Laying in the hospital bed with an IV pierced into my arm, stained with crisping blood, I remember vividly what I’d felt. The idea of my issues negatively impacting others weighed on my heart like a stone crushing a feather. I could not go on creating one issue after the next. Not to mention my sister was at home, in her bed, alone. Hearing the doctor talk about the lack of nutrients in my body and that if it continues I could be in more danger than I had ever been did not create fear inside of me. I was aware of what I was doing to myself. Hell, that was the goal, to deprive myself of so many things that my body shriveled up and shrunk to the size of a dried grape. 

At the age of 11 I developed a sense of guilt from eating. I noticed when eating, I would get a pit in my stomach the size of a basketball. This was the age I had just started becoming independent and with the lack of family dinners which my family had taking place at the time, as well as the little time I spent at home, it was easy for me to skip a meal. This continued to develop until I was at the point of losing a noticeably large amount of weight. At that time everyone let it pass for losing my “little kid chub.” That way of life went on for about a year with some fluctuations in my weight and severity. There were times in which my mother was skeptical, but because of my age, I think the idea of anything being “wrong” with me completely passed her mind. 

The first time the both of us accepted the situation at hand, I remember like it was yesterday. There were three days of no school due to snow. I was laying in my bed, the frost fogging my window. I have a little crack in my window frame so my bed is cold as ice during the months of winter. My nose was becoming numb from the seeping winds, so I’d decided to go downstairs for more blankets and to talk to my mother and sister with whom I had not interacted with in two days. 

When I sat up, pulling myself out of bed, my room began spinning faster than the “teacups'' ride I used to ride with my mother. The ones that she didn’t really want to ride because she was always left feeling sick. 

I sank back down into my bed and the fact of my not eating for the past three days became abundantly clear. My arms were weak and my eyes were bloodshot and drooping. There was a consistent shake in my leg creating a pattern of me grabbing it, letting it go, waiting for it to shake, then grabbing it again. Like a dog being locked away in its crate, I felt so stuck, so in need of someone. 

Eventually, I mustered up enough power to do what to anyone else, is such a simple act. I wobbled down the stairs, holding the side railing. I made my way to my mother slowly, my stomach turning in tight knots of worry. Seeing her face so concerned with my appearance, with the ghost-like figure I’d become, I had to tell her what I’d done. Hot, salty tears were streaming down my face and after many failed attempts of talking, leaving me with only sounds from my throat, I said “I haven’t eaten in three days.” My mother immediately grabbed me, pressing my head to her shoulder and I was immediately 8  years old, being held because I fell and scraped my knee. She then led me to the kitchen and attempted to feed me several different things. 

We went through my gagging at toast, refusal to eat fruit, nausea at fruit snacks, and then with a shaking hand and a weak, nearly destroyed stomach, I managed applesauce into my mouth. After an hour I finished the applesauce while my saving grace, my sister and mom sat by my side. After this experience, my family became sensitive to me, but unaware of how to address it, they just tried to help me eat, leaving me still in the struggle of healing. 

I once awoke, months later, my throat swollen. I was unwell. I was nearly passing out every few moments, hardly breathing because of the apparent throat virus I’d contracted. That was when my father decided we needed to make a visit to the hospital. There, they inserted an IV, struggling because of the deprivation of essential calories and nutrients. They pumped cold fluids through my veins. My fingers gripped the sides of the hospital bed, my whole body shaking. My dad helped me force some calories down my throat and eventually, with no ease, I was healthy enough to be released with the recommendation that I “eat more.” That was the experience which sparked my therapy and recovery. 

Though I still sometimes struggle to eat and I can guarantee that anyone else who has struggled with something similar still struggles,  no matter how long ago it happened, I will always remember the guilt I felt of my mother and father fearing the loss of their child and my sister being looked beyond because of me and because of my issues to be greater than the guilt I feel from fueling my body.