"A piece of her will live in me forever, like a traumatic experience or a moment of euphoria."

*Names have been altered to protect the identities of those written about*

Trigger warning: eating disorders. 

Emma’s Story: 

I was addicted to the feeling of being wanted by someone who I never could have dreamed would have wanted me. I became addicted to a lot more than the confusion of lust for love that year, and I don’t remember quite clearly when the transition happened. It was clear that going into my junior year of high school I was a quiet, well put together, school focused girl, with curly brown hair and a passion for running track. I loved my family, I cared about having true friendships, and I never could imagine anything becoming more important than those core values; this was until I met Korin. 

She was everything I wasn’t. Popular, perfectly edgy, strikingly beautiful, and outgoing to everyone. Everyone said that one day Korin was going to be a Victoria’s Secret Model, and she ate that up. She sucked in every compliment she received like a giant cobra, a tsunami, or a self-centered bitch. Korin was in my calculus class and we were partnered together for a project. Immediately, her cobra-like nature sucked me up too--I still am not sure if I’m still alive inside of her, if I’ve already been digested, or if I killed the cobra. A piece of her will live in me forever, like a traumatic experience or a moment of euphoria. 

You can already assume from what you’ve read so far that Korin and I became close friends. Under her wing she swept me up and said “baby bird go, go, go! You’re not a baby anymore.” My life as I knew it completely transformed into an unfamiliar social extravaganza with pretty people and large houses. This life included everything they could have ever wanted, but it was never enough. 

I enjoyed Korin’s friendship. Everyone saw the change in me except for me. I was going out more, dating people and then dumping them (or getting dumped), dressing differently, and losing weight.  The numbers on the scale were sinking lower and lower and I decided that to be like Korin, and to keep up with this lifestyle, I needed to look like her. 

“If we eat only cashews for the day we will bloat before getting skinny. Don’t worry.”

So, I ate only cashews for the day. 

Korin celebrated losing three pounds, so I made sure I had also lost three pounds. 

“Weigh yourself!”

Korin would say this to me during a sleepover or while hanging out after school. 

“Oh, Emma! You’ve lost weight, how good does that feel?”

I felt awful. I was addicted to this routine of losing a certain amount of weight each week, because if I didn’t I would have to watch Korin celebrate in front of me. 

My parents began to notice the rapid weight loss. They noticed me leaving dinner, skipping meals because I had already eaten, or coming back from track practice completely winded as if I were about to faint. One day I was changing in my room and my mom walked in. She gasped. I screamed at her for invading my privacy, and she shut the door. Later that day my parents sat me down and told me they were worried about me and that I needed to see my doctor. My mom made a doctor’s appointment for me and I told her I would only go if she wasn’t there with me. My mother agreed. It was too easy to lie to her. 

I didn’t go to that doctor’s appointment and when asked how it went I said something along the lines of, “I’m a little under my BMI but that was not anything I had to worry about.” I told my parents that this weight was healthy but if I lost more weight it wouldn’t be. They agreed, and then I lost more weight. 

Korin told me I looked amazing. She told me that I could be a model. Korin always emphasized that to be a model you had to be the skinniest girl in the room. 

There was one day when I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten anything. I walked into the bathroom to shower and fainted. There was another day when my mother asked why my knuckles were red and swollen and I lied and told her I had tripped and fell during track. What she didn’t know is that this was from my bulimia. 

I needed to get help when I found out that Korin had been hospitalized, and when I could hardly physically function enough to react to this. My mother pulled me out of school and told me that Korin was in the hospital. She told me that Korin’s mother had called her with the news that Korin was not awake and was being fed through a tube. I heard the tears in my mother’s voice. Korin and I had pushed each other too far. 

No one saw Korin for over a year. She was in and out of programs for her diagnosed eating disorder and she began to grow healthier. She would post on her social media and speak out on what she had been through. We spoke often and she told me how happy she was in recovery, but she never once tried to help me. She never once asked how I was doing, unless it was a question about drama going on in school. She looked great to everyone around me, except for me. I genuinely believed that she had looked better before. 

This is when I started to crash and burn. When Korin got better, I got worse. All my unhealthy habits became ten times heavier on my back, and I saw sinking quicker than ever. I lied to everyone. I disguised my eating disorder in oversized jackets, pretend doctor appointments, trips to the bathroom because “I had to wash my hands”, and late night workouts when everyone went to bed. I was slowly dying but felt more alive than ever. In the back of my mind I knew that this high was going to end and I knew that I was setting myself up for something unimaginable. 

It was April, the sun was out, and I was getting ready to go to my grandmother’s birthday. I wore a blue dress that used to fit me but was now drowning me. I wore a white sweater because in 75 degree weather I felt like I was living in the Tundra. I hardly made it through the birthday because of how light headed I felt. It was almost as if I wasn’t even there, but just watching this sad version of the person I had become. 

I hesitantly opened the door to my mother’s bedroom. I told her I needed to get help because I wanted to live, to have babies, to walk outside in the sun and smile, and to be happy again. I went to an in-patient program one month later for the entire summer. 

This experience shaped me in ways I never would have imagined. If you were to have told me three years ago that I would be on the beach in a bikini without a towel tightly wrapped around my body, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you were to have told me that I would survive this eating disorder, that I would be going to college, and that I would be writing this story, I never would have believed you. With all the love in the world I will now tell you this: try, try, try, and then try again. You can survive anything.