The Girl

     When you see her on the street she is always smiles, always trying to add sunshine to everyone's day. She is the first person to jump in if help is needed without expecting anything in return. She succeeds at everything she puts her mind to, and everyone whispers about her potential. The girl has it so together that everyone around her wishes they knew her secrets. The only problem is that girl who you think has world in her hands is falling apart.
     Those smiles, the good grades, the awards, and helpful nature is all there to cover up the real girl...the girl she knows that no one could ever love. Everyone thinks her life is so on track, and they talk about her future, about all the amazing things she will do. None of them can see what she is hiding, the secrets that are tearing her apart everyday. It gets so hard to breathe some days she thinks she won't make it...she is so afraid and no one knows. No one knows that beneath her long sleeves are the marks of the crimson tears she cries every night when the lights go out. No one sees that she has stopped eating, and is obsessively watching the numbers on her scale fall everyday. She must be perfect, who could love her if they knew she was such a mess.
     She looks in the mirror everyday and can't find what it is that everyone thinks is so beautiful, so talented because all she sees is hate. Her mom has fallen in a bottle that can't get out of and the girl thinks that maybe, just maybe if she could be perfect than her mom could come back. There would be no more screaming, no more hiding the bruises...if only she were better. If she were more perfect her dad might actually see her, she could be something rather than nothing to a family that she has always disappointed. She wants to scream and break that mirror, shattering that stupid reflection staring back at her, but she practices the smiles and programmed responses hoping no one can see past the walls she has put up.
     The girl is so tired, so tired of hiding who she really is. She doesn't know how much longer she can do it, the secrets drown her more everyday. She has forgotten what it means to feel pain free, the only time she can truly breathe is when opens her own flesh.
Somehow the bleeding makes the pain go away, it is somehow escaping her body, but it always comes back in the morning. People have noticed her ever shrinking body, but now her diet has become an obsession that she can't stop. She was raised to never lie yet every time she opens her mouth another one escapes her lips without even second thought. She can see her walls breaking down, everyone is beginning to see that she is a wreck which only makes her fight harder to cling to her addictions. At this point she is so out of control she can't navigate the web of lies she had spun over the years. Her choices are limited now, too many questions from everyone, and one solution...RUN.
     She runs to a new place, to a whole new group of people who won't see past her smiles to the damaged person she has become. The only problem is that every time she thinks she is comfortable in a new place they start to notice that she isn't okay. They watch with a plate full of food that never actually finds its way to her mouth, but rather the nearest trash can. They spot a scar or cut on her arm, and it is just a little too perfect to have been an accident. The second they confront her she shuts down and heads for a new place. She has been running all of her life, she doesn't see a person worth saving, or deserving of anything but the pain she puts herself in everyday. They tell her she is pretty, smart, talented, etc yet she doesn't see it. The girl hates herself, she is trapped and she can't find a way out. Even when she screams at the top of her lungs nothing comes out. The only voice she hears is the one in her head calling her fat, worthless, pathetic, selfish, and so many other things that you wouldn't say to another person let alone yourself.
     Just like most nights the girl finds herself on the floor trying to bleed out the pain of the day when something changes. She is hopeless, the world has forgotten her, and she makes a choice. By the time the paramedics get there the girl isn't breathing surrounded by empty bottles and razor blades. That girl who brought sunshine with her smile will never smile again, and so many people will be left behind asking, "why"? Some people judge her and call her selfish because they can't understand why she did what she did. Others see themselves in the girl...hiding their starving bodies from the world, taking razor blades the their arms every night thinking no one can understand...they could never love me like this.
