Dear Anorexia,

I am writing this letter to address your destructive existince in my life. You took so many opportunities away from me and now is the time I need to break free.

I would see you as a comfort and something I would turn to whenever I felt scared, alone or bad about myself. You made me feel safe and that things would be okay if I did the things you told me to do.

To be completely honest, I am absolutely terrified of life without you and parts of me doesn’t want to let you go, you made me feel like I was special and that I could achieve things, but those things damaged me. You convinced me that the lower the number went on the scale, my life would be better, I would feel happier and people would like me. You told me I was strong and I didn’t need anyone else but you. Sometimes I look back and remember how proud you were when I did that excessive exercise or lowered my calorie intake each day. Whenever I did this or managed to starve myself for days. It made you proud and that made me feel good about myself. Even when your kindness and praising turned to cruelty, I still find it so difficult to want to leave you. You are like a magnet that I am constantly stuck to and I can’t pull myself away even when people are trying to save me. This bond isn’t something I feel in control of anymore. You bully me into thinking I don’t need anybody else but you, you make me believe that I can’t live without you. Now I don’t have the ability to see myself as anything of any worth as a healthy person.

You said you would make me feel better, make me feel powerful, but all I feel is broken. The amount of times I denied myself food in the hope that you would comfort me. I’ve lost so much time trying to be ‘perfect’ and waiting for you to tell me it will be okay, or being scared if it wasn’t enough which makes you angry.

So this letter is to my enemy. I am fed up and tired; tired of being trapped in your clutches. I don’t want to feel like a puppet dangling and manipulated by the strings of your cruel power. I don’t want to be incapable of viewing myself other than a ball for you to cradle in the palm of your hand. You distorted everything around me, replaced all my possibilities of happiness with illusions of light that actually just turned out to be shadows and darkness. I now have lost the capability of recognising who I truly am. My vision has now been masked by your evil fog that I struggle to see through, making every day dark and grey.

I don’t understand how you got so powerful. How you managed to convince me that I can survive without food, that I will never be ‘thin’ enough or ‘pretty’ enough unless I obeyed everything you said? Why do I not deserve to be healthy and fuel my body and mind with the nutrients and nourishment it needs to survive? Every other human does so why can’t I?

I trusted you, I believed you that this would make me happy but instead it made me miserable, I was your slave, I exercised for hours till sometimes I collapsed, I restricted my calorie intake, I made myself sick, I abused diet pills and laxatives just for you. This just made me really I’ll and caused my behavior and thoughts to be so out of control.

At times I enjoyed being in control and losing weight but you took over and I lost the control. I had a sense of enjoyment from freedom and feeling proud but that wasn’t the healthy me.

Enough is enough, I can’t let you take more control away from me. It’s too time consuming and every you introduced a new rule or ritual. It’s emotionally draining and you have to leave. I can’t cope with you occupying my mind every minute of every day. I can’t keep counting calories, exercising and then punishing myself when things didn’t go your way.

You took “Stephanie” and replaced her with someone unrecognizable.

How dare you take this part of my life away, how dare you destroy everything and make me feel like I’m not good enough.

I’m now going to destroy you, make you feel the way you made me feel. I’m going to nourish myself and I don’t have to feel guilty for it. I don’t have to get rid of every calorie with exercising or purging.

I want you to know that you are an evil parasite and you are NOT my friend. Friends are caring and kind, you’re damaging and cruel. I don’t need you anymore. I will fight; fight with every bit of energy I have to escape from your evil clutches.

I deserve happiness and I deserve to have a life that I control. I deserve to be healthy and I deserve to recover.

You made me unwell but you aren’t going to keep me this way. I will win this fight.

Goodbye Anorexia.

From the girl who wants her life back and deserves a bright future.