When my eating disorder started, it wasn't centered around a desire to be thin. Sure, my weight was an area of insecurity for me, but isn't it that way for every girl at one point or another? Losing weight was a bonus, but it wasn't my main reason. My eating disorder came about because I felt like everything in my life was suffocating me, and starving myself was the only relief I had.

It confuses a lot of people. Hunger isn't usually considered a pleasant feeling. I'll admit it's a difficult thing to explain to others. What I've realized over the years is if you've never experienced it, you'll never really understand it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't still try your best to understand a bit about why people turn to eating disorders.

Everyone has a different story. For me, I had issues with my weight my entire life. That seems to be the case for most people who end up struggling with an eating disorder. Looking back on it now, I was never an overweight kid, but I went through phases where I was chubbier than a lot of the other girls in my class. It didn't really bother me until middle school. Undressing in front of an audience of my peers in the gym locker room made me distinctly aware of my thick thighs and little paunch.

That's when my obsession with diets started. I grew up watching my mom reading books by talk show hosts that promised to help you lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks, so it only made sense for me to create my own middle schooler version of these diets. One week I pledged to be a vegetarian, another week I played Just Dance on the Wii after every meal, and let's not forget the short lived celery-only-diet.

But I was a growing girl who needed energy, so those diets always inevitably ended in cookies and tears. Every time I failed, I would berate myself over my total lack of control. Skinny girls had total self control, I would bet.

Luckily, I didn't have to wait long for my desired body. By my freshman year of high school, I had hit a growth spurt and my body thinned out naturally. My paunch was gone and my thighs didn't look like the word "thunder" belonged in front of them anymore. I always thought being thin would make me happy, but the opposite was the case.

With my freshman year came a serious bout of depression. I'm not sure what brought it on. Maybe it was the change from middle school to high school, maybe it was from losing some friends, or maybe there was no reason at all. Whatever it was that caused it, my depression hit me hard. All I wanted to do was lay in bed and stare at the ceiling all day.

I ended up joining after school theatre in a last ditch effort to get my motivation back up. I worked crew on the school's winter musical, which entailed a lot of long hours and heavy lifting. The director kept us until 9pm every night and refused to feed us - which, looking back on it, is probably illegal. By the time I got home at night, I was so exhausted I would just stumble to bed without eating dinner. The next morning would be a rush for me, as it always was, and I wouldn't eat breakfast to save time. Soon a meager lunch became the only meal I ate.

It didn't take long for me to notice clothes that were once tight becoming looser on me. It gave me a rush knowing my hard work hauling props twice my size was being rewarded with a flatter tummy. Finally, I felt some of the self control that I was missing in middle school. Participating in the musical wasn't helping me with my depression, but maybe this could.

I started to experiment with lessening my food intake even more. I would pick apart the lunch I brought to school every day, choosing which items to eat and which to toss in the garbage. Eventually, I got to the point where I would only eat a cheese-stick for lunch and then a pack of gummy bears from the vending machine during rehearsal for "dinner". This pattern continued throughout my freshman year, and the pounds kept melting off.

You might think that finally being "skinny" made me more confident, but the opposite is actually true. By the time my sophomore year rolled around, I was living exclusively in baggy sweatshirts and ill-fitting leggings. I didn't like people to see my body. To me, it was repulsive. Not because it was too skinny or too fat, simply because it was mine.

My depression only worsened in my sophomore year. The sadness manifested in the form of self-hatred. I stopped trying as hard in school, refused to go out, and didn't care about maintaining friendships. I was my own worst enemy. It felt like everything was spiraling out of control. I was losing my grip on everything in my life and I couldn't handle it.

Not my eating disorder though. That was one thing I had control over. It was the only constant in my life. To me it was the best friend I never wanted and didn't want people to know about. It was the constant voice whispering in my ear and demanding I obey its commands. Whether that was dropping friends who dared to voice their concerns or sitting in the library during the lunch period, I would do it without hesitation.

The effects of malnutrition hit me hard and fast. I barely had the strength to lift all my textbooks. I was so tired all the time that I fell asleep in almost all my classes. My hair became brittle and came out in clumps in the shower. I had to have a heater in my room at all times because I was always freezing.

Things only went further downhill in the coming year, but through it all, I clung to my eating disorder. I refused to give up the only thing in my life I could control completely.

It took therapy sessions that my mom forced me to attend for me to see the error in my thinking. I was originally there to treat my depression, but my therapist caught on quick to the fact that it wasn't my only issue.

Years of starving myself weren't fixed by a few sessions. It took quite a few just to even admit that I had a problem. Being forced to examine your feelings and the reasons why you're acting a certain way is difficult and uncomfortable. To me, admitting that I needed help felt like I was giving up control.

It wasn't until my senior year that I was able to realize that I didn't have control; my eating disorder was the one calling the shots. I was so addicted to the false sense of strength it gave me that I was blind to the fact I was destroying my life.

Recovery is hard and not always linear. I wrestled with it for a long time, and there have been moments where stress has made me fall back into my old habits. And yeah, sometimes I feel an all too familiar guilt after eating a piece of cake. Sometimes I look in the mirror and cry because I feel like all my "hard work" went to waste. But those days are fewer and far between as the years go on. It will never completely leave my mind, but I am better now than I once was.

You can't control an eating disorder, but what you can control is your own path to a healthier, happier life.