Anorexia nervosa is characterized by emaciation, a relentless pursuit of thinness and unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy weight, a distortion of body image and intense fear of gaining weight, and extremely disturbed eating behavior. Many people with anorexia see themselves as overweight, even when they are starved or are clearly malnourished. Eating, food and weight control become obsessions. Some who have anorexia recover with treatment after only one episode. Others get well but have relapses. Still others have a more chronic form of anorexia, in which their health deteriorates over many years as they battle the illness (NIMH, 2009). 

Pretty Enough For You?

Writing Submission and Photography by Anna

I have finally almost fully beaten my battle with anorexia. Someone said something to me the other day when I mentioned that I looked “fat” in a photo. I didn’t really mean that I felt I was literally fat; it was just one of those days, and a bad photo. They flipped out on me for saying that though, and it made me think. It is a big deal for me to be able to say, “I look fat” now, jokingly, and not take serious further action on the thought.

I have had serious anorexia for 5 years and I can now, finally say, I am almost over it.

But, not completely.

Pretty Enough For You? by Anna 2008(c)

It’s something that doesn’t really go away. It’s still a huge struggle sometimes, but to be able to eat food without completely hating myself, without becoming sick with the thought of how many calories could have been in that bagel, or that mouthful of cereal, is an amazing thing.

Constantly, obsessively checking the labels on food products as well as DRINKS, (yes, even water), in deadly fear of calories or fat. Being underweight is dangerous in general, but being 5′2 and UNDER 88 pounds, is, well, you get the idea. I was losing weight so rapidly. Losing my hair, becoming extremely bony, my eyes and cheeks sinking in, and other things that comes along with being anorexic, including a very bad kidney infection, (from not drinking the water in fear of weight gain).

If I had not been forced to stop when I did, I probably would not have lasted very long without being hospitalized. I’m not putting this on here as a pity story. I’m putting it on here as a warning and as a message. My story is not as bad as others are, but it was, and still IS, a horrible thing to have, to go through, to experience. 

And, it never fully goes away and never leaves you alone. It’s always with you. It’s always in the back of your head. Telling you not to eat, telling you to be being deathly afraid of any kind of weight gain. Feeling like your diet is the only thing you can control. It can be used as a way of coping, when I felt like I couldn’t control anything else.

You think about it constantly, and are always trying to think of how you can avoid your next meal and get away with it, if possible, as often as possible. You constantly need to stay in motion, in order to burn whatever calories you can.

No one ever knew that I had it. I never told anyone. They only assumed and accused, because I was so nightmarishly thin. The anorexia was a reaction to many other things. I get so upset when women say they are anorexic only because they want the attention, or want to be thinner than someone else is. That’s not how it works. They don’t get it. Anorexia is an actual mental problem, a mental illness. A deadly game that your mind plays with the rest of your body.

There is really only one person who has helped me get through this. I love him with all my heart and I don’t know what would have happened if I had kept going, because I was on a train that wouldn’t stop for anyone and it kept picking up speed.

Taking this picture made me feel so much better. I have finally gotten out what has been hiding inside me for so long. And, to the person who was about to smack me the other day for what I said about that picture, well, I love her dearly.