     That girl isn't just me, she is so many of us in this world right now. So many of us are sitting home in the dark clutching that blade praying so hard that you can beat it, that you don't have to do this, and then you fail again. Things become so hopeless, and going on seems too much. We all hide our true selves from the world thinking that if people knew how screwed up we were they wouldn't want to be around us. Just because this girl in here had to die doesn't mean we all have to. Believe me I know what it feels like to be on your floor crying out for some kind of strength to stop everything, some kind of answer that the pain will go away someday, and you are clutching that razor wanting so badly to throw it and tell someone what is going on. I also know what it is like to be afraid, so afraid that taking your own life seems to be the only way you can make it all go away and never come back. It is very easy to change the ending of this story, you have to reach your hand and admit that you are no okay. There are people who will help you and everyone will still love you. You can cry real tears on someone's shoulders instead of bleeding your pain away, you can learn how to eat again, and you can go on to have a good life. I know it is hard to reach out because we are all so afraid of that hand pulling back at the last instant like a joke leaving you more raw and more exposed than ever.
     I would be lying if I said that it is easy street now because there are plenty of struggles and old temptations. The girl here represents a lot of my own struggles except when the paramedics broke into my door I was still breathing, and I kept on breathing. We all need to be working on being our own "girl'"...stop covering up all the things that we think make us some undesirable person. The thing is that generally what you hate about yourself someone else loves like your eyes, your smile, the fact you are full figured...etc. You can be the girl that recovers and goes on to help others find their way out of their own darkness, and get that voice back so they can speak for themselves. You get to be someone who doesn't have to constantly juggle a thousand lies at once while waiting for it all to come crashing down. You are allowed to have a voice, to say how you feel without having to hurt yourself. There will always be people who try to pull you down, family members who will joke at your expense, family members whom you will never please, and stupid boys (there is plenty of time for boys later). You aren't alone because we are all out here for you. Please don't have a tragic ending like this girl did.
    
      To the rest of the world take some time to get to know people, and learn to look past their smiles and stand with them through the dark days, and someday they can return the favor. We don't take the time to really get to know people that often anymore, to break down those barriers and just dig into who the person is, including ourselves. We think that if we are honest then no one is going to want us. People can surprise you if you give them a chance, and you can truly feel what it means to smile and let go. The tragedies can be prevented, we don't have to be the girl/boy from above. We can't stop every ignorant bully in the universe, but we can stand together and fight. We put down the razors and use our voices.

Holiday Pain

     When I woke up this morning my first thought wasn't, "Yes, I'm ready to get my Christmas on". In all honesty the only thing that came to my mind as I stared at my ceiling gathering up the courage to get out of bed was, "Lord, give me the strength to get through this day with only a few tears, and give my son the best Christmas I can". I have struggled with my own hardships these last few months, and the last thing I've wanted to do was put up a Christmas tree and smile like there was nothing wrong. I was ashamed that I was too broke to buy my son a bunch of Christmas presents, and the only reason he had some under the tree was because of some amazing people that blessed us in our hard times. I began to wonder as I sit here alone in my house, my son going to bed, everyone else coming home from their family dinners how many other people were hiding pain behind those smiles this year?
     When you look at pictures from the holidays everyone is beaming ear to ear with grins, but how many of those grins are truly genuine? Just because it is Christmas or any holiday for that matter doesn't mean that things magically get better in our lives, we simply learn to hide it better because that is what is socially acceptable. We are taught that no one wants to hear your tragedy when they say, "Merry Christmas". I was around some family today and not one of them asked how I was doing, or how I got through opening "Santa" presents with my Firefly without crying wishing my husband was here seeing our son get excited about his new toys. It was very lonely this morning, just me and my lil Firefly sitting in the living room opening up gifts, me trying to help him and take pictures for my husband, and then after we got done at my parent's house I came home to my house just me and the Firefly. It is amazing how quiet it gets sometimes without him here. I still walk down the stairs some days and expect him to be in the kitchen, but I know that he isn't, and won't be for a long time. It breaks my heart for him to call me and there is nothing I can do to make his holiday better...we are both serving time, forced to be apart.
     Believe me I know that some of you are like, "How are you in prison, he is the one stuck behind the locks for not doing anything wrong"? I am not locked in a room being told what to do all the time, but I am being kept from the man I love. I have taken on the life of a single mom for a little while, while being sick, and while spending every spare second trying to free my husband from this false charge. It is heartbreaking to wake up to our son crying for his daddy still thinking he is going to be there for their morning breakfast routine, and you think he is only two and would forget...he doesn't. I miss him so much it hurts my heart deeper than I thought possible, I have stacked crap up on our bed so I don't have to feel the void next to me where my husband should be. The holidays really mean very little to me this year, I put on the smile for my son because he deserves to have a good holiday even if his mommy is struggling. At the end of everyday that little boy gives me the strength to wake up and fight all over again, and I know that is a blessing not everyone has.
