When my battle with anorexia began, I thought I had three choices: let the eating disorder kill me, adapt my disorder so I could live in eternal purgatory for the rest of my life, or kill myself.

Recovery was not even an option in my mind. The disorder had such a strong hold on me that I truly believed that there was no life without it.

Confession time: I only chose treatment so that my family would feel like I had given it my best shot before I killed myself.

I never thought it would be successful, I only wanted to lessen their pain when I took my life. At the time, I was convinced that that was the only way out. But it wasn't. Fast forward a year and I had started to really believe in recovery. I knew that there was a life beyond my eating disorder, I just didn't think it was one where I would truly believe the body image positivity I spouted to any and everyone who triggered me.

The first time I heard about Southern Smash, I rolled my eyes at my dietitian. She had said a lot of things that I found outlandish in our time together, but this was by far the most ridiculous. She expected me to walk out onto my college campus, in front of all my peers, and smash a scale. The very lifeblood of my eating disorder.

Even more shocking, she expected me to meet this woman, McCall Dempsey, and to actually share my story with her. I had no interest in meeting a woman that would smash one of my most (at the time) prized possessions, but in that moment a curiosity was born. I wanted to learn about the woman that had the guts to travel from campus to campus and repeatedly destroy one of an eating disorders most wicked mechanisms.

So I began to read about her story. I promised myself that if she returned to NC State's campus, I would go to the event. Unfortunately, the next year came, and I chickened out again, but the curiosity didn't go away.

As I learned more and more about her and her organization, Southern Smash, I became inspired and enthralled. I had to see this beautiful, incredible moment firsthand. I had to know what it felt like to smash my captor into a million tiny bits.

So yesterday, three years into my recovery, I went. And what I found changed my life.

Seven months ago, I hit a rough patch in my recovery. It was only worsened when two months later, my therapist moved away. For a long time, I felt like my motivation went away with her.

And yesterday this fierce, passionate, incredible woman welcomed me with open arms. She stood and talked with me and for the first time in my life I really, truly, honestly believed that I had met someone that was living their life free of the shackles of their eating disorder.

McCall Dempsey treated me like she wasn't the complete and total definition of a recovery rockstar. She was kind and humble, and so compassionate. She stood before a crowd of people and shared things about her eating disorder that were totally and brutally honest. I'm three years into the recovery, and yet I still cannot look back at my journals from during my sickness. Yet here she stood, sharing them on a slideshow.

I was stunned when she explained that the reason her video had pictures of her journals and not of her during those times was because you couldn't truly see how sick she was in an external picture, because her battle was internal. As someone that struggled to find treatment because of outdated diagnostic criteria about BMI, this hit home for me. My least favorite question to be asked is "do you have any pictures of you at your worst?" because no photograph could ever express the hell I was living in. And I know that what you look like at your worst doesn't matter, but to hear someone you admire that much say it as well, is an indescribable feeling.

In the grand scheme of things, the time I spent talking to McCall was just the flash of a star across the sky, but it was exactly what I needed. She reignited the fire inside of me that yearns to break free, permanently, from my disorder. She gave me the courage to walk into my new therapist's office and actually attempt to be vulnerable, because what do I really have to lose?

So thank you, McCall, your words and your wisdom showed me that what I thought was a wall, was actually a fork in the road. I could choose to continue on my way, living my life at 70-80% capacity, or I could choose to combat my own fear and push through, choosing the path of recovery. And I will do my best to continue to pay it forward.

If Southern Smash comes to your campus, or your area, do yourself a favor and go. Smash that scale and meet that incredible human.