It's pretty crazy that someone who seems to be happy and has their life together could be fighting some pretty serious demons. It's hard to believe that your best friend could be having issues that they don't feel comfortable coming to you about. It's crazy that someone who is surrounded by love can feel so alone and unloved. But it happens. All the time. And it happened to me.

When I was in seventh grade, I had a lot of close friends in my life (or at least those who I thought were my friends). I was pretty popular in middle school. I had a "boyfriend" in title, but nothing more. My family was super involved in my life. But something snapped. I would hear my "friends" making comments about how they wore a size zero, but I couldn't relate. They would make comments about guys talking to them. They would say that I shouldn't know what that's like since I had a boyfriend. I would be a slut if I was friends with other guys. It would make my boyfriend look bad if I had guy friends. They pointed out all the things that were wrong with me, and because I thought they were my closest of friends, I thought they were right.

So in seventh grade, I developed an eating disorder. It started out small: Just giving my lunch to my friends because I "wasn't hungry." I slowly stopped talking to all my friends, male and female. But nobody noticed. My "best friends" didn't notice that I was slowly becoming isolated and losing weight faster than I should have. As the year continued, I continued to eat less and less, and I ate even less in eighth grade.

My own family didn't even notice. Nobody knew that I was fighting these demons. But my mom found out. We were Black Friday shopping and I hadn't had anything to eat all day. Before we went shopping, I hadn't slept, either. Everything was totally fine and I was enjoying time with my mom until I got dizzy and everything went black. Before I knew it, I was on the ground and was surrounded by people. When my mom found out that I wasn't eating and was losing friends, she didn't know what to do.

She started having people watch to make sure that I was eating. Any time I would stay somewhere, she would tell a parent about my issues and reminded them to watch me closely. It was embarrassing but it needed to be done. It was because of my mom that I did start eating and slowly started to talk to people again. It was a hard process and it was something that continued until I was a senior in high school. It took five years to repair the damage that one conversation with my "friends" caused.

The moral of the story is this: If you're friends with someone, you never want to put them down. Being a friend is all about building up and supporting others. Don't be the reason that the term "best friend" loses its meaning.