Sometimes I experience thoughts and emotions that I'm very certain no one wants to hear, so I keep them to myself. They brew inside me, and then I crack. I sit at the desk at work and cry about how frustrated I am. I've decided that whenever I have these feelings, I'm going to write here. Frustration number one: work. My job is not difficult. I sit at a desk for eight hours and deal with hotel guests, as well as manage events and do laundry. Unfortunatly, the hotel I work at is so small that I'm here completely alone when I work the 3-11 shift. Now that winter has truly set in, we have few guests. Often I don't see another soul for the entire shift. No one talks to me, so I begin to feel very alone. This is an unhealthy state for someone of the likes of me. I begin to think unhealthy thoughts, and about bad behaviors, and my mind is overtaken with negativity about myself. I develop a poor outlook. And here I am with no one I feel I can go to with these things. Frustration number two: Recovery. I never imagined that getting better could be so painful. I developed an eating disorder when I was 15. It has been almost five years of throwing up everything I eat and intermittently starving myself, all the while running 6-8 miles a day and cutting out meat and carbs from my diet. I am still angry at myself. The memory of making myself vomit for the first time is still engrained in my mind. I can clearly see my 15 year old self looking in the mirror. I had lost 40 pounds by running. I was finally a healthy weight, but I began to worry. What if I gained it all back? I would once again be the fat, awkward girl at school that no one really cared to talk to. Unnoticed. I'm fairly certain that's a 15 year old's greatest fear. Then, aha! I can eat whatever I want and if I throw it up, I wont get fat. Maybe I'll lose some more weight too because I run! I was thrilled with my brilliant plan. So I made myself throw up my dinner, and before I knew it, purging was no longer an option. I had to do it. My sickness quickly mutated. It began as just a thing I did after regular meals, and within a year, it was something else entirely. I couldn't wait to get home from school so I could shove everything within sight in my mouth and then make myself throw it all up again. It's an impulse that I'm sure will never go away. It got to the point where I could eat an entire pound of spaghetti, a few bagels, chips 'n salsa, a half a container of ice cream, cookies, ect. Anything I could find. A whole pizza and four bowls of cereal. It didn't matter, as long as I ate it and then purged. Of course my family began to notice, but we didn't talk about it. We don't really talk about things. It became worse. I then discovered through more unhealthy decisions which I will not expand on, that I could also starve myself, and at the very least, I could eat only fruits and vegetables, as long as I threw up everything else and kept running. I began to experience the effects of electrolyte imbalances and anemia. My hair started to fall out, my legs cramped up, I easily got migraines, and I was tired all the time. My dentist told me that if I continued to mistreat myself, I was going to have root canals performed on my back teeth. He told me all of my teeth were decayed. I was silently trying to deal with this in high school and then in nursing school. Tomorrow marks a month of recovery. I exercise five days a week, and I eat healthy. I eat carbs, and I will have dessert. I've gained about five pounds, and I'm sure it's mostly muscle, but it's painful. I always thought that when I got better, I would be excited and proud of myself. I thought it would feel great, but it doesn't. I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin, and I don't know how to like myself. I turned my mirror around, and I only wear loose-fitting clothing. I cannot describe the fear and disgust I have. I know it's the right thing. The cycle can end. I always believed I would be sick for the rest of my life. I know the thoughts will never go away. I will always have a difficult time liking myself, and I will always experience the urge to binge and purge. The difference is, I know that I can say no. That is something I'm incredibly thankful for.