Struggling with anorexia taught me there is no shame in talking about it

February is a month dedicated to spreading Eating Disorder Awareness. I participated in Where I Stand’s #purplelove campaign to try and spread awareness, but I decided I needed to do something a little bit more drastic.

I am not the type of person to talk about my life and some of the struggles I go through as to not burden anyone. I need to realize it’s not a burden.

This month represents a real struggle for me and over thirty million other people in the world. That’s a lot of people, yet nobody ever discusses anything related to it.

I remember learning about eating disorders in my sophomore health class. I always hated this week in health classes. Something about this year was different. I had learned about them before, but it was never so personal to me.

The one thing I can never forget is when we were talking about anorexia and the male students (I can’t even bother to call them men) kept laughing at some image of body dysmorphia. It’s those types of people who make me sick to my stomach.

Obviously, they didn’t know that was something I had been struggling with since I was eleven years old, but I really wouldn’t expect them to change their responses if they had.

I had been hospitalized the year before, three separate times due to this illness, and some of its effects. I became really depressed and self conscious. I could not leave my house or do anything because I thought people would judge me.

I lived in a constant state of fear. I can now realize it was irrational but at the time it did not seem irrational. The paranoia I felt was so dibilitating.

It’s hard for me to even remember what made me start to hate my appearance so much. I remember my friends in the fifth grade would always joke with me about how piggish I would eat at lunch. I laughed along, but I was secretly really hurt and became super self conscious of what I ate.

This turned into eating only those boxed salads they sold in the cafeteria, to just a bag of goldfish, to nothing. The funny thing is, nobody seemed to realize. They would realize when I consumed two cheeseburgers as a tiny eleven year old, but not when I hadn’t put anything into my body. So I started doing it more often.

It’s weird to think the jokes my best friends at the time had been making actually sent me in a hellacious downward spiral. This includes three years of different rehabilitation centers to try to get me to a healthy weight and reduce my fear of food and what other people would think of me. It has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and sometimes I don’t think I can do it, but people remind me I can.

So yes, I do wear purple because I have struggled and I know what its like to be so low. I still struggle. I wrote this for those who feel like they can’t speak up, you can. It took me seven years to really come out about this and it feels so good.

I don’t care what people think of me. My friends know me for who I am and this doesn’t change a thing about me. There should be no shame in speaking up, and there definitely is no shame in wearing purple proudly this February.

I’ve learned to find happiness in myself and I know everyone can too.