Ana was my way of life for so long...That summer that I was nine, everytime I stepped on the scale, it was a war against myself. If I weighed even an ounce more, I had to starve myself. If the numbers were lower, it meant I was doing well and needed to keep going. That scale was all that mattered...I counted calories, I watched what went into my mouth, I learned to say no to food.

A couple years later it came back...It was a living hell for me. A girl at my school had previously been diagnosed and hospitalized for Bulimia, and it amazed me to watch her. She was thin and I envied her so much...Later that year, during the summer after she had gotten out of the hospital, I saw her at the town fair, and her previously slim body was covered in fat rolls. I felt sorry for her...I obviously couldn't say that, but I wish I could have.

Just this past October, I knew Ana had come to visit me again. I was going two, maybe three days at a time with little water and absolutely no food. My grandmother would occasionally find out I wasn't eating and blackmail me into it...but I got what I wanted for the most part. My weight started dropping again, and the rush of watching the numbers go down was back full speed. I didn't tell anyone about Ana..she was my own little secret.

A friend finally got me to admit to having an eating disorder, and the battle began. Food journals, pictures of models with bones showing, quotes to keep me from eating...It was a huge game of loss. Gaining weight wasn't allowed. I started to remember how much I loved to feel that pang in my stomach from not eating, and how the cold would settle right into my bones. It was a huge battle for me that I knew was only about to get worse, but I didn't realize just how bad it was actually going to get.

I tried to purge so many times, but lost my nerve when I started gagging on the end of the toothbrush. Finally I just stopped and gave up. Ana was my way to control, and Mia would never play a part. Man was I ever wrong.

Christmas day after dinner I snuck into the bathroom, and I had planned to throw my cup away, but it didn't work like that. Before I could even understand exactly what the hell I was doing, I was down on my knees sticking my fingers as far down my throat as they would go. Thoughts were racing through my head like wildfire, and it only made me more determined to get rid of what didn't need to be there. Finally I was about to give up on the whole idea...I had been getting only saliva up for god knows how long, and I was starting to lose my modivation. I remember whispering "Just five more tries..if I can't get it up in five tries, then I'll leave." On my third try, peptobismal colored vomit spilled out of my mouth and into the toilet. I stared down at it for a few seconds....and somehow realized that I had ruined the purity of the white bowl by vomiting pink...I flushed the toilet, stood up, and said "Merry Christmas Mia" to the bathroom mirror.

Since that day, I've been in an endless cycle of starving, eating, purging, starving some more. Sometimes I wish Ana and Mia would just go away and leave me alone..but I need them to keep my control. uli Iulnonei0 control what goes into my mouth, and I can get it back out if I don't want it there. Having an ED isn't the best way to deal with things, but it gives me more of a thrill than SI did. I only wish I would have known how addicting it was before I started again....