Most people believe that someone who has anorexia just eats less because they want to be thinner but it is so much more than just that. Anorexia is a mental illness which can consume you completely.It can start with just a single thought.This tiny thought grows and grows in the back of your mind until its the only thing you can think about.Anorexia becomes like your best and worst friend.She tells you that shes helping you be happy because after all skinny equals happy in our world.“Dont you want to look like those girls in the magazines”“You're not trying hard enough”“You want to be thin dont you?“ „You're not good enough”The more you listen to this voice in your head,the more you believe everything its telling you. After time, you realize that the voice is bad for you but at that point you are so consumed by thoughts, rituals and that fear, that overwhelming fear of gaining the tiniest bit of weight that you dont even care anymore. The vicious cycle starts and its so hard to break out of it. Everyday you get up and weigh yourself. Then you go through your day thinking about that one number on the scale and counting every single calorie you consume. Everyday you try to consume less and burn off more than the day before. Every calorie you consume adds to the noise in your head, the more calories you eat the more you think about how to burn them off and the harder it is to concentrate. At one point, you decide that if you're going to get through your day its easier if you dont consume any calories at all. Little by little you fade away without even realizing it. Because lets face it, what is skinny enough? there is no skinny enough. Anorexia will never let you think that you are skinny enough. You could be on the brink of death and look in the mirror and see yourself as overweight. That is due to something known as body dysmorphia. The longer anorexia controls you the worse it gets.The problem is that Anorexia is not always painful. Often its torture but sometimes there are moments where starving yourself can make you feel euphoric. That feeling of emptiness becomes an addiction, a craving. You long for it. Restriction gives you this sense of total control that you cant get from anywhere else. Its a way of finding calm in the middle of the storm which is your life and in a way it makes the bad parts worth it. It is so often said that the hardest step to recovery is having the courage to ask for help. Thats not true. What is hardest is what comes next. Recovery is so hard because you are constantly having to fight with your own mind. Part of your mind is telling you how much you are missing out on because of this illness, how the best years of your life are slipping away from you and how this pain isn't worth it.The other part of your mind is screaming at you to do everything in your power to loose weight, eat less and burn more calories. You are at war with yourself. Every bite of food is an internal struggle that makes you desperately want to turn to your many ways to cancel out that food. You have to find something that motivates you to keep fighting, something that makes you realize that your life is worth living. You can see therapist after therapist but in the end they wont be able to help you. They will guide you and try their best to help you through all these dark, destructive thoughts but in the end you are the one who has to make that terrifying choice to recover. It has to be your decision. For a while, everyday will be harder than the last. Some days will feel amazing and you”ll get this sudden burst of energy because for the first time in ages your body isn't eating away at itself but more often than not, that feeling of guilt and hatred towards yourself after every meal will make it seem like giving up altogether is the only way out but eventually it does get easier, things will look up, and you”ll stop seeing food as the enemy. Little by little you”ll start to be able to enjoy all the things that anorexia took away from you. Possibly the hardest thing about suffering from an eating disorder is that so often, even after recovery, somewhere at the back of your mind those thoughts are still there. Those same cyclical thoughts about weight and food are still there and they could be triggered at any time. It is so hard to fully recovery from an eating disorder because of the society we live in. You see pictures of skinny, famous and popular girls and of course you want to be like them. You see those pictures of the sad, fat before girl and then the pictures of the happy skinny girl that says “I went on this diet ,lost weight and now everybody loves me”.Its so hard to recover because everywhere you look there is a reminder of that thing that used to be the most important thing in the world to you and deep down you still want it.So, you learn to live with these thoughts, you learn to keep them at the back of your mind and you learn to forget them but that doesn't mean that they're not there.

