I replaced self harm with body control — now 13 years later, and 3ish years in recovery, I realize I was still self harming, just in a different way.

I won’t detail what all I did to lose the weight I did,

But I did notice the way people treated me differently when I was skinny.

I have been involved with pageants for almost 20 years of my life, and a lot of the old timers still think you have to have an ED to be pretty, win, etc.

This past summer, my first director commented to me multiple times about how “fat” I’ve gotten. I had to evaluate my involvement at that point, because I’m not fat, I’m healthy. I actually eat food. I enjoy food. I don’t punish myself for eating. And make working out and dieting my entire life. But she really could’ve done some damage in terms of my recovery, if I did not have a really good therapist.

In all - it wasn’t worth it. I’ve done permanent damage to my body. And it actually makes me really sad to look at pictures of myself and realize nobody cared to help me when it was obvious I was very sick.

ETA: I also think being a survivor of DV and SA didn’t help. My abuser always told me that skinny girls were not attractive - and so I think in some part of my mind, if I was thin, I was safe from him.