     I know so many of you are hiding the pain you feel this time of year whether it be the pain of losing someone you love, trouble in the family, money problems, illness, or so many other things that hurt us. I wanted to let you know that you are absolutely not alone this Christmas. I know how much it hurts to smile and laugh when you would rather lock yourself away and just cry or disappear. You have to understand there is nothing wrong with you if you are struggling, I promise you more of us are struggling through the holidays than laughing. Everyone is hiding something or stressed out about trying to afford presents or getting the right presents for everyone. Don't get me started on how commercialized we are, and that we can only show love by gifts...that frustrates me. This is just a really hard time of year for so many people.
     I'm writing this for all of you who are finding yourself sitting alone in your rooms after peeling off the make up and gift wrappings that made you look perfect this holiday season. You are surrounded by stuff and yet tears still stream down your face for whatever reason. I know what you are thinking..."There is something wrong with me". But, I can promise you there isn't, it is okay to be sad or need help this time of year because lots of people do. Years ago I use to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas just smiling ear to ear and then when I got home I would go back to my room, back to the darkness inside me, and I would take a razorblade to my flesh. I couldn't be happy like everyone else, the stuff I pulled paper off of didn't fill whatever that emptiness was inside of me, and I was right back to where I was before it all. Now, I am blessed to not feel the need to turn to those old demons, I have a son who needs me to be whole not starving or bleeding. But, not everyone has the support to get through this without resorting to their demons whatever they may be. I hate to think of the people who are alone and scared turning to their addictions to get through the pain...YOU AREN'T ALONE! I think about those people who take their lives around the holidays and it breaks my heart. I know what it is like to give up, I've swallowed the pills myself, and only woke up in the ICU by the grace of God. But, waking up after that night was enough to let me know that I didn't want to die, and so I think about those who succeed who would have had a long life full of possibilities ahead of them if they would have been given the chance to just wake up the next day. So, I'm writing this to tell you that you aren't alone, that there are tons of us that are sitting alone right now crying wishing we were with the ones we loved or wishing we had a better relationship with our families, and you don't have to hurt yourself to show this.
     Believe me, I understand how much the pain eats away at you and you think you just can't make it another day. Pain has a way of draining you in every way possible, it makes you tired physically and emotionally, and eventually it feels like too much. I know as it gets harder and harder to live with you turn to other ways to get through, drugs, alcohol, razors, starving, etc ...anything to make it feel better, anything to help you keep up the smile for others. I have been there, you want someone to tell you that it is okay to not be okay, and I'm telling you that right now. Believe me when I say it took courage, prayer, and support of some good friends to get me through this holiday season without my husband. Christmas has been hard since my mom died six years ago, we lost her on December 8 kind of made things like my birthday on December 20 and Christmas seem unimportant without her. Then the year after my mom passed we lost my great grandma two days after Christmas, once again another black cloud over the holiday season. My heart began to open up again when I met my husband and had my son, but this year my husband and I only spoke on the phone for a few minutes. I know not everyone has a kid that keeps the fighting through these tough days, but I can offer you my friendship and a promise that if you ask me to talk I won't leave you alone in the dark. I don't want to read about anyone hurting themselves because the pain of the holidays was too much. I promise you that you don't want to die, and it will just bring a whole new set of troubles to your family. Living is amazing, I know it is hard, and often times makes you want to give up, but the thing about it is you never know what is around the corner. I believe that even in the darkest hours of our lives there is still the possibility that the light will shine through again, we just have to keep up the fight, and when we see people struggling to win the battle on their own we help them out. It is amazing the capability of people if they aren't forced to stand alone.

So, you want an eating disorder?

