Back in June of 2012, I thought things in my life were going pretty well. I had a steady job, had just gone on a long weekend trip with my boyfriend to Las Vegas, and was looking forward to a week-long vacation to San Francisco with my mom -- a place neither of us had been before.

Little did I know things were about to change very drastically.

The day before my flight to San Francisco, my boyfriend and I got into a fight and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was about.

All I remember is him telling me our relationship of three years was done, leaving the apartment we had shared together for the past 10 months, and driving to my parent's house 20 minutes away.

I think I was numb on the way over to my parent's house and had this feeling like this was just another silly argument that would blow over.

I figured I'd come home from San Francisco to find my boyfriend sitting on the couch in our apartment, watching TV and offering to bring in my luggage from downstairs.

I quickly realized the next day and during the following week in San Francisco, when my boyfriend didn't answer any of my text messages or phone calls, that this wasn't the case.

We were actually over and I had no idea how to handle it. My San Francisco vacation was ruined; I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't enjoy any of the places we visited while we were there.

I was frantically checking my phone every ten or fifteen minutes to see if I had any missed calls or texts from my boyfriend, trying to talk to his family over social media, questioning my mom if she had seen warning signs, etc.

It was a mess and worse still, I was a mess.

I came home to my apartment at the end of my ruined vacation and things took a turn for the worst when I saw he had taken the opportunity to move out while I was away.

I came home to find almost all his personal things gone, along with the furniture we brought that was his and a flatscreen TV he had bought me for the previous Valentine's Day.

He also informed me I needed to take myself off the lease so he could break the lease and move back in with his parents until his under-construction house was finished.

The next few weeks were a blur of crying, sleeping, and not eating. But suddenly, there was a silver lining.

The black cloud of sadness I was under started to lift as I realized this horrible, gut-wrenching break-up I was going through had made me lose weight. And rather quickly at that.

I had always been one of those girls who struggled with an extra 10 or 15 pounds on my frame and it was infuriating. It seemed like no matter how many diets I tried, the weight stubbornly stuck around and didn't budge.

But now, suddenly, I was losing weight and I started to like what I was seeing in the mirror. This is when my eating disorder emerged.

The funny thing about eating disorders is how insidiously they can sneak into your lives. It's not like you wake up one morning and say to yourself, 'I think I'll starve myself today and make myself feel miserable just so I can lose weight.'

Negative events of all kinds turn our worlds on their axis, and unfortunate actions occur as a result. In my case, the start of my eating disorder was a result of this bad breakup and I'm sure that's not uncommon.

As my weight started to go down, the attention I began to receive from the opposite sex -- as well as my confidence --went up. Suddenly people that had never been interested in me before wanted to date me and I was starting to feel much better.

But as I started to feel better and not as sad that my ex and I had called it quits, my appetite started to return. I suddenly couldn't make it until two or three in the afternoon to eat for the first time and my weight started to creep back up.

The compliments I had started receiving from people regarding my weight loss in the first few months after the break-up slowed and then stopped. I panicked. I didn't want this new attention I was getting to end.

I should probably mention that I'm a type 1 diabetic. That means my pancreas doesn't work and in order for my body to process my food correctly and to keep my blood sugar stable, I need to take multiple daily insulin injections.

Without insulin, my cells don't get the energy they need to function from the food I eat and I'll get very sick. But, unfortunately for me, I also realized that if my body couldn't get the energy it needed from the food I ate, it began to break down my fat cells for sustenance.

By not giving myself insulin and keeping my sugar levels very high, my body was literally feeding off of itself in order to survive.

As a result, I began losing a lot of weight. I remember walking into my primary care doctor's office and they told me I lost about twenty pounds in three or four months. When they asked how I just said I went through a bad breakup and wasn't eating very much.

Which wasn't a lie, necessarily, but it definitely wasn't the whole truth either.

I was overexercising, I remember that clearly. If I didn't work out in the morning and at night or didn't burn a certain amount of calories by the end of my workout, I felt like a failure.

If I ate something that I had told myself was 'off-limits,' I felt like a failure.

If I gave myself insulin for something I ate, I felt like a failure. I was firmly in the clutches of an eating disorder and I refused to see it. I just kept telling myself I was taking control of my appearance, I had an image I wanted to maintain and this was the way to do it.

When family members started to express concern about my appearance, I did a quick Google search and learned that what I had is called diabulimia and skipping my insulin doses was a way of purging.

Although diabulimia isn't yet officially recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is usually classified under the Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED) category and efforts are being made to have it classified separately like anorexia and bulimia are.

About a year and a half into my eating disorder, I met the person who would eventually become my husband. I told him I was diabetic, but I didn't really elaborate and he really had no idea what I was doing to myself by withholding my insulin.

It wasn't until we were dating for about three months and I ended up in the hospital emergency room with diabetic ketoacidosis (an unsafe level of ketones in the blood) that he realized I was very sick.

I explained to him what I had been doing with my insulin and he was floored.

He didn't understand why I would do that to myself and it was so hard to explain.

I felt ashamed that this is what I had been reduced to for such superficial reasons. I don't think he realized how skewed my thinking was as a result of my eating disorder until I expressed concern to him and my parents that I was getting 'fat' from all the IV fluids they were pumping into me.

They couldn't believe that was what I cared about as I sat in a hospital room, very sick because of something I did to myself.

I wish I could say that was my wake-up call and I started taking care of myself, but it wasn't. I still struggled with restricting insulin and had a poor relationship with food.

It wasn't until I was pregnant with my first son that I got serious about taking care of myself. It was no longer about me; I knew that I wouldn't do anything to risk my baby's health or safety.

I took my insulin, counted my carbs, exercised, and saw my doctor three or four times a month. But in between my first and second pregnancy, I went right back to my old ways of not giving myself insulin and letting my sugar run sky high.

There were days I could barely keep my eyes open because I was so tired of having blood the consistency of maple syrup because of high blood sugar sluggishly moving through my veins.

I now have a two-year-old and a one-year-old, but I still struggle daily with my eating disorder. It's constantly on my mind and puts a strain on my body, my relationships, and my mental health.

I now see a therapist once a week who is trying to repair my disordered thinking and help me realize that there is more to life than my pants size.

It's something I will probably struggle with for the rest of my life, but having a support system in place made up of people who care about me and my well-being has been a huge help.

I was in denial for a very long time about my eating disorder, and even now, it's sometimes hard for me to admit it to people because of the stigma surrounding eating disorders.

I've heard every negative response you can imagine from "you're selfish, get over it" to "you're going to deny your kids a mother when you pass away from the complications."

Those comments sting and they aren't helpful, but I've realized that people are ignorant and they make asinine comments like that because they are uncomfortable and don't know how to react.

My hope is that by sharing my story, even if it's hard sometimes, will help others find their voice and ask for help too. Eating disorders don't discriminate and affect people of all ages, race, gender, and socioeconomic background.

I've learned over the past few years that it's okay to admit you have a problem – asking for help doesn't make you weak, it means you want to be strong.

If you or someone you know struggles with an eating disorder, contact NEDA (National Eating Disorders Association) at 800-931-2237 or visit www.nationaleatingdisorders.com