[Bearica]

Hello.
My name is Erica. I am 18 years old and I would love to share my eating disorder story for you. The reason behind this is because I want you to know that there is hope and there is a way.

A quick back story to my life is that I was born in a dysfunctional family. My parents pretended to be together for the first three years of my life so that my brother and I had a facade that we had parents when we were children. When I turned three and a half, my father completely left to another state. Every other weekend my brother and I would switch off parents.
Ultimately, we ended up living with my father. After a few years of playing hot-poatoe with our custody, my brother got sent off to military school and had his own mental battles. I, however, got sent to my mother's.
I was twelve years old and quite heavy at this point. I went from living in the middle of the country to the big city. Not only that, but I went from living with my father, step-mother, and brother to living ALONE.
My mother was never home, she was always out with friends. My step-father travels the countries and was never home. I was a twelve year old left alone in a big city.
My mother has always been very physically judgmental. She always called my brother and I fat or ugly. It was always more directed towards me because she loved my brother; she never loved me. Me living with her gave her the opportunity to literally starve me.
She wouldn't give me food, she would tell me that I had enough after one or two bites, she would rid the house of food or keep secret stashes JUST so I wouldn't have a way to eat.
Since she wasn't ever home, I stole money from her to walk a mile to the nearest grocery store, bought as much as I could carry, and feed myself. As a twelve year old I had to do this. I went from family dinners at the table to this.

I began smoking and drinking and cutting and starving. I didn't know that these were bad things. I knew that smoking and drinking were the things that made my step-father happy, so I picked it up. I lost quite a bit of weight in less than two months. I was fourteen years old and less weight when my mother finally stopped bothering me.
That's when I realised how ****ing ridiculous this was.
I told my mother that I didn't want to live with her anymore.
I forced my father to take custody of me.

My father has never been good with things. They didn't know I smoked, drank, cut, or starved myself. The first thing I did was quit starving. It took me 5 years.
I suffer from schizophrenia, too. I used that to my advantage and I actually bought a book titled, "How To Help Your Child With An Eating Disorder" and I pretended to be my own parent.
When I stopped doing that, I worked on ceasing cutting, I got that in 5 years, too. I stopped when I cut so deep that I almost bled out and died.
I stopped drinking after 6 years. I drank so much that I was drunk for two whole weeks and passed out in the middle of a busy road and almost died.
I stopped smoking last month, promising myself that I won't smoke until I turned 19, so that I can kick the habit by than. I haven't touched a cigarette since.

It gets better.
Don't try to tackle all the problems at once.
Find a way that woks for you.

I still struggle from wanting to smoke, drink, cut, starve. I steal deal with all of these family issues each and every day. But if I can be stronger than that. So can all of you.

Cheers to good health.
We can make it through this together.

[lynn P.]

Hugs to you Bearica - thanks for sharing your complicated story of survival and hope. You deserve credit for overcoming these obstacles. I hope you continue to stay on track and become stronger each day.