I had never felt insecure before my fifth grade year. I wore a pair of shorts one day and realized they didn’t look similar to any other pair anyone had on in the class. I took it to heart and decided that those shorts weren’t the move. Sixth grade I tried a lot of different styles and was just happy with myself as a child and made some friends, one of which is still my closest friend today. Seventh grade everything hit at once. I realized I was not as smart as the other kids in my advanced math class and that I would actually have to work for my grades. I never could find the motivation to study and realized i was in for a harder time than i had planned. At the same time I was always on tumblr and found that area commonly known as ✨pro ana tumblr✨. yeah fuck that. i started to fixate on how those girls looked and how i didn’t. (of course i didn’t !!!! i was 12 years old and had started puberty only a year ago.) but who was i to realize i had more growing and developing to do? i wanted to look like how they did! so i kept looking at them and became obsessed with the lives they lived and the things they posted. i then got a phone, and moved on to the same idea, but on instagram. i realized that i could. i could be on the same page as them. so there i went. decided to make my own account. my bio looked similar with my “cw”, “gw”, and my “lw” i posted pictures of these thinner girls and thought that i truly would love myself as much as i loved them if i became them. with these posts i would write captions witj my goals for the next day, how far i ran or how little i ate. i didnt think anything of it. on a similar note, i started self harming at the time. had read so much about other people doing it as punishment, as disturbing as that is, and i started doing it as a form of coping. that was a whole other problem that lasted nearly as long as the soon to develop eating disorder. so at that point i was tracking calories, planning meals for weeks ahead, and running all the time. after a while, i binges, gave in, and went back to eating normally and occasionally binging for a while. eventually that grew into realizing i wanted to go back to what i was doing before. bounced between restricting to binging to restricting to binging and fell weak to a cycle many have before me eventually i read of another person who had a similar problem including the word “purging”. they spoke of it as a relief and a great help to them. so as one does, i looked into it. read how to do it. read what it was supposed to do. how it was supposed to help. so there i was, in 9th grade. purging when i thought i ate “too much”. so let’s go back to that restricting cycle. so let’s imagine tht, but now add purging after the word binging. now i had another bit of spice in the cycle. ok so at this time i was overweight just a tad because of the sudden eating an excessive amount a lot of the time. i fell victim to purging after dinner probably twice a week, then eating normally, then purging again, back and forth until the summer before 10th grade. there i was, a healthy weight, so u healthy however. often out of breathe, obsessed with taking pictures in the mirror and writing down my weight in the morning, afternoon and night 10th grade started, dropped the restricting and i have never picked that back up. i fell victim to purging. all of tenth grsde i would say it was moderate. summer before 11th grade it was truly awful. once it twice a day, every day all summer. at this point i had been dating my girlfriend for about half a year. i told her most of the time when i purged and she encourages me to tell someone in my house and help myself to stop. she knew it was a problem, she helped me out greatly by allowing me to talk about my pure fear of gaining weight that was ridiculous. she didn’t question it if i refused to eat something just cause i didn’t want to purge it and disappoint both of us, like i was bound to. i started 11th grsde, began purging a little less. i opened up to the rest of my friends a little bit into 11th grade and realized that i truly did have a support system. both my girlfriend and one of my friends pushed me to talk to a school therapist who i had considered contacting before. i just finished eleventh grsde a few months ago, and i’m glad i did talk to someone about it. i still fight the urge to purge quite often and i still need to work on my self image as i have developed quite some body issues from years of eating porboems and staring in mirrors, as anyone would. it’s frightening looking back, as how often i used to purge has truly affected my habits, how i eat, what i eat, my teeth!!!c the obsessive amount of water i drink. but im done ranting for now thank u <3