"Hello Medusa.
First I would like to thank you for your blog. It has kept me from falling deeper into the abyss of eating disorders. Thank you so much for your work and sharing our stories. You help us getting through this. Also, I would like to apologize for my English. It's not my mother language and it's not very good... I'll try to do my best with it. I won't send you a picture of me... because... I'm a coward and I'm paranoid someone will find out my secret. I hope nevertheless that you will read my story. I really need to share it.
I do, however, have a blog I'd like to show you. It's mostly in Spanish, but it has some posts in English. Its address is http://namelesshumanoid.blogspot.com. That blog, which I named "I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all" as a sign of wanting to feel and live in spite of my pain, is the only place where I can write down all the things I can't tell the people I know. Writing is my therapy, the only escape I have from my crazy mind. Writing is the only thing I'm good at. Writing is my life.
This is... so damn hard to write. Because, I don't have the typical ED story. I have never been diagnosed with anything. Nobody suspects anything. I'm not even underweight, or at least not visibly underweight. I don't even know if I'm anorectic or bulimic or EDNOS or what... I just know this cannot be normal. I know I have a problem, and I know I have to admit it, get help.
But I can't.
My blogger nickname is Yanagi. Yanagi means willow in Japanese. And my name is Natalia. I've always wanted to be as strong as a willow is. I'm Colombian and I'm sixteen years old. I have this issues since I was fourteen, but their evil seed has always been on me.
I've never been the kind of person who likes to be helped. I like to do everything on my own. And do it perfectly. I hate criticism and I hate failing. I can't stand it. I've always wanted to be recognized for something, but all I achieve is a fake reflection of what I really am.
Maybe I have lost any idea of who I am. Ana and Mia stole it from me.
This comes from my family. My mom had anorexia when people didn't even care what anorexia was. She is slightly shorter than I am (I'm 5'6 and she's 5'5) and she got to weigh 90 pounds when she was my age. She didn't eat or sleep and she had lots of problems with my grandmother. One night she fainted. The doctor told her that either she ate or quit school. She picked eating. But even now she doesn't have a healthy relationship with food and body image. Her weight is stable around 110, but she thinks she's fat. She loves seeing me get thinner, and always congratulates me when I do. My sister has gastric problems, so the highest weight she has attained is 108. She's so skinny and has always made me feel so fat in comparison! And my grandmother is always checking if I eat or not and what I eat. She has made food something incredibly important for me.
I've always felt fat and ugly. I was very unpopular when I was younger. My sister and my aunt always told me I was chubby and needed to lose weight. Now I look at pictures and I know I wasn't that chubby! Not every 10 years old is as slim as a stick! I just happened to be kind of short and have a tummy. The girls in my school were not kinder. They called me "the ugliest girl in the classroom" and "chihuahua dog". They showed their prepubescent flat tummies at each other and I felt so fat. Their mothers took them to gyms. They went to parties. Boys liked them. They wore fashionable clothing. They had many friends. And I was always this nerdy fat lonely weirdo who liked reading and heavy metal.
Then I went through puberty. I got a lot taller. And went from weighing under 110 to weighing over 130. I didn't freak out, but I didn't like my weight. I always lied saying it was lower than it really was. I started loathing everything about me. My hair, long and messy as it was. My nose. My skin and its pimples. My wide hips. My tummy. My thighs. My arms. My nails. My big, rat-like, teeth. I was depressed because of many things that happened to me during that time, like my parents' divorce. I started cutting myself. I wanted to die. I cut my arms, legs and even my lips. I cried and cried... but I never asked for help.
I survived pretty well that depression, though. But then something worse happened: I discovered pro ana sites. I accidentally started reading one of them, as I've been a blogger for a very long time. First I hated those blogs, I was horrified and considered pro ana girls stupid. But... My curiosity increased. I created a blog, just to check what their world was like. I had a need to belong somewhere, too.
But.... I was such a fool. I never imagined how weak I was and how easy it was for me to fall.
I looked at this girls' photos and thinspiration. I decided that it was true I was fat. And I didn't want to have an eating disorder, I just thought that this... pro ana advice.... could help me to look fit and lose a few pounds. Such a fool! Me! The smart girl who would never do shallow dumb things like getting an ED.
Somewhere, somehow, I lost it. I lost control.
I'm not underweight. I'm almost underweight, I'm 106 pounds. But I hate food. I've barely eaten this week. Sometimes I binge. And sometimes I purge. But I hate myself. I want to get thinner! I want to be 100 pounds! I want to be pretty and perfect... But I'm afraid this will take me away from everything I care about.
Now I have the "perfect life". I have many friends who like the same things I like, I have freedom, money, my lovely family, a boyfriend who loves me, I do well at school, I know what to do with my life, I have lots of fun every weekend, I don't have many responsibilities, people in school respect me now...
But I feel so empty... That's why I say I'm crazy. I have everything and I still feel like I have to be thin to be loved. I don't understand myself. I'm very afraid of loneliness, depression and death. I'm afraid of the EDs.
This is a poem I wrote about purging... It's not very good, but here it is:
Please forgive me.
I'm a sinner, I'm a criMInAl.
My throat hurts, my voice is silent.
My mouth tastes like blood.
Please forgive me.
Please repent me.
Wash my mouth.
Heal my fingers.
Raise my voice.
Clean the blood.
Take me to the good path.
Please... forgive me.
Medusa, I still have hope. I want to recover... I left the pro ana community long ago. So I think I will be able to win this battle. I want to tell all the girls in my situation that thinness is not happiness, and that they can't lose hope. Hope is the last thing to lose.
I also sent you a picture of a vintage ad. It's in Spanish, but it reads " DON'T BE SKINNY. Be a woman of great proportions. PLUS-FORMA generates flesh on the thinnest silhouettes..."
Isn't it funny how times have changed? Thank you very much for reading this,
Natalia."
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