Losing It.

1 in 4 people know someone who has suffered from an eating disorder. Hi, I’m Ashly. Now you are one of them.

I had no idea that a story could have such colossal impact.

& I’ve waited to tell mine online until after National Eating Disorders Awareness Week was over, because the awareness effort needs to transcend seven days of momentum. The theme of 2014 Awareness Week was “I had no idea”, and as you’ll read — I had no clue.

I’ve owned this story in many forms since 2008 when I gathered the strength to tell it. It’s found places in creative writing workshops, to curious friends, through my friends (thank you for this video, Leah), in body image counseling, a Women’s Studies lecture, seminars, therapy and support circles. It’s the Internet’s turn now.

I usually present a much more visceral version that isn’t appropriate online. But I hope my story is informative regardless. Warning: it’s lengthy. Please try to read this in its entirety. Anorexia is much more complicated than a desire to be thin. An eating disorder is real, and it is fatal.

our walls were violent violet, a prison of misunderstanding. i waded in a pool of pity they called room 24, the measurement of my waist in inches. everyone knew their numbers, engraved in their memories like locker combinations they wanted to forget. 28-24-32, tattoos on a holocaust of skeletons. we danced naked in our world without mirrors, because we so loved the bodies they swore we hated.

— “The Day Room”

28-24-33. I had no idea this was a part of me.

High school: amplified emotions, dramatic relationships, difficult decisions. Everything feels like it matters. Shortly after blowing out the 18 candles on my birthday cake, I stopped mattering to me. There was a breakup and loneliness, college rejection letters and anxiety, a lack of direction and then blurred vision. A size 6, and then a size 0.

I had no idea that anorexia is a mental illness, not an aspiration.

People often point the finger at the media for creating an unrealistic standard of beauty. But society’s ideals did not introduce me to Anorexia Nervosa. Those societal ideals just became an excuse for me to obsess later as I struggled to recover. For many months, I actually did not even care about the number on the scale or what I really looked like.

I had no idea that my Anorexia was about control.

My story starts with feeling as if I had lost control over my life. I had a reality check: life after senior year would not resemble my teenage hopes of remaining physically close to my friends in college or getting married to my high school sweetheart. I panicked. Anxiety and depression overwhelmingly clouded my perspective. It made me feel sick; and I lost my appetite from it. That’s how simply it began.

I lost 30 pounds in 11 months and about 15 more before doctors got involved. My fastest decrease was one jean size in 7 days. My lowest weight was 84 pounds, when I was solely sustaining myself on soda and tortilla chips.

I had no idea taking control would become so out of control.

People often ask me, “How did this happen for so long? Why?” I was controlling something amidst chaos. I couldn’t take a step back. Before I could recognize reality from 10,000 ft, I was enveloped by the downward spiral of my own bad habits.

I cared about nothing, and it was ugly. I watched full plates of food come to me and leave me no less empty. I cried myself to sleep for months. Lost my hair in chunks regularly. I scratched myself like a cutter. I couldn’t stay awake for more than 8 hours. I never stopped shaking. I passed out often, even in public. Everything moved blurred and in slow motion. I was self-destructing and I was addicted to it.

I had no idea I was permanently damaging my organs and killing myself, literally.

I had no idea that the emptiness would become addicting.

I heard the clinical diagnosis countless times during endless trips to doctors, therapists, and hospitals. Anorexia Nervosa. I embraced it. I wore it like a badge. It felt like a relief to focus my energy on something. Anorexia (the problem itself) became a way to avoid other problems, particularly my sadness. It gave me a hobby. I know now that it wasn’t right, but I had no idea then.

It felt good to be empty — calming and clear. True starvation affects your hormones. The “ana-high” is real, and it felt really good. Something else made me feel great too — the compliments I was receiving. If someone told me I looked great, I clung to it as validation.

I had no idea this would affect other people in my life.

When you hurt yourself, you hurt the people who love you. My parents felt like failures, but they still brought dinner to my room every night. I disappointed a brother who looked up to me, but he still asked me if I was okay every day. My friends did not know (and should not have known) what to do. What I became scared them. Some of them brought me ice cream and many of them just grew distant. When I became fixated on my weight, it made some people feel insecure about their own. Because I wasn’t myself, I destroyed important relationships that took years to rebuild.

I had no idea the relationship I would most destroy was the one with myself.

The big picture hit me when I saw my naked self in the mirror before a shower. My actual self, not the mirage of who I was before the weight loss. And I finally accepted the disgusting reflection. My head had become too big looking for my body. I could count my ribs. I had an 84lb cavity, not a body. Something clicked: if I did this, I was the only one that could fix it. And it needed to be fixed. This ignited a different breed of panic. I needed help, and I needed to start accepting the help and support around me.

I had no idea that accepting I have no control would terrify me, for the rest of my life.

Mental recovery is a long process. Anorexia was a traumatic thing for my psyche and body. Today, my anxiety manifests itself in strange parts of my personality. I’ve become a perfectionist and a planner, much less carefree than I used to be. But I’m working on it.

Other people’s habits sometimes affect me, but I don’t need or want anyone to change their behavior around me. When people talk about bikini bodies and diets around me, I force myself to stop listening. I’m afraid of drinking too much and losing control of my clarity. But moderation is everything, so I manage just fine. I often fear people jump to the conclusion that I’m “crazy”. But I’ve come across many girls with similar stories in support circles. It’s a process, and I’ll live through it. We’ll all live through it.

I had no idea what recovery would look like.

You aren’t “cured” of an eating disorder, you recover from it. Recovery is a difficult and unpredictable process that takes months, sometimes years.

But I did it. I fucking recovered.

For me, recovery started as trying to get back to a normal weight. As I stumbled through relapsing behaviors, I blamed the media’s portrayal of women and the Internet’s “thinspiration” trolls because it was easy. I really had to learn a hard lesson of taking responsibility for what I had done to my body. And I’m better for it.

Now recovery to me is positive empowerment, healthy happiness, and working to reach my potential in life. It’s my Master’s degree, my two days at the gym, a job I enjoy, and strong relationships. Recovery has become helping others who are struggling with their own version of this story. It’s about making an impact, and supporting those people as so many incredible people have for me. Recovery is letting those people know they are gorgeous, and that they are not alone. It’s raising awareness, and asking you to tell someone they are beautiful today.

I had no idea if you would read this in its entirety, so if you have — thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Anorexia Nervosa is just one of many types of eating and body image disorders. To learn more about these disorders, please visit The National Eating Disorders Association Website and The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt.