“When will the leaves change?” I asked, drawing a finger along the fogged window. “Soon. Have patience.” My mom smiled at me, and took my hand. “Have something to eat. You must be hungry!” I frowned at the bagel she offered me, and shook my hand out of hers. “No, mom. I’ll get fat.”

There began my struggle with anorexia. It’s a long winded, decade spanning story, but a story nonetheless. It was a battle with a society that did not understand, and fought only by a lone soldier with no armor. She had lost it all to a disease that still haunts her to today.

“It all began in 4th grade.” My mom tries to explain it to countless people, trying to make them understand. I had entered the battle completely unprepared, without even a sword to defend myself against the oncoming slaughter. “She never really stopped eating.” My mom whispers. “She just ate less and less each day.”

9 years old, and each calorie was counted. My math homework was done on the side of cereal boxes, adding them up to the side of the milk carton. I multiplied how little I could eat without my parents noticing. But, of course they noticed. They noticed the gaunt cheeks, the bowed knees, and the knobbled hips. They could count my ribs.

“It was a healing process.” My mom says. “But we pulled through.” After about a year of near-starvation, I narrowly avoided being hospitalized. My parents slowly helped me, introduced me to foods that I couldn’t count, and paid close attention to their eldest daughter.

I began basketball, and found the outdoors. I was happy again! “We thought it was over.” She says, her voice straining. “We thought we had solved the problem.” I, too, thought the battle was conquered. I had armor now, and food had not been said in a whisper in almost 5 years. I had been so convinced the battle had been won!

Alas, it came back, with reinforcements that conquered and burned the city. “It took her over. She became obsessed. She was unrecognizable.” She whispers this in a quiet breath. 6 years after my first interaction with anorexia, it came again.

I was older this time, and much sneakier. I knew tricks to make my parents oblivious to the lack of food passing by my lips. I had control over something, even if it was as self defeating as starving myself until my thighs didn’t touch.

I was eating less than 1000 calories each day, if that, and I was also running competitively for the school cross country team. I sunk into this hole of disappointment and anger, but I refused to heal. My parents, who caught on after I threw away my entire lunch one day, couldn’t help me like they had before. The battle had become a war, and the opponent had become an all consuming monster.

“We were afraid for her life. She was small, so, so small…” Tears always come with that line. It took me a long time to heal, but I did. I had hit rock bottom, and the only way out was to go up. I became stronger when summer came, away from peers and judgment.

My mom, as tears poured down her face, her tired eyes closed, and hands folded in prayer whispers, “She had become the disease. They were one. But she fought it, she fought until her arms shook with trepidation and exhaustion. She fought it, and she was the winner.” She smiles now.

Recovery was a long, painful process. The doctors helped. They told me what I was doing to myself, and explained that I did deserve better, and I was going to get better. They helped me become the fighter. When first told that I was a fighter, I realized the strength my body had to help pull me through this. I respected my body, almost instantaneously, when I was told that I would survive.

Of course, looking back on the whole experience, and learning new things each time changes a person. I had never been called a fighter before. I had never fought a war before, only battles. From the whole, drawn-out experience, I learned how much power the mind has over the body. I learned how desperate I was for control, and I began to understand why the whole ordeal happened to me. (Perfectionist and OCD combined only intensified the problem.) But I pulled through.

It’s impossible to fight the war alone, which was probably my biggest realization. I do need my family, and I do need my doctor. Without them, I wouldn’t have won. No war has ever been fought by one soldier.

I sent in the battalions, and I promised myself I would get better. My family, I believe, also developed a greater respect for the body in general. If you do not feed it, it will kill you. Not only that, but also we as a family had a greater sense of being a unit. We had all fought the war, and we had done it together. My mom, as the main colonel, really created the sense of family. We had become the family of fighters.