Typical

I use to be one of those girls.

I was the girl that didn’t eat when she was hungry and I weighed a total of 94 pounds on a “bad day.” I got to the point where I would have to be supervised to eat. So I made it worse. I ate and threw it all up. After a while, no one noticed. The sound of retching at four in the morning was a normal occurrence in my household.

I guess in a sense it started because of my insecurities with weight; which is hard to believe because my whole life I was always an ‘extra small’. But to me my thighs always looked like they were too big, my ass way too flabby, and my sternum and clavicle and bones weren’t always as visible as I wanted them to be -- months after it became a routine. I felt when things got too overwhelming or uncontrolled, I would vent. Venting, to me, came from my stomache and the refusal of anything but water. Not eating was a way for me to be different, to rebel against everything. I was stronger than that, nope, not me, I don’t need food… after a while I would start fainting and suffering from exhaustion, sleeping for days. My parents would argue with me to eat and comment on how they haven’t seen me eat all the foods I loved. (And don’t get me wrong I love food, especially chocolate cake or fruit tart.) But I was rebellious, I needed to “pave my own way,” and “learn from my own mistakes.” A couple of months after -- the attention shot to my arms, my legs -- my afternoon venting session.

My parents threatened to put me in rehab.

“It isn’t that bad,” diluted my thoughts “I can stop.”

This became a drug – an obsession. I didn’t have the power to stop. And I didn’t want to, in a sense.

Now I’m about six months pregnant and I’m still not gaining enough weight, eating enough. No one seems to understand that it’s hard for me. Not the gaining of weight part (because I know it’s all for the better health of the baby), but the part that involves actual consumption of food. It’s hard for me to eat and continuously keep eating through the day when I’ve always been use to one “meal” a day. I’ve become so acquainted with the feeling of hunger and the sound of starvation that I know my body will function. But I know it’s not just me anymore.

I don’t know how to change.

I’m sorry.