    Lately I've been noticing more and more online how many people are actively striving for an eating disorder, and it frigging baffles me. My whole universe for almost ten years revolved around food, weight, and running away from hospital admissions. I can't even remember how my diet turned into anorexia, nor what point the scale started to dip lower and lower. The only thing I can tell you at that time was I was determined, the more weight I lost the more my mom would be proud of me, the better I would look, and the list goes on. I hid everything and when it got to the point that people started to question me I found anyway and everyway to lie about what was going on because in my mind I did not have an eating disorder. By the time I realized something was wrong it was already too late, I wasn't me anymore I was a walking eating disorder. When you spoke to me the only thing I could talk about was weight and food, I constantly moved even when forced to sit down, I would have bruises on my hips from "checking" how my bones were sticking out, every trip to the bathroom meant stripping down to nothing to weigh and being prepared to punish myself for the slightest gain, and that is just a short list of my rules.
     I don't understand why you would want to strive for this. You don't get to live while you are in an eating disorder, rather you exist. Your smiles and responses are all programmed, "smile, laugh, and they won't know", you spend the weekends in your room doing sit ups while your friends are at parties, and, in my case, when everyone got to go to college I got put in a hospital. Do you know what happens when they put you in the hospital? You go from being able to make decisions for yourself to having everything taken from you. When you are admitted you get to watch while they dig through all of your stuff looking for contraband. After they take some of your stuff away they send you to a room where you wait for some admission counselor to come in and explain the rules, all of which will go completely against the "rules" you had been following. You will weigh everyday BACKWARDS and not be told the number. You will eat all of your food in a certain amount of time or you will drink a supplement. If you refuse your supplement long enough you will have a tube shoved down your nose and it isn't pleasant and doesn't make you the coveted "sickest". Now the food rules...no cutting or tearing into small pieces, you must eat a sandwich whole, 1 packet of each appropriate condiment, no mixing foods, no avoiding fat, no hoodies or jackets at meals, your pockets can be searched, and those are just the most basic. Does this sound fun yet because it gets better? How long have you been using the bathroom and showering without a babysitter? Guess what that is a thing of the past, enjoy peeing with someone standing in the door. Enjoy having to stumble to the nurse's station in the middle of the night for them to let you in your locked bathroom. They come in and check on you while you are asleep to make sure you aren't working out. EVERYTHING you do is watched and there are consequences for rules broken.
     I know you are probably thinking that is horrible, and it isn't fun if you are the one being treated, but there is no other way. I rebelled against my treatment team for so long thinking they just hated me and wanted to take away the only thing I'd ever done right. The thing is I wasn't in my right mind, I was literally starving myself to death...I couldn't even see what I was losing. All my friends were in school getting to have fun and do all those crazy things kids do while I was being held down on a hospital bed while they put a tube down my nose. And, I know if you are suffering from and eating disorder your brain is say, "Tubed means hardcore, if I get tubed I must be doing something right"....NOT!!!! Let me just tell you they hurt and not just when they are placed. You lay there tethered to a pole watching something drip into you that is completely out of your control, and if you pull it out there are consequences. Once the tube is in the only way to get it out is to start eating, not saying you will eat, but eating on top of the tube feed. Believe me I know we would joke about being tubies, but I want to make it clear that it is not the way to go and if you are sick and don't have a tube don't question the severity of your problem. Anytime you are intentionally starving, purging, or doing anything that harms your body like that you are very sick and in a lot of danger. 
     Does any of what I've said so far sound fun? You think the obsession with weight and all that makes your life easier, but it puts you in a place where you are completely and utterly alone. The disease requires that you isolate from the rest of the world because you have one task to focus on...losing weight. You cry as you watch your hair fall out, as you deal with the pain of muscle wasting, and that feeling like you are in a black hole you can't escape. There is no happiness, the scale that you coveted is now your ruler, despite hating it you have to kneel to it. If your weight is up there is punishment and if it is down it is never down enough. I was looking through some of my recovery stuff and I found something I had written down that said, "If only I were perfect the punishment could finally stop". The thing is as long as you are in your eating disorder the punishment will never stop because you will never be perfect. The more you realize how much you are consumed the more desperate you become, and before long life doesn't seem worth it anymore and you try to hurt yourself...I was blessed to survive my attempt, but unfortunately I know many who were not and it is completely heartbreaking.
