Most kids want to run away from their parents, the only people in the world you can hate so much and still love at the same time. But I’m not most people, and didn't’t want to run away from my parents, I wanted to run away from myself. Have you ever felt that white hot sensation that bubbles up in your blood? It pumps through your whole body in seconds, lighting that painful spark in every cell. Every second that passes it boils hotter, building up the uneasiness that trembles through you like an earthquake, uncontrollable and terrifying. Have you ever caved into that feeling? Let it absorb every bit of you that was good and happy, transforming your very own body into some restless blob that just lays there to foreign to know anything about itself. I have, and I wish on everything thing still whole and beautiful in this world that I hadn’t. I would give anything to take it back, to fight for myself when I couldn’t before. That helplessness that consumed the girl I once knew is something I never want to see again. This is my story.


I slam my bedroom door with as much force as I can muster in my fragile state, and collapse on my bed. I lie there in silence so loud it’s deafening. I am so weak, just lifting a finger feels like I’m lifting a whole mountain, too much for me to bear. Still, I force myself off the bed and open the drawer. I try to brace myself for what is about to come, no matter how many times I do this it will never seem right, still I feel this overpowering wave of guilt that threatens to break me. I take out the journal and the tape measure and lock the door.


I stare blankly at the numbers in front of me, numb to the bone and exhausted beyond repair. Through the cloudiness the numbers are shockingly bold. They taunt me in my nightmares, drive me deeper into this inanity, and block me from seeing the truth. Now in my state of confusion, the numbers seem to be staring back at me, taunting me yet again, and pushing me to do everything I was told was wrong. The grinding sound of my empty stomach brings me back to the present, the choice I must make yet again. It’s simple really, to everyone on the outside. Eat or not to eat. That’s all it is, the decision I am forced to make every day now. Unfortunately, I make the wrong decision, but it’s so hard to tell what’s right and what’s wrong these days. This decision is one that will stay with me for the rest of my life, only how am I supposed to know that? I close the journal and lie back down on my bed. I have made my choice for today, and yet again, it is the wrong one.

I wake with cold sweat running down my back, the images of my nightmare still vivid in my mind. I can’t take it anymore, the guilt and the worry that my secret will be discovered is getting to be too much for me to handle on my own. I can’t stay here like this, I have to run. I sloppily throw on an old t-shirt and track shorts and close the back door quietly behind me. I’m running before I even hit the driveway. I don’t know where I’m going, the only thing I can concentrate on is moving forward. I don’t know how fast I’m running until I pass the lake that marks the beginning of my usual trail. I can’t seem to stop my feet from going farther and farther into the woods. Putting more and more distance between who I have become and who I really am with each step. I am not running away from the family who has no idea how sick I really am; I am running away from myself. From the girl who has no idea what she has done to her own body, or how much help she really needs. I don’t stop running until I’m back at the lake, out of breath and out of strength. Then it hits me, like a wall of bricks, and I see the truth of what has been happening for two years now. I know what I have done to myself and that it needs to stop right here right now. The truth has been right in front of me the whole time, but I was too wrapped up in my own sickness to see it. I ran away from myself every time I got close to seeing the truth. That stops now, because I don’t want to run anymore.