To every eating disorder, you will never win. You will never have the upper power, and you will never define us.

Living with an eating disorder is like living with a constant weight sitting on your chest that becomes heavier every time you eat. It's eating a meal because you're hungry but hating yourself for it afterward because "you ate too much" even when you didn't. It's having the smallest of appetites some days and then never feeling full the next, but feeling guilty either way. It's constantly hearing "Wow you never finish a meal!" and "You barely ate anything, want something else?" and still frantically searching for an answer to either one. It's forgetting to eat all day until you get a headache or feel dizzy when you stand. It's thinking about food but not wanting it, it's being hungry but dreading eating anything. Its a war, a constant war. But I promise we will win every single time.

To every disorder, you are not strong and you are not slick. You will not control my life because the only person who can do that is us, and we do not choose you. We do not choose to feel sick at the thought of food or choose to hate ourselves after every meal because we ate too much or want to purge after every meal so the calories won't count. We do not choose you, so please stop choosing us.

The war may be long, and it may be hard but we will always be the victorious ones. We will continue to go out to eat with friends and we will continue to eat our favorite meal when we feel like it. We will win, we will win every single time.

There may be days where you have more power than we do, and there may be days where you win the battles. But overall we will know you're there and we will continue to fight back. We will wake up every day and we will look in the mirror and we will love ourselves because of who we are is beautiful no matter what you tell us. Our weight is good enough and what we eat will be up to us, not you. Because you don't have our best interest heart, you did never do and you never will. You don't love us, so please stop visiting and let it be time to love ourselves.

I won't say you don't hurt us, or change our everyday lifestyle or that we're not affected by you, because we are. Every day. But the point isn't how much you hurt us, the point is what we're doing about it and what we're doing about it is surviving and thriving as best as we can. And that's all we need in order to keep on going.

So this is from all of us, you will lose every single time. It's inevitable, we can't be beaten.

Sincerely, the survivors.