     Eating disorders are not a goal they are illnesses that kill so many young and old people everyday. It is an obsession that you will do anything to protect because the idea of having anything in your body to nourish it just seems to horrible to fathom. This is NOT something you can make a choice to have, and it has nothing to do with weight or food. The starving, purging, over exercising, laxative abuse, and all the other destructive behaviors are symptoms of a much deeper problem. For me it was so much more than control, it was a way to control my own pain. When I was starving or hurting myself I could decide how much pain I would feel and no one else could hurt me, no one else could get through, and I could keep it together. The thing is that I never had it together and the second they would feed me all those things that were starved deep down inside of me or that I bled away would hit me like a truck, and that would cause panic. My brain would go into crisis mode and I would immediately start acting like I was crazy. I would cry and scratch at my stomach screaming that I could feel I was fatter, I would obsessively pace around my hospital room until I had to physically be sat down, and I would be completely engrossed with the lies screaming in my head, "You fat, worthless failure...get up, you don't deserve rest, purge, run, cut...do anything to punish your weakness". I literally believed what I heard in my head as fact, I believed that everyone else was lying to me when they told me they loved me, that I wasn't fat, or that I didn't have to live like this. I was living in my own nightmare, and couldn't find my way out.
     If you are attempting to glorify eating disorders, please understand that they are very serious mental illnesses that have a super high mortality...that means a lot of people dying. Just the fact that you want an eating disorder in itself shows that you have some serious body image issues because no one should want to be sick or have the ability to starve themselves and throw up on command. Please understand this will take everything from you...I could be a musician today, but anorexia took over and I lost it. I also lost everyone's trust because every word that came out of my mouth was generally a lie, and pretty soon all those lies you've spun out there get really hard to keep track of. You are beautiful the way you are and a number on the scale does not have anything to do with your self worth. I know that I might have seemed attacking earlier, it is because I know the pain that an eating disorder puts a person and their loved ones through and from the depths of my heart want to protect you from it. Once you start there is no stopping without help. You are worth more than that.
     To my beautiful people who are fighting an eating disorder right now, and you feel like the claws are in tight and there is no way to free yourself from it. Keep fighting because you can beat this. I was labeled chronic, all but one doc told me I would never recover, and everyone was worn out dealing with it...I found recovery. I am far from recovered, but I no longer live by the scale and die by the scale. I can smile for real and even laugh sometimes, and I have one heck of a cute lil man who loves me. I am thankful everyday that I survived my eating disorder, thankful a friend found me on the night I tried to kill myself. Believe me I know that having an eating disorder is far from a choice, but the only way to get better is to fight back, to show that voice in your head screaming the lies that you aren't gone, and you will fight back. Help is available, but a lot of the time you have to reach your hand out to grab it. Eating disorders are deadly and we've all thought at some point or another that it just couldn't happen to us, but then someone dies. When you see a young person laying I in a coffin having never had a chance to live her life, and you realize everything she lost...everything you are currently losing. There is hope for a future without the rigid rules you set for yourself, without being a certain number on the scale, and without faking your emotions. It is okay to feel and okay to cry. This all sucks, but with determination and support you can get through it. We have to stand together and stop competing for the "who's the sickest" title...WE ARE ALL VERY, VERY SICK! I don't care if you are sixty pounds or two hundred and sixty pounds and if you are struggling you are sick. There is no magic number that pops up on the scale that will convince you that you are finally sick enough to maybe try help. Guess what...a fairly good majority of people who die from eating disorders are not underweight. You deserve to live a life not just exist to hurt yourself because I promise you it is impossible to be a functioning human being with an eating disorder. Imagine having a lunch meeting and the panic that will ensue as you try to find something "safe" to order, then you have to try and control your food rituals, and afterwards try to sneak to the bathroom without people wondering why. That is far from a life. Please keep fighting.