STARVED
I was not good at purging. The feelings of guilt and disgust
with myself motivated me to continue to purge, until it soon
became part of my everyday life.
By high school, I was fully entangled in the lies, depression,
anger, and pure distortion that tend to accompany eating
disorders. My mental state began to affect my performance at
school, and I went from being a straight-A student to not going
to classes in order to act out in the eating disorder. I hated life.
I hated God for letting me live, even though deep inside of me
I knew He was my only answer. Hospitals, doctors, dieticians,
therapists, and psychiatrists became part of my everyday life. I
was in and out of treatment centers, and with each discharge I
felt more and more hopeless.
During this time I also added binge-eating (followed by
purging) into my life. I had learned about bulimia in a
treatment center. During my struggle with bulimia, I felt more
hopeless than ever. My eyes were beginning to open to how out
of control I really was. I made it through only two days of my
senior year of high school, and then I was hospitalized again. I
found myself in another psychiatric unit where they dealt with
eating disorders.
Desperate and broken, I applied to Mercy Ministries. I stayed
in treatment until it was time to go to Mercy. When I got there,
I knew it was where I was supposed to be, but I honestly did not
believe I would make it through the program. I knew I didn't
have any other options, but somehow I thought that God's love
and the freedom I was being told about was for everyone but
me. I hated myself, so my actions reflected that self-hatred. I
continued to act out in the destructive eating patterns.
After a while, I slowly started allowing God to cha