5.14.2014
It was a Tuesday. I remember
that because I was supposed to work on Tuesday because my boyfriend at the time
Ryan had work. I had just gotten an amazing job working
in a bridal store in Belmont. In my mind, I was leaving for Berklee in the fall and I had to learn the guitar, master the piano, buys
microphones and textbooks and pay fees and learn music and make recordings and
forget everything else. That would be my life, and I was okay with that.
Growing up, it was eat sleep breath music and chorus. I was so use to it; i
never really gave any thought to anything else. Why did I have to, I was talented
and loved it.
On November 23 2013, I was admitted into Children’s hospital in Boston for depression and anxiety. It was decided that on the following monday I would be admitted to an outside facility.
"Wait what... I’m
not suicidal...I don't want to die...what
are you talking about?" That’s what I kept saying to the doctors.
That I was "fine."
I wasn't fine. I was
skipping classes, disappearing for hours at a time and i gave up my music. I
quit everything. I quit jazz, chorus and I quit my amazing vocal teacher. I
thought I had this amazing new life; This boyfriend and amazing new friends, it was a lot
easier to start over somewhere else then to stay and face the consequences. I
ran away. I abandon the four most special girls i have ever met and I destroyed
my relationship with my family. I accepted that I was the family disappointment
and did everything to keep that reputation.
I did it all, getting arrested,
drinking, staying out all night, pretending to not give a shit. Yeah, I’m the
queen of pretending not to give a shit; I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It’s kind of
scary how little I really care about anything. I felt untouchable to everybody and
everything. To me, I was on top of the world.
I told three people what
had happen to me, my boyfriend, my best friend and my "gay" best
friend* i.e. guy whose secretly in love with you but you have friend zoned*
Their reactions were enough to know to keep this secret to myself. By the time
this had all happened, I had been to probably been to one full day of classes all year,
not including the first day.And going back to regular school seemed like the scariest thing in the world.Trust me, you don't want to be that kid who just randomly shows up one day. There were a lot of questions i wasnt ready to answer and a lot of people wanting to know what was up. Everyday i would validate in my head why it was okay to skip
school. It wasn't just like one day here and there; it was full weeks at a time. It was just bad I can’t even put it into words.
The Monday after I was
in Children’s, I was sent to Bournewood facility in Brighton Massachusetts. I was
there for two weeks.My first mistake was thinking i didn’t belong there, in my
mind, I wasn’t really sick... yea i sometimes couldn't leave my house for a few
days but it was fine. I wasn’t cutting like the other girls, just purging, and
i could stop whenever i wanted to. I was normal.
I wasn't fixed after Bourne
wood; I was quite far from it actually. I didn't care what had happened. I didn't have time to deal with that. I had a boyfriend and friends’ in another town i
had to worry about. I seriously didn’t have time to deal with all this
bullshit. I was completely over it and didn't really want to acknowledge what was going on. So I did what I had always done and just started going through
the motions.
"Yes mom, i have
been eating"
"Yes mom, I did go
to class today"
I was a liar and a
cheater, I didn’t really care who I hurt.
And trust me.... I hurt
everybody.
I was diagnosed with an
Bulimia nervosa in January 2014.I don’t really remember the date because I don’t
really remember much of anything. Let me put it this way, it feel like i fell
asleep when i was 12 and woke up when i was 18.The past five years, to me, are
a blur.
It wasn’t until February
that I actually started to take my recovery seriously. On February 7th 2014 I was rushed to the hospital for having such low potassium levels I was at risk
of having a heart attack at any moment. Imagine that phone call, 17 years old being told you could have a heart attack, on top of that my boyfriend of almost a year had just broken up with
me hours earlier.It was a fantastic day.
At this point I felt like I kind of
deserved it though. I was mean; I held all this hate in my heart for no reason.
My eating disorder will never be an excuse for the way I have acted in the past
year. I deserved to lose friends and to not graduate on time. I chose to do
all those things. No one forced me to stop eating, no one forced me to stick my
finger down my throat, no one forced me to stay home from school, but i also didn’t ask for all the rest of it. But those
stories are for a different day.
I didn’t explain why or
how my ED was developed, just when, how’s not really important.
To most people, saying you have an eating disorder has become this "social trend." 1 in 10 men and women in the United States suffer or have suffered from an eating disorder. Only 35% get treatment. Bulimia nervosa is a serious disease and should not be taken lightley. If you or anyone have had any premature signs of an eating disorder please tell a loved one, its better to get help now then think you can fix it on your own. Its an addiction and should be treated as such.
I fell in love, got my
heartbroken, got arrested, almost failed out of high school and single handily
drove my mother to insanity.
I’m not saying I’m 100% again because I really couldn’t tell you what that feels like. But I’m doing
okay. I really am. It been the hardest year of my life and now that it’s coming
to a close I can’t wait to start fresh on Nantucket and leave all this recovery
nonsense behind me once and for all.
I take Zoloft everyday now for my depression and anxiety and I have an amazing team of doctors and (obviously) the best mom to help me balance out and get me through my recovery.
You can choose to believe
my stories or you cannot.
But let me just ask
you.....
How would you feel if
you were me?
My eating disorder has been a secret that I have held onto for the past 5 years to protect myself against other people opinions. Having an eating disorder didn't make me strong. My eating disorder destroyed my life. What made me "strong" was my support team of doctors and friends. They made me want to be strong. Without these amazing people in my life I doubt I would be alive today.Especially my mom. She saved my life.I don’t know where I’m going to be in 6 months or even a year from now, but I’m alive and I'm working on it and that’s good enough for me.
So hey cut me some slack okay,
I just woke up.