Learning to love myself has been one of my longest life challenges. My self esteem has been at battle with a twenty-year old eating disorder. Turning eleven brought a birthday gift of weight gain and put me on a path of restricting, binge eating and over-exercising. It seems like it has taken forever to understand how manipulating my weight and appearance in both healthy and unhealthy ways was a reflection of how I felt on the inside of myself. Bombarded with images in the media of impossible beauty standards and socialized norms of feminine behavior, my eyes looked into the mirror for a sense of self esteem. Instead of empowering female friendships, mine were competitive. Who had a thigh gap? How many boys were drooling after us? Whose closet was larger than life? All that criteria was external and I couldn't win. So I skipped parties, weddings and graduations because I felt unattractive. The "when, then" game ruled my life: I thought 'when I lose twenty pounds, I will have a boyfriend" and "when I lose twenty pounds, I will be happy." I didn't realize that projecting my happiness to the future meant I was missing out on the present moment. I lost a lot of time to this unhealthy obsession. Instead of building personal coping tools like meditation, work-related skills, or even participating in sports, I spent years hiding in therapy and eating disorder programs. I was desperate to find out what was so wrong in my core that I put so much emphasis on looks and weight. One mind-blowing incident started my journey towards self-love. I remember spotting her six years ago while I rode the subway. She was my ideal self: petite, with manicured nails and blond hair. Why couldn't I look like her? For sure she had a boyfriend! I ruminated over this for most of the ride. Finally my ears decided to interrupt my brain and I heard her speaking to her friend. Her voice was sharp and she spent the whole subway ride complaining about her life. She seemed miserable and shallow. I came home and told my mom I would never want to be that pretty if it came with being so negative. My family physician also held the key to a lesson I still think about daily. She sat me down once and asked me to look outside her door. There was a woman in head to toe Michael Kors, dripping diamonds, with highlighted hair. She asked me what I thought of her and I went with "beautiful." Within two breaths my doctor told me that her patient's life was falling apart because of divorce and bankruptcy. "Never assume someone's happy based on what they look like or what they wear," she warned me. That day my doctor really called me out for the way I was looking at the world. It was as disordered and self-destructive as my eating. Working in fashion was also one giant leap towards recovery for me. I am a sales associate, fitting women of all shapes and sizes and working hard to establish our collective self-esteem. When I accompany my clients to their fitting rooms, young women and their mothers regularly share with me their fears regarding the shape of their thighs, booties, and breasts. It was out in the open now and I confronted how ingrained body shaming is across my gender. Answering “does this outfit looks good on me?” or “does this make me look fat?” is my opportunity to reassure women. I let them know that confidence, posture, and inner beauty radiates beyond body shape or size. As they try on the latest in Spring styles. I like to vocalize my appreciation for what sets them apart, be it their freckles, or their life accomplishments, friendships and career achievements. There are too many stresses in young women's lives. The pressures of social media, peers and fierce academic/job competition face girls every day. Dinners are hardly made at home anymore. Routine discussion between family and friends is often interrupted by constant texting. The pressures of exams, lack of sleep and Red Bull, penetrates young lives. I hear about my client's struggles with their bodies, Mara Teigen and Ashley Greene on Instragram, as well as what boys think about them. This the context in which our feelings and thoughts about our bodies are developed. So when will this self-deprecation end? As long as there are to be beauty products and fashion brands to be sold, marketing may continue to rule female self-esteem. I am writing to let others know that there really is a path to becoming self assured in ourselves. When I chose to put the most value on achieving personal goals, and deciding to really interact with the world, there was socializing and activities which built up my self-esteem. I could really list what I liked about myself based on my capabilities and social media has been banned from my life. I am finally doing the activities I always dreamed of despite of how I worried I am or anyone else is about my looks. I cross my fingers and wish that for every girl and women I ever get the opportunity to dress!

