Dear anorexia:

Hi. It's me, Emma.

We've known each other for a long time now. I first met you when I was just a little 10-year old girl standing in the hot summer air of another blazing New England July. I still remember how you introduced yourself to me; you seemed kind, reassuring, and honest. You told me that I looked silly and ugly in the bright rainbow bathing suit I was wearing, and prompted me with stabbing jabs to wrap my arms around my stomach and skulk away into the shade of the umbrella my family sat under, where I could Like any shy individual already lacking in confidence, I gravitated towards negative thoughts about myself. You whispered sweet nothings into my ear and I absorbed them like my skin soaking up the sun's rays. As the waves crashed onto the sand, your assaulting barrage of vitriolic hatred wreaked havoc on my mind, bending and warping my thoughts to your whims and your beliefs.

The next 10 years were spent in your omnipresent shadow. I went through a decade with disordered eating habits. No one ever confronted me about it, because you were really good at making yourself scarce and providing me with excuses and reasons for why I was doing what I was doing. I would lie through my teeth and insist that nothing was wrong, all out of a desire to keep our friendship, or what I mistakenly interpreted as such, intact. On the inside, I was slowly dying, like a flower withering in the cold sun of winter. But on the outside, I smiled and laughed and pretended that nothing was wrong.

You kept me company when my depression and anxiety rendered me a sobbing, curled up ball in bed, wrapped in blankets in an attempt to shield myself from the outside. There were days where it felt like the ceiling was crashing down on me, or like I was Atlas, trying to support the weight of the world on my shoulders. I made friends and lost them as quickly as they appeared; holding onto them was like trying to catch water. But through it all, you stood by my side. As I isolated myself more and more, I reached for your company with greater frequency. We began to spend more time together as the days went by. I performed the tasks that the world required of me with a smooth, calm exterior that never belied the sheer panic lying just below the surface. When it came time for me to leave the safety of my quiet, idyllic little town and apply to college, I dutifully did so, even though inside I was consumed with fear of leaving everything that was familiar and comforting behind.

Freshman year began rather auspiciously, and as I dove headfirst into a new social ocean, I put you away in the corner like an old coat that I seldom wore because it had patches on the elbows and a stain or two marring its surface. But like a determined predator, you laid in wait until you were able to find me at my weakest and sink your claws into me. I was free-falling into an abyss.

Over the summer we became even closer. I withdrew further into my shell and began to slowly but surely waste away, physically and mentally. But still, nobody knew. I protected you like a mother protects her newborn baby; I cradled you and reassured you that everything would be okay. No one would take you from me.

Then, one day, sitting on my bed under the covers, because I was too cold otherwise, I hesitantly typed "anorexia" on my phone and waited for the pages to load. Shivering, stomach growling for want of the food I so cruelly deprived it, and nervously, I began to read about you. I began to learn about the friend I had never truly understood. I began to learn that not only were you not really a friend, but more of an ominous, threatening foe that held my life in the grasp of its cold, bony hands.

With every line I read, my horror grew and grew. There was a reason my hair was falling out. There was a reason my skin was dry and cracked. There was a reason why I never ever felt warm anymore. There was a reason why I drove myself to exercise every single day, despite how much it hurt.

And the reason was you.

You were not the welcoming, kindly face that had beamed down at me like the sun that first summer day and offered me shelter in your arms. You were instead a dark, demonic, deadly force that I had allowed to latch onto my heart and soul as you slowly sucked the life, and the will to continue that life, out of me.

I would like to say that as I sat there, thunderstruck, with the full realization that I had an eating disorder still absorbing into my brain, that I resolved then and there to be done with you forever. That I decided to say goodbye to you and rid myself of your poison.

This was not what happened.

Instead, our relationship grew even more intense and close. You were my constant companion; the devil on my shoulder without an angel as its counterpart. You were there for every waking moment and stayed to haunt my dreams. I could not escape you, and deep down inside, I wasn't sure if I wanted to let go. There was something exhilarating about the false sense of control I got from denying my body the nutrition and care it so desperately craved, There was a feeling, which I mistook for my elusive happiness, which I got from watching myself waste away more and more.

Even now, ten months after I first called home with emotion choking my voice, begging for help, I still can't seem to escape you. Whenever I start to feel positive or believe that I am finally free of you, you take me by the shoulders and shake me into following in your every footstep again. Ours is the relationship I keep coming back to, no matter how terribly you hurt me and abuse me. At the end of the day, I still crave your approval and your simpering smile as you reassure me that you will never, ever leave.

Dear anorexia:

As I write this, I know that you are not my friend. You are probably the worst enemy I will ever encounter in my life; the evil, scheming villain to my humble and unassuming heroine. I wouldn't wish you on anyone. You have made me miserable, you have made me crumble, and you have even tried to kill me.

Someday, I hope to be free of you. I hope to be able to look at myself in the mirror without your hateful words echoing in my head. I hope to be able to eat without having to completely numb myself to the outside world and focus solely on the mechanical process of chewing and swallowing one bite after another, without stopping to contemplate or enjoy what I am consuming. I hope to be able to learn how to have a healthy relationship with exercise; instead of using it to destroy myself, I want to use it to build myself up.

There is a large part of me that fears that I will never be free of you. That our identities are too closely tied together; that you have become the sole defining characteristic of all that I embody.

Fighting you has taken strength I didn't know I possessed. I've had to reach into the very depths of my soul and find the little flame of my desire to live that you almost extinguished. Every day is a battle; a war I did not sign up for. I wish more than anything to be able to cease spending every waking moment locked in combat with you. I wish for the peace and tranquility of a mind free of your toxicity.

But every day, I shoulder my shield woven out of happy thoughts and brandish my sword forged of positive affirmations and charge into that battle.

Because no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you sink your teeth into me and threaten to leave me bleeding out poisonous vitriol, no matter how tightly you lock your hands around my throat, no matter how intensely you work to convince me that you are a friend, not a foe, no matter how desperately you attempt to hold onto our frayed, tattered relationship, you will never beat me.

Dear anorexia:

One day, I will be free of you. One day, I will say goodbye.