Stick thin

I sat staring at the plate of food in front of me. How could I eat that? All that fat and calories, makes me sick just to think about it. Everybody around me was eating it, stuffing there faces. I noticed my dad looking at me watching my every move. I knew he was watching to see if I was eating. I knew that he would say something. If I didn’t eat part of it, he would force me to, like the other night. That was awful, he was practically pushing the food into my mouth. The taste and the smell was so strong I thought I was going to be sick.

After the meal, I ran upstairs to the bathroom. How could I have eaten that awful food. I lent over the toilet and threw it all back up, trying to be as quiet as I could so as not to let the rest of the family hear. I drank some water, then excused my self and went to bed.

I had been so tired lately, I used to go running and swimming, but now I was out of breath just running upstairs. I thought it was the fact I was fat that was making me out of breath. That’s when I first noticed I had to change what I ate. I started eating less and less day by day until I was barely eating anything.

The days were worse than the nights. At school my friends kept telling me to eat. “Eat your dinner” they would say. But they didn’t understand they were all stick thin size 8’s and then there was me the blob in a size 12. I longed to be like them, they didn’t understand I envied them so much and when they went on saying “ oh, I am so fat, look”, when there was nothing there at all.

When I reached a size 10 I was so happy. But that wasn’t good enough I wanted to be lower. I threw up every meal, I felt so ill. My family could tell. I was a size 6 by now. They kept saying “ Beth, eat” but I knew better than them, they were just jealous because they didn’t look as good as me.

I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was starting to get spotty. I had always had such perfect skin and now it had changed. My hair was thinner, my face so thin. It was at this moment that I realised that this wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be pretty so that I looked like the other girls, I wanted the boys to notice me. All I had done was make myself uglier than I was before. I had to get help I had to tell someone about it, anyone that could make it better.

I plucked up the courage and sat my mum down. I told her that I thought I had a problem and that I wanted to get help. She was really supportive of me and took me to a special clinic where they helped me see that food wasn’t a bad thing if you ate in moderation. I tried to eat and some days it was really hard for me. I kept thinking maybe I could go back to my old ways. But I didn’t I kept on going until I was a healthy size 6. At my lowest time I was a size 2. All the clothes I wore hung off me. How did I get to be as bad as that? I still had a long way to go till I was back to normal, but somehow deep inside, I knew I was going to be ok.