๐๐ผ๐ ๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ผ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ถ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ
I still remember the first day this all began for me. It was mid-2020, and I was 14, sitting in my room, scrolling through my phone. Thatโs when I came across this one beautiful girl. The video showed her crying on her bathroom floor with the caption: "My mom said it's time for dinner."
At first, I didnโt understand what it meant. Then I checked the comments and saw people providing contextโthey explained she had an eating disorder. For some reason, at that moment, it felt like she was telling me that if I wanted to be beautiful, I had to starve myself. If I starved myself, I thought, I could look like her.
I had no idea this moment would impact the next 4 years of my life. That same day I didn't eat anything until my mom called me for dinner. It was all I could think about that day. The next day I repeated this cycle. I would start engaging with ED videos and content until that was all on my feed. I came across someone talking about "EDtwt" ( Eating Disorder Twitter, a side of Twitter that promotes such stuff ). I decided to look into it and it sent me down a rabbit hole. I remember that same day, I must have spent 3 hours just looking through all the threads, thinspo, fatspo, meanspo, sweetspo, all of this content enabled me further. It was triggering me more and more.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐บ๐ฝ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐
I recall the nights when I would just stay up staring at myself in the mirror crying, telling myself over and over again "You are fat, you are ugly, no one will ever love you if you look like this." I would hide myself in baggy clothing. Feelings like I had to shield others around me from how ugly my body was to look at.
Somehow, I canโt recall exactly how, but my coworkers caught on to what I was doing. They would have endless talks with me, telling me I shouldnโt be doing this and that I needed help. I wouldnโt listenโIโd try to defend myself. Looking back, I realize how insane I sounded, and how mentally ill I truly was. My coworkers even started taking me out to dinner after our shifts, trying their best to help me. I felt immense guilt walking to the restaurant's back room to purge it all up. I felt sad knowing my coworkers were trying to help me but nothing they did helped me because I was so convinced at the time that they were trying to sabotage me but in reality, they were trying to help me.
I distance myself from my friends because I associate social events with the involvement of food and I would rather stay home than risk the chance of me having natural urges to eat. This then caused me to lose all my friends. I was alone and all I had was the goal weight I was trying so desperately to achieve. I stopped doing my school work because the lack of foodI hurt my focus. I became angry every day because I would be starving. I put my anger out on everyone, including my parents which fortunately caused them to catch onto what was happening.
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐๐๐ฒ๐บ๐ฝ๐
My parents found out what I was doing and decided to send me to a recovery center this past January ( 2024 ) . I spent 2 months there. Looking back it wasn't that bad and I started to really recover. I met some nice friends there and it was nice to be in an environment surrounded with people who I felt understood me. When I returned in March I thought that I was freed. I started to eat normally again and reconnected with all the people I stopped talking to. For the first time in 3 years, t I felt happy again. Until, I met a person of interest.
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐น๐ฎ๐ฝ๐๐ฒ
In May I met a guy. I was so interested in him and I wanted to be perfect for him. So I relapsed, and all those edTWT propaganda tweets of "no one will love you if you're fat" returned. I started to stave myself again, I re-downloaded Twitter and it felt as if I was at the start again, repeating this endless, pain-ridden cycle. The days when I would go see him and I thought I looked too fat I would cry. I begin to despise myself once more.
One night I was going on the train home after seeing him and I started to cry, not because I thought I looked fat that day but because I realized he didn't think I was fat. I never was fat. I made all of this up in my head. It's almost like I was brainwashed all these years like so many others. He never looked at my body thinking it was disgusting like I thought. It didn't end there, I would now starve myself for significant intervals of time, and when I saw something triggering it would start up again and then go back down. It was a constant cycle and it felt never-ending, I felt recovered at times and at others I felt as if I had returned to my old habits
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐
I started to open about what what I was doing to other people, and I never thought I would listen and take to account what they told me but I did. I took the time to hear them out and reflect on what I was truly doing. I had to ask myself, "Do I want to live the rest of my life in this pain or can I let go and be happy." right then and there I made my decision, I could not go on doing this. Being sent to a recovry place was not the solution. Asking myself this simple question was. Ever since this night i've been happier, really happier because I know this time its genuine and im freed from this part of my life that used to consume me.
๐๐ผ๐ป๐ฐ๐น๐๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป
Recovering from an eating disorder has been one of the hardest but most rewarding times of my life. Itโs taken time, patience, and the support of those around me to rebuild a healthy relationship with food and my body. If I could say one thing to others, itโs to never let societyโs unrealistic expectations make you feel less than enough, youโre worth so much more than that.
Tags - @RainbowDash @neymar @choripan @ifsixwasnine @lemonpie
TLDR: OP details struggles with eating disorders, relapsing, and mental health as a result of eating disorders, and most peoples words did not benefit them until they found something that worked.
Last edited:
