,
2013. I was a junior in high school and my mom confronted me about dating a
girl. I was nowhere near ready for that conversation or for what would happen
afterwards. A whole mess of stuff happened but that was the day I purposely decided
not to eat because I felt worthless.
Prior to this day I had frequently skipped meals, and maybe
someone wiser than I would have picked up on my restrictive eating patterns,
but I never saw an eating disorder coming. I was very fortunate to have the
right friends in my life at this time. My closest friends intervened before
things got too bad. I still struggle with body image issues practically every
day, but I don’t often resort to restriction anymore.
With the eating disorder came the kick start of my anxiety
and depression. I feel like I’ve always had a little bit of this in my life
(depression and anxiety run in my family), but it didn’t really start affecting
me until my junior year. Junior year this only affected me in terms of eating.
Same with the first half of senior year. Honestly things were getting better. I
had relapses but they were having less of an influence over my daily life.
Then came the break up.
March of my senior year of high school my girlfriend and I
broke up. We had been dating for a year and a half and this destroyed me. I
took it as bad as you could possibly take a break up. Then a month later my dad
attempted to kill himself. He lived, but still to this day the memories from
that night and the words from his suicide note haunt me. Everything all became
too much to handle and I made myself numb. Numb to my feelings and numb to
life.
The thing about feeling numb is it can’t last forever and my
best friend warned me of this. It didn’t stop me though. I was numb the whole
summer before freshman year of college, first semester, and a few months into
second semester. It was around a year after the breakup and I realized that I was
having feelings again. All sorts of feelings I hadn’t experienced in so long. I
had a silly crush on someone and I felt true happiness at first, but it wasn’t
long before all the painful feelings that I tried to cover up came flooding
back.
That’s when I cut myself for the first time.
I had always been afraid of cutting myself. I had spent many
nights my junior year of high school lying in bed and knowing that cutting was
an option. But I always held myself back. I was afraid. I was afraid of the
pain and seeing the blood. So not surprisingly the first time I “cut” I didn’t
really cut. I remember being in such a haze that night, but I picked up a
safety pin and I scratched at my arm. That fucking hurts. And it stings more
afterwards than cutting does. After a couple times of scratching, I felt like
it wasn’t enough. I took a blade to my left hip and it became an addiction very
quickly. I have stopped before, but not very successfully. I think the longest
has been a month. I’d like to say I’ve been clean for a while now, but that
would be a lie.
My depression and anxiety has gotten worse in college. On
days like today I feel an absolute nothingness to the world and my depression
consumes me. On other days I can’t get out of bed because anxiety cripples me.
Not every day is bad though. Good days still exist. There are still things to
look forward to, and new memories to be made.
That is my story. It’s not finished and neither am I.
