Hey everyone, I am so thrilled with my recovery. This is actually the monologue that I read at Snowball. I was a leader **** times and a director once. Snowball changed my life for the better and since i had many good responses to struggling people after reading this, I thought i would share it with all of you...







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I knew I had hit rock bottom when my mom found me working out in my room on Thanksgiving. She broke the lock on the door and as she walked in, I saw tears in her eyes. All that she could seem to get out was “why?”. Why did I take it so far? Why did I stop eating? Why did I want to do this to her? But I didn’t do this to her. I did this to myself. But what she will never understand is what I went through inside…how it felt to hit rock bottom and what led up to what I consider to be the worst day of my life.



It all started ***** years ago. All throughout my life I had low self-esteem but had no problem accepting myself for what I was, average. My sister, on the other hand, was skinny. And when I say skinny, I mean it. I was always compared to her. “O Lindsey you’re getting so pretty…you have such a great shape!” Then they would come to me and ask me when my braces were coming off. I hated going anywhere with her because all the guys would look at her and not even notice me. As the extrovert I am, I always joked about my looks and never really let them get to me. My sister, on the other hand, was the opposite.



I still don’t quite know why she wanted to lose weight so badly. She looked amazing all the time. Everybody wanted to look like my sister! This is why no one in my family saw anorexia coming. It hit her hard. She got down to a weight that was inconceivable to even a ****-year-old. Then there was me, I looked like a tub of lard in comparison. While my sister struggled and was in the worst stage of her life, all that I could think about was myself. How I wanted to look like her…I never even realized the pain that she was going through to get to how she looked. I idolized her. I watched her every move and documented it inside within myself. I HAD TO. It was the only way. I needed to lose weight. I needed to feel pretty. I needed the guys to look at me. Lindsey got looks all the time as a skinny girl, that is all it would take for me to finally get some recognition. So finally, as she started to recover and finally love herself, my self hatred began.



It was the summer before sophomore year. I began running everyday and eating all of Lindsey’s health foods. I hated the way they tasted and despised my new diet, but I soon got over that. I started seeing fast results. As of my return from band camp in August, I had dropped ** pounds. I was finally doing it. But I didn’t want to stop. It was so easy! Sophomore year began and I hit a bump I the road. My body wouldn’t let me lose anymore weight. I couldn’t take no for an answer. I slowly started cutting out food groups, living on anything fat free, no matter how tasteless. It worked for a while and I dropped * more pounds. When homecoming hit, I looked great! I got so many positive comments from friends and parents at pictures but inside, It wasn’t good enough for me. I was told that I was a twin of one of my friends at homecoming. We weighed about the same. This statement horrified me. I didn’t want to weigh the same…I wanted to weigh less…a lot less!



With the start of our competition season for marching band, I found the perfect opportunity to almost stop eating totally. I was rarely home and conveniently found garbage cans everywhere I went. All that I had to do was ask for a packed lunch and dinner. Then I would stay at school the whole day, throwing out everything except for a piece of fruit here and there and if I knew that I was going to be running around a lot at practice, a half piece of bread. Sitting on the bus on days of competitions next to that friend whom I weighed the same as, I couldn’t eat. It pained me. I gave my food away or smashed it into the bottom of my bag until I could sneak it into a trash can later. People asked me why I wouldn’t eat but I would either lie, saying I wasn’t hungry, or tell them I already ate.



My plan was working. I had lost almost ** pounds when Halloween came around. I spent Halloween in a pair of huge pants, starving myself on the couch. I refused to go trick-or-treating with my friends for I feared I would lose control and eat something bad for me. Instead, I answered the door and thought about how fat every kid would get after eating their Halloween candy that night. I felt so powerful as I stepped on the scale and saw the line go further down and down. But then I began to wonder, how long could I keep this up? I was barely eating anything. I was tired all the time, FREEZING, and so unhappy. I was isolating myself from everyone. I walked the hallways alone, wearing my letterman jacket and gloves because my body had almost no fat or muscle to keep it warm.



I started to realize that something was seriously wrong when my right leg gave out. Something happened inside it that I lost nerve endings. My sister thought I had neuropathy. My mom started calling me “gimp”. I walked funny and couldn’t help it. On top of my physical symptoms, I now avoided mirrors. I hated looking at myself. I gave up wearing nice clothes and worse sweatpants and sweatshirts all the time. I had lost ** pounds now. But I was so hungry. I would often rock myself to sleep telling my stomach to just shut up and stop growling.



Thanksgiving had arrived and I wasn’t excited at all. This was going to be the worst day of my life and I wasn’t even aware of it yet. Thanksgiving is a day of indulgence. It’s an eating fest. I didn’t know how I would get out of eating this time. My schemes couldn’t work in front of my family. My whole family knew that something was wrong with me. As I carried out my normal routine, working out in confinement, my mom walked in with those wretched tears in her eyes. I was mad at her. I couldn’t even feel badly for her. Moreover, I was mad at myself. She told me that my friends had been calling. They were worried. She was worried. Everyone was worried. She told me that I was going to the hospital, right then and there, on Thanksgiving. I couldn’t believe it. I had taken it that far? Apparently yes. My mom said that I was dying. My leg was proof. I could barely walk and I actually got an x-ray because I thought some bone in my back was broken because of the way it protruded. I was a skeleton and couldn’t even see it. That day, my mom made me see it. And everything started to change.



I sought out a doctor. I started taking medications and started working on my self-esteem. I went to Snowball a week later. Here, I met some of the most supportive, and caring people I have ever met. They gave me the courage to get better. As I started to get better, the weight came back on and I was ok with that. I finally liked the way I looked, and best of all FELT. I was happy for the first time in over a year. I struggled for a year but I struggled with recovery for almost ****. These have been the toughest years of my life. But look at me now. My leg is back to normal. I have muscles on my thin bones. I am not cold all the time! Most of all, I am happy. I don’t let my disease control me. I moved on. I put my life back into play. I continue to work towards full recovery as the rest of my life gets increasingly better and better. I know it will take much more time. Anorexia isn’t so much as a physical disability, but rather a mental one. It just doesn’t heal itself and be better. It takes time and a lot of work to overcome it. I am making great strides every day towards full recovery. I am so close and my life has never been better.[img]images/smilies/kewl.gif[/img]











Good luck to all of you with EDs. I know the pain you are in but there is help! [img]/images/smilies/gimme.gif[/img]