The idea of perfection, Anonymous (16)

It started in the fifth grade, I remember where I was in my elementary school, the clothes I was wearing and what I was doing with my friends. My body had matured that summer and when I compared myself to my friends sitting around me I felt empty. I felt that urge to want to be skinny I was barely even 10. I went the whole year wearing sweats trying to cover the body I was given. It's scary to look back at where it all started that day were I looked down at my body and thought I was ugly. I thought I wasn't good enough. When it starts it never seems to start. From that day on I craved a flat stomach. I wanted to be accepted into society and I thought my only way into acceptance was through my stomach. As all the pretty girls had it. I worked for it I remember working out in grade 6. Any video on youtube that had the word flat stomach in I would watch. It terrifies me that at such a young age I feel the same way I do today. It got worse in the ninth grade and the tenth grade. I didn't care about my appearance at all in the ninth grade. I didn't care what people thought of me or the way I looked. I was happy being me I lost that fire in me. I was working out back then but it was at a sustainable level, In the tenth grade, my life took a 360. I didn't want to be that all-natural girl in the ninth grade, I wanted to be the pretty tenth grade who boys swooned after. So I bought concealer and mascara for the first time in my life and I swore by it. Worst of all my body image got worse. I looked in the mirror and I wanted to change. I remember so many days where I would cry looking at myself in the mirror. What looked back at me was so ugly and I couldn't understand why I looked like that and other girls didn't. So every morning I woke up at 5 a.m and run on my treadmill until I couldn't feel my legs. Then I would make my way to the washroom and curl my hair and do my makeup. For once I felt confident. Or so I thought. Every day my schedule was the same wake-up, run, curl my hair, go to school, excessively participate in gym class, go to volleyball practice, and repeat. I developed a negative relationship with exercise abusing it going 100% for everything I did to the point at which my body was exhausted.No matter how much I exercised no matter how much I tried my body wasn't giving me the result I wanted. So I stopped eating. It wasn't that plain and simple I started by counting calories. One of the greatest mistakes of my life. I would turn over the food and stare at the nutrition fact and it was a large number I lost that hunger and want. I felt as though that number on that white box defined who I was. Consuming anything with a large number made me feel like I was disgusting. I learned to say no when food was offered to me. I learned how to hide breakfast, lunch, and dinner from my parents. It wasn't easy but I could sacrifice all the food in the world just to have a flat stomach. Day turned into months and I was finally losing weight. At the cost of skipping meals and throwing out foods. Much of that time is a blur but the one thing I specifically remember is coming home from school and forcefully made myself eat an apple. I sobbed the whole time if I hadn't the results would have been fatal. I learned to enjoy the feeling of hunger almost like it was the noise my body made when it was burning fat. I try and try and nothing feels better. Even when I lost weight I still feel the emptiness. I'm currently borderline underweight seeing those numbers on the scale excites a side of me. That side that wants so desperately to be accepted to be called skinny and pretty. The side of me I'm scared to show to others. When I have I've been seen as abnormal. The other side who still feels that emptiness and the thing inside of me reminding me that I will never be good enough. What I've learned is eating disorders arent not always physical it's your mind causing half the problems. I wouldn't wish this feeling on even my greatest enemy. I pray that all of us who suffer through this learn that we are perfect. That calorie don't define us. Skinny isn't supposed to make you happy because deep down you'll always want to be skinnier.