He was the wisest man I have ever known. And the cruelest. He taught me to love art, music, poetry, to enjoy the free and open exchange of ideas, creativity, and the purity of thought for the sake of the purity of thought.The poet, the rebel, the non-conformist, I am all these because I am his son. Like him, I don't suffer fools kindly. He told a story when I was a child. He was in a meeting with the vice president of the company who asked him what he thought. My father picked up a napkin from the table, shredded it, and said, “This is what I think about your idea...” Then he told them all how it really needed to be done. A few weeks later, he was without a job. Again. The only difference between my father and me is that I have learned to hold my tongue. Usually. His cruelty scars every day of my life. Anorexia, at 7, alcoholism, at 16, the disdain I carry for myself - I can't look in the mirror - all stains he placed upon my life. His ill-health and his alcoholism forced me to work at 7. His cruelty cost me my childhood and my innocence. One day, my father had cornered my mother in the kitchen. I watched as he raised a hot pot of coffee high over her head. The pot was shaking. Coffee burning his arms. The more his arms burned, the angrier he became. I knew that if he hit my mother, I'd kill him. So at 13, I left home. At 16, he broke his hand on my face. I didn't cry. I just stood there calmly. I felt nothing, not even the pain of impact. He screamed in pain and told me what he'd do to me when he got his hands on me. I just turned and walked away. Just before he died, liver cancer caused by alcoholism, we took a walk to the church near where I grew up. “I have one regret,” he said. “That is?” I said, coldly. “We are not as close as I hoped.” “What are you talking about?” I said, lying. Whatever love I felt for him was beaten out of me long ago. Eight weeks later, we buried him. Life went on. I had every reason to fail. Abused children usually fail, at least it is what has happened to most of the ones I have met. When I teach, I can identify them quickly, especially the brightest. The story is always the same, and it leads to the same life-long suffering I have endured. When I was about 7, my father took me to the factory where he had worked before becoming an engineer. His father and brother still worked there. It was a terrible experience. The factory was dark, dank, loud, and smelled of urine, sweat, and machine oil. My grandfather and my uncle were filthy. My grandfather lifted me up on to his workbench and my uncle bought me a ginger ale. The pounding of the machines made it hard to hear anything. The floor of the factory and the workbench pulsed with every smash of the machines against the steel and aluminum they were machining. At one point, I watched as my uncle crawled under a machine as long as a football field to fix a part. “What will happen,” I asked, “if the machine falls on him?” “It will kill him,” my father said. As we left the factory, my father, who was 6'4,” looked down at me and asked, “What do you think?” “Horrible,” I said. “I don't ever want to work there.” My father spun me around, got down on his knees and took hold of me by the shoulders. “Fuck up your life,” he said, “and this is your future. There is no Plan B.” Honestly, I had no idea what Plan B was. I guess I didn't need to. The last thing I wanted to do was to spend my life in that factory. I can't say that experience turned my life around. I wasn't old enough to turn anything around. However, I never forgot it. I talk to my students about it. Whenever my life gets dark and I face failure, or, when I just get to the point where it is all too much for me, I remember looking at my father's face. The anger I saw in his eyes as well as the concern. I am because he was. The days are shorter now, The nights are longer and darker. If you knew me, chances are you'd say that I am loving, kind, patient, gentle, and caring. I am always surprised when someone says that. I don't know why I am or how I can be. Not after all the cruelty. Or, perhaps, I have found a way to love despite all I suffered. It doesn't matter. The past is past. “When the dead are left to bury the dead,” Koestler wrote, “the living are left alone.” I have been alone a very long time. Sometimes I wish he were still alive. Not because I need him in my life, I learned to live without him long before I turned 13, but because I want to know why someone who was so wise could be so cruel, and why I can't ever seem to leave the scars he cut across my life behind. As he lay dying, his stepmother, a miserable person, came to see him. There was an intercom in the bedroom so that if he needed my mother, she'd hear him call out. “Did you ever love me?” he asked his stepmother. “What do you mean?” she responded. He died without ever knowing the answer to the question that meant so much to him, and, sometimes I fear that I shall as well. I am because he was.