{by Terra from Raising Zoeyjane}

Twenty. That’s the number of years I was anorexic for. Twenty-one: The smallest my adult waist ever shrunk down to. Two Thousand and Four: The year I got breast implants, thinking that if I felt more proportionate, I’d have a more positive self-regard. 87: The weight I got down to, ten months post-partum. Eight: The number of miscarriages I’ve had, likely owing to a hormone issue brought about by the eating disorder. 100: The number of Cheerios I would allow myself in a day, alongside an apple and a cup of hot chocolate, when I was fifteen. Two: years as a part-time model, during the grunge/heroin-chic period. While on heroin and cocaine. Thirteen: The number of workouts I was doing a week, at twenty and twenty-one. 1000: How many sit-ups I had to do each day, or I was a lazy failure. Four: suicide attempts. One: Year sober, on November 16th.

I sought out an eating disorder at seven years old because I was a chubby kid who got picked on for it, who came from an abusive home, with a single father who minimized me ‘to keep me from becoming egotistical’ and an absent mother. I wanted to disappear, while also wanting to be able to have control over just one thing in my life. I understood the ideology and the permanence of anorexia, and I read hundreds of case studies before I started to restrict, eventually adding over-exercise, vomiting, laxative abuse, amenorrhea, multiple esophageal infections and a prolapsed colon to my resume.

When sex discovered me, it edited the mantra I’d always repeated, ’You are ugly and stupid and fat. No one can stand to be around you’, and made it, ‘You are not too ugly, stupid or fat. Men will want to be around you for sex. This is all you’re worth, so don’t fuck it up.’ This was my law for over a decade.

When a friend in the Vancouver social media community asked me to participate in a date auction she was organizing to raise funds for a writers’ society, you could say I spit-taked. I tried to back my way out of it, before I’d ever agreed to do it. I was positive that she was delusional and I would ruin the whole event, if not simply embarrass myself by drawing in the minimum bid and listless looks from a crowd.

I’d been practicing for years to hide myself, whether with an imaginary wall, or a literal one made of scrubby clothes and hair, no makeup and ragged fingernails. You didn’t see me, generally, unless I’d decided that I wanted to be seen.

This auction was a challenge to that. I didn’t volunteer, I was asked, so I would be on display, felt as if I needed to measure up to some appearance-based ideal, and it wasn’t on my own terms. I agreed to do it, because I’m a pushover who is more concerned with disappointing people than looking like a fool, but I was anxious and considered backing out, or just not showing up, several times.

{Originally published on The Sister Project.}

Winter 2008—five years after we donned our white caps and gowns at Tanglewood—four out of my six best friends from high school are finding themselves in the same sleepy Berkshire town where we grew up.

In honor of this momentous homecoming, I’d like to share an essay I wrote shortly after we graduated. I haven’t touched it since then (except to change some names), and it is a strong representation of the kinds of reflections I was having about my high school experience at that time. Meet me after Bio to get high in the parking lot…

‘Picking at Scabs’

WHEN WE HEARD Brooke throwing up on Katelyn’s 18th birthday, the seven of us skipped a beat. Our spoons, heaped with chocolate sauce and ice cream, paused in midair before reluctantly arriving at our lips. Gator’s hand ticked for a split second as she sliced through creamy frosting and into birthday cake. No one said anything. We just listened. My mind wandered up the air vent to the cool blue tiled floor where I know Brooke knelt with watering eyes and a runny nose—her bony fingers brushing the back of her throat, coaxing and begging for release.

These girls are the closest things that I have to sisters. We are not fused with blood but with bruises and Band-Aids—our mutual growing pains. Our insecurities have bonded us together with can’t-live-without-you love. I watched the girls shift uncomfortably eyeing the caloric catastrophe that lay before us, sprawled across the kitchen counter. Our throats began to close around the clumps of cake and ice cream. We ate fast. We ate to get rid of it. Behind us, Justin sang Senorita through the kitchen speakers. Above us, Brooke coughed and spat. It was an eternity cruelly crammed into a split second.

Originally published on The Great Fitness Experiment

Well, you can’t trust them. That’s the first thing. They’ll lie to your face, tell you anything you want to hear, to protect their compulsion. It’s not that they’re bad people. It’s that they’re scared and the eating disorder is their coping mechanism. They already think they’re nothing. Without it, they’re worse than nothing. At least that’s what the voices tell them.

But don’t give up – they need you. Incidence of eating disorders are rising among almost every group, with a surprising (or not, depending on your level of media consumption) surge in adult women. It has a 6% mortality rate. It has only a 50% cure rate.

(click title for more)