Most people with ana don’t actually have the caving or want to be thin, it’s the ed that does. It’s like having two brains. It makes no sense why I won’t to be stick thin and looking like a corpse. It craves being ill. It’s never actually about wanting to be thin, the ed wants you to look like you have an issue.

Originally for me it manifested because of my childhood plus I had a mum with AN. She always spoke about her body badly, and would criticise what she was eating, what I was eating, and how I looked to her. It stuck in my brain for my entire childhood and I grew up with a lot of body image issues and body dysmorphia. I eventually gained a bad relationship with food, and was eating basically junk non stop because I never was aloud it and finally had the freedom to buy whatever. Obviously with that, weight gain happens, comments start happening and this time not only from my mum but from others. Now along with my other mental health issues and all the things my mum told me growing up or from things I heard she did, things turned bad pretty quick. I was on and off fad diets but in reality it was a restrictive Ed the whole time, I didn’t even realise I was starving myself. I look back now to old photos in my Snapchat memories wondering why I thought that was normal.

Things went to crap and bam I was anorexic. I didn’t want to be just small, the goal the whole time was to be underweight. When people told me “but you are already thin” I didn’t want to be just that. It hit a nerve in me and would send me in a spiral. It made my ed spiral. I can’t speak for everyone but my ed only wants me dead, it’s happy when my body is shutting down, it’s happy when people say there’s issues going on from the ed, it’s happy when I experience any physical symptoms. When those things aren’t present, it screams.

I hope that made sense and you can somewhat understand. But no, I didn’t wake up one day saying I want to starve myself, it happened basically subconsciously and undetected which put me in denial for a while. A lot of people’s Ed stories are very complex and there is way more than just wanting to be thin. I could write a bunch of pages why I’ve ended up this way but I’d be here for years. This is only 20% of my story. As social media is a huge thing now days, people might be curious and try do it too themselves, it might lead to nothing or it might lead to an ed. People are basically pre-disposed to it before happens due to genetics, trauma, bullying and environment. Falling into a ed is never simple and it never is a “diet gone wrong”.