My Love Story with my Eating Disorder

My love story begins freshman year of high school. We first locked eyes in the cafeteria, I remember it vividly, I was standing on line to buy my lunch when he said to me “That sub is going to go straight to those thunder thighs of yours, you’re better off with the salad”. It started off as a casual fling where ED would sit with me at lunch and tell me “it’s okay to skip this meal in fact if you do you’ll be able to see through your legs with a beautiful thigh gap”. Ed proved to be right, after some time I wanted to see if the advice ED was giving me was working, so I stepped on the scale and saw that the numbers were quickly going down. After that moment I knew I could trust him.

As time went on ED and I got a bit more serious, he started to come home with me after school and have dinner with my family. He would sit next to me and whisper in my ear what every single piece of food would do to my body. He taught me a new trick that would ensure the safety of our relationship and make sure that no one would break us up, he told me after dinner I could sneak up to the bathroom and easily get rid of everything I just ate with just the tip of my finger, that way the jiggle underneath my arm would go away. This casual fling continued on for the next 2 years but then we had the talk and I was starting to fall in love with how ED made me feel. We would wake up every morning and he would tell me how thin I was getting and how beautiful I was. The best was when we would stand on the scale and the numbers would drop because then ED would let me eat breakfast that morning. We started getting serious after those first two years and ED wanted to be together constantly, he thought that if he was with me at all times that I truly could make that number on the scale drop and my life would then finally be perfect. I mean I already lived the perfect life; I had a perfect family, perfect grades, perfect friends and now a perfect relationship with ED.

The more serious I got with ED however I started to realize maybe things weren’t so perfect. I was spending so much time with ED whether it was working out at the gym 4 hours a day, or sneaking off to the bathroom for some alone time or simply avoiding social activities with friends because ED was starting to worry that if I spent too much time with my friends they would get jealous of my boyfriend ED. People started to notice that I changed and would ask if everything was alright and I would simply reply “I’m fine just stressed with school you know the usual” and they wouldn’t think twice. ED and I were very secretive when it came to our relationship and at first it was fun to sneak around and not let anyone in on our little secret but I started to notice that maybe this secret was starting to kill me.

By senior year of high school I was consuming less than 500 calories a day, exercising about 2 hours a day, throwing up twice a day sometimes 3 leaving myself with less calories than I allowed myself to eat each day. I started to notice that I would go up a flight of stairs and I would be out of breath, I noticed I would easily sleep 10-12 hours because I was so tired trying to keep up with everything ED wanted to do. I just wasn’t happy in our relationship anymore and I didn’t know who to turn to except my mom. I sat her down and started to cry, I don’t think I stopped crying. Finally the words came out and I said “Mom, I’m not okay”. I proceeded to tell her about my relationship that I had been keeping a secret for 4 years. When I was done she simply said “I understand, I too had a friend named ED.”

I didn’t go into treatment right after I told my mom, it took me awhile to accept the fact that I needed help but eventually I did and I attended a treatment program in my home town. I was there every day, fighting to get ED to leave and to have Keri back again. I wish I could say that ED is gone forever but he’s not. He still lurks around the corner waiting for a weak moment in my life to appear and support me. ED has taken a lot away from me, 4 years that I’ll never get back and he has given me the hardest battle anyone who has met ED has to face, recovery.