A month ago I moved from a suburb of Chicago, Illinois called Orland Park to Lancaster, California.

I was attending school at Northern Illinois University in Fall '07 for music performance.  I thought percussion was going to be my life.

Before college, I was ignorant to the fact that I was developing some issues.  I started isolating & lost contact with all of my friends.  I found myself spending minifortunes on food, hiding out in my room until I conquered it all to where it was too painful to move.  I was literally in pain from abusing my body by forcing more food than it wanted.

Now, after many months of treatment, I know that it was a (very unhealthy) way to cope with my feelings.  Instead of dealing with my emotions, I made it so I couldn't think about anything but the uncomfortable, sometimes tearful, pain.

It got to the point where I was late for school because I was too anxious.  I missed around 20 days or so of school senior year.  I would wear my corderoy jacket all the time because I couldn't stand the shape of my body & the thought of anyone looking at me & finding out what kind of a freak I was.  No matter how hot it got, I wouldn't take that stupid jacket off.  There were times where I was sweating, but it gave me something to think about instead of my emotions.

I struggled with old friendships & earlier this year of '08 I practically finished off any relationship left with them from my behavior.

On & off I'd try to control my eating by "trying to be anorexic" or by eating the same thing everyday so I knew how many calories were going into my body.

The thing was, I definitely had/have an eating disorder (though it is much more under control now), but you can't change your mental disorder to another one.  It doesn't work like that.

I was (obviously) struggling from binge eating disorder, & my face goes red when I write that.  It was something I just didn't want to really admit because it sounds more pathetic than the more known anorexia & bulimia.  It feels like people will just think you have no willpower & that was one more put down I couldn't bare.

Eventually I evolved into a new phase of overexercising.  My eating was still completely out of control, but I would count what I ate & make sure I burned it all off.

Another thing I learned from treatment:  overexercising is another way to purge other than physically ridding yourself of food or abusing laxitives- I know that's unpleasant to read, sorry.

The completely crazy thing is that I had no idea, even though I understood why I was doing it, that I had invested myself in the pretty little stages of an eating disorder.

2nd semester of senior year was ending & my weight was literally going up & down 10 lbs weekly.  It's all about control.  Because your life is out of control, you use your body & your weight to visually see how you're controlling something.  I know there's a lot of control's in there, I don't know another way to explain it.

You take it out on yourself instead of learning how to set boundaries- realizing that you can't please everyone & saying no to someone is also saying yes to yourself.  I had to learn that I can only control what my actions & reactions are.  You want to control other people's actions when it affects your life, but it's all about learning that you can only make decisions for yourself & no one else.  So if someone does something you dislike, all you can do is react without contol as your intention.

After graduation, I was a loner again even though my friendships were slightly mended with like used bandages I'll say (cause they weren't sturdy-if you didn't get that.)  Everyone was busy working towards something for school.

I had worked all year on my college auditions & now that they were finally over, I let myself go back into complete isolation.

I was so sick in my head.  I tried so many extreme behaviours.

I would walk 3 miles to the gym, workout, then walk back home.  After I got back I would crash for the rest of the day.  I couldn't do that for more than 2 days in a row.  During those 2 days, I would go down 10 lbs & for the next 4/5 days I would go right back up because I was too exhausted to do anything & I felt like a failure so I would just eat.  My job was on the same street as the gym, about 15 minutes down, so one time I tried to walk to the gym, work out, walk to work, work 5-6 hours, & walk home.  Yeah, I made it to work, felt like fainting the whole time & people were thinking I was being pissy, but the truth was that I wasn't nourished to funtion properly so my behaviour was unfriendly - which just caused me to put myself down even more.  I knew I couldn't walk home.  I called my mom to pick me up.

I remember this episode of 'Girls Next Door' when they were recording exercise videos.  This was one of the days where I was sitting around because of the strain from my ridiculous "workout" if you call it that.  More like "death sentence."  And so they were doing their one on one with the camera & were like, "honestly, the easiest way to lose weight is by sleeping.  You just sleep through half of the day & you eat half as much!"

I don't know if you're guessing what's next, but I drove to Walgreens & picked up some sleeping pills.

I feel so sorry for my desperation at that time.  It didn't work.  Actually everytime I took more, it worked less.  & in the end I wound up with hypersomnia (exhaustion from depression & tends to make you sleep abnormal amounts of hours & still feel exhausted) that I've been battling probably before that incident, but it definitely didn't help my energy issue.

When I went away to NIU, it was just a detinator waiting to go off.  It was definitely one of the worst experiences of my life & the worst I've ever felt about myself.

I had a semester amound of 200.00 on my ID card & spent about 100.00 on vending machines.

I started to buy ipecac.  So bad for you, but I just didn't care.  I didn't know what else to do.  Eventually all I had to do was smell it & that was enough.  To this day, anything that resembles the slightest scent or tast of that stuff makes me gag (again sorry for graphics).

When I got back for Christmas break, I was so tired of all of it.  I had heard that crystal meth was what some stupid stars were using & that's why they were thin.  I was negotiating with myself for a while, but chickened out.  I even tried looking up ways to get tapeworm.  Man it's so sad.

The day after Christmas I checked myself into a treatment center called Linden Oaks Hospital in Naperville, Illinois.  My whole family was shocked & my parents never really understood/understand.  They think it's just something you can give up.  2 of my 3 sisters suffer from bulimia as well.  It doesn't make a difference, my parents still don't think it's serious.  That was something that took a long time for me to let go of because it was holding me back from growing.  That's an example of not being able to control them putting more effort & understanding in this.  I had to realize that all I could do was express how I felt about their lack of attention & let it go.  Whatever their response is, all I can do is express myself & not hold onto them reacting the way I wanted.

But you know, it feels really good to know that I'll never use any behaviours like that again.

All of it just completely fucked up my metabolism.  When I first started treatment in December, I actually gained weight when I was on a scheduled meal plan (btw, we're not suppposed to look at our weights, it just feeds the mental sickness, but I was still looking.)  It was hard for me to trust them because I didn't understand why if I was eating properly, I would gain more weight than I already had from all of this.  It was so hard for me to trust them.  I guess bulimics, which is what it eventually turned in to, are more commonly overweight from all of the binging.  A misconception the media doesn't really expose.  But once proper eating takes place, it's common to gain weight at first because your metabolism needs to rebuild itself.  It took 6 months for it to start kicking into gear.  It was so uncomfortable living in my skin at a weight I wasn't even usually at.