It started out harmless, as a diet, as getting in shape, being healthy. It turned into an obsession, a daily struggle, a ritual, a way of coping, an addiction.
Nowadays her eating disorder is her safety net, something steady, something she knows, in the family that has become so strange and foreign to her. It’s a coping mechanism to escape the unhealthy and distressing environment of her family.
She used to praise them. Her parents were perfect to her. To her, her family seemed like one of those you see in commercials. Already into the world of eating disorders she had to experience that her family wasn’t quite as perfect as she thought it to be. The strength of her father, the authority of her mother, the relationship of her parents - nothing but a bunch of lies to keep up the veneer. As she watched her world fall apart, questioned everything she has been told, all the morals, everything she believed in blindly, she got lost in the mess and got sucked deeper into this black whole, into an eternal darkness which she wasn’t going to be able to get out of on her own again. Without an actual goal or a clue who she was or who she wanted to be, she wandered around in these endless fields of black, not knowing how much longer her feet would be able to carry her exhausted body. She was worn out, there was no sparkle in her eyes anymore, no life, she was existing but not alive. Shallow. Empty. Hollow. Forced to put on a smile that, every time she put it on, her heart broke into another thousand pieces. She didn’t aim for anything. She didn’t even long for death. She simply didn’t want to live anymore. She didn’t care anymore. She swallowed a box of pills, not caring about the effects it would have. It landed her in a mental hospital. And there she continued to fall apart, mentally, physically. Pressure. Pressure from the hospital to eat, be active, get better. Pressure from the parents to get better, be better , be happy, be healthy, be recovered, be her “little cheerful girl” again. Pressure from the eating disorder to be sick, to be thin, to get sicker, to starve, to “succeed”. Pressure from herself to be everything everyone wanted her to be.
Until she found love. Love saved her life. As cheesy as it sounds, he made her love life again. He made her feel alive again. She started to live again. She accepted her as the person she was, with the disorder she had. She accepted her. Sad, depressed, broken, thick, thin, lazy, manic, hyper, down, pretty, tired, laughing, crying.
Today, she still suffers from an eating disorder. She is still taking medication for her depression, she still sometimes skips school because she couldn’t make it out of the bed in the morning, she still looks in the mirror and sees fat, she still purges, she still starves. But she smiles. And the smile is real. She lives. She lives her life and has fun. She accepts that she has a body. She lets him see and feel her body. She lets people in her life. She talks. She activated her friends again.
She hasn’t self harmed in over  a month, after 3 years of self harming at least once a week, up to several times a day. She is not recovered. But she is slowly starting to feel again, to allow herself to feel and react.
Love saved her life.