Lauren Elicker is a freshman from York, Pennsylvania. She is currently studying psychology and sociology at Juniata. This past week, Lauren shared a blog post via her Facebook that she wrote for her high school English project. She focused her project on a rather controversial topic that people all around the world suffer from: anorexia.
Lauren wrote in first-person through the lens of the personified character, anorexia. The narrator, anorexia, slowly takes over this young girl’s life as she slowly “cut [out the] disgusting things out of her life, like eating, and hanging out with friends”. At the age of 15, she was admitted into a hospital for fatigue. She slowly “got better”, when in reality, she was faking it. As time progressed, she got even better at lying and pretending that she was full after meals. Slowly, but surely, she was able to fight against anorexia and, as she described it, broke up with “anorexia”.
Lauren is an inspiration. I personally find Lauren to be a brave and fearless individual. Prior to writing for Her Campus, I had a blog of my own where I would talk about my fight against depression and self-harm. However, unlike Lauren, I was afraid of people that I knew reading about it and questioning me. Lauren, on the other hand, writes to share her story and has hopes of working with people who have gone through what she went through. She writes to spread awareness as a lot of people tend to brush it off. When I asked Lauren if she has plans on writing more, she said that she plans on writing in the future, but whatever happens, happens.
Let us all acknowledge Lauren’s bravery! Read her post on her personal blog.