I have been you. Well, I have been like you. You have two settings: wishing you looked different and hating yourself for not having the will-power to starve yourself. Or you’re the type who distracts herself and overloads her schedule so that finding something to eat is nearly impossible. Maybe neither of those are you, and you’re the girl who has convinced herself that she doesn’t even enjoy eating. Which ever girl you are, I’m writing to you.

It breaks my heart to know that you’re here. I hate to know that I’ve been to this place, or a similar place. I know that some people spend their entire lives in this dark, lonely mindset. While you are here, you should also know that I understand that this article will not be the sole reason you change your mind. I know that someone complimenting you encourages you to eat less- not more. I know that it is an intrinsic gloom, but I also know that there is light on the other side of it.

For some of you, the numbers are what drive you crazy. Numbers include weight, calories consumed, calories burned, hours until your next snack or meal, or times you’ve had to eat in front of someone else so that they don’t suspect that anything is wrong. For others it’s not the numbers, it's the image. No matter what you look like it’s never good enough. You wanted a flat stomach, and now it’s not flat enough. You wanted a thigh gap and now sometimes your thighs still touch when you walk. Sometimes someone takes a picture of you at an unflattering angle or in the wrong lighting and you’re broken. And as a result of this, you’re not hungry.

Aside from the hunger and the numbers and the pictures, you are exhausted. It is a mental battle to tell yourself how much you hate yourself ALL THE TIME. It is draining to spend your whole day unhappy. Even in the best weather and with the healthiest support system, your mind, your body, and your soul are never satisfied. You aren’t nourished. You’re (probably) exercising or over-exercising, and you are irritable. You can't explain to anyone why you’re so tired, why you’re not hungry, or why you’re in a bad mood. You break at the idea of explaining to anyone how you see yourself, even if they see you otherwise.

And this is where I *hope to* strike a nerve with you. Instead of internalizing your pain, your hatred, your darkness, the negative body image you have, or the regret from whatever cheat meal, or only meal, you ate, I beg of you to tell someone. Tell someone why you cry. Tell someone why you have no appetite. Explain what you see when you look at yourself, or the scale, or your food tracking apps. When I was you, or like you, I cried when I looked in the mirror. I cried when I was hungry. I cried when I lashed out at the people I love. When I hit my breaking point I was crying because my parents didn’t want me to go for a run at 10:30pm simply for my own safety. Instead of internalizing and going to bed, I screamed- what would normally have been internal- aloud, “I need to run because I hate myself.” I cried harder. When the words finally came out of my mouth and I heard how ridiculous I was being, it slowly all stopped. I knew I would never cry about that again: I would never cry again because I hated myself.

Change wasn’t going to come from complements. Change would not happen if I listened to the me who hated everything about myself. Change wouldn’t come internally. It happened in the darkest place. Change came from my breaking point. And I hope that you break. I hope that something changes your mind, or your view, or your obsession with “perfection.” I hope that you break so that you can begin to heal.

What, though, is healing? What does that look like? For me, it was making myself strong because I had been weak. It was working out to build strength, not to punish myself. It was finding a love of sweating out my negativity and bad moods rather than controlling my appetite. It was falling in love with my body one very small step at a time: beginning with accepting my body for what it was and aiming to be better every day. Both physically and mentally I learned to control my emotions and my body. I learned to exercise because I loved myself, not because I hated myself. I learned to eat when I was hungry, and rest when I was tired. I learned that carbs make you run fast, and protein makes your muscles POP, and drinking water fixes just about everything in between.

So to the girl who is not eating, I learned that the best results physically, came from the best mental attitude. I learned that as much as controlling what I ate helped me feel in control of my body, it was actually making it nearly impossible to control how I looked and felt. I learned that healing my mind was what made my body look the way I wanted it to look. It was not a lack of food, but eating the right foods. It was not in extreme diets or exercises, but in balance and moderation. I, currently, feel the best I’ve ever felt, and this has blossomed from a positive mind. I have found that with proper nutrition, my body is a machine that is capable of amazing things. I am strong, now, because I have been weak, because I have been broken, and because I have forgiven myself. Until you break, until you see this need for change within yourself, you will never understand how happy you could be with yourself.