Let me tell you what it is like to have an eating disorder:

You are hungry, all the time, and when I say “all the time,” I mean all the time. You are most likely cranky because you are hungry. You crave junk food, or food in general, but because of the restrictions you have placed you know you can never eat any of that type of food. You have this deep feeling of constant exhaustion. Your nails become brittle and break easily; your hair falls out in clumps. Climbing up a set of stairs makes you feel like you want to fall over. Your skin becomes dry. You are probably constantly dehydrated, or you drink too much water with the intention of wanting to feel full, of wanting to mimic the feeling of having food in your stomach. You are so tired you lose interest in everything. You live in this constant state of just aiming to make it until the next time you go to sleep so that way you can try to catch up on the rest you feel like you never get. Whenever you try to eat (because it comes to a point when you try), you hear voices whisper in your ear. They tell you lies like you are not worth eating that. You do not need that. Stop eating. You are too fat to have that. Just stop looking at it and do not eat.

You have a love and hate relationship with food. It becomes an obsession that quickly takes over your life. You try to make it into a game; you win more points the fewer meals you eat. You dream about food, literally, and you can never stop thinking about it. The nutrition labels on the back of wrappers become your best friend and counting calories becomes your favorite type of math.

You learn to crave celery and crackers and you wonder if toothpaste has calories. You love getting high on the feeling of having an empty stomach. You feel guilty for turning away food when you know there are people on the other side of town who would love to be in your position; so surrounded by food that you have the choice to not eat. When you feel full, you feel sick. Even thinking about eating a full plate at dinner makes you nauseated. You feel powerful knowing you have all of this control over yourself but that the same time you are just so… exhausted.

You have no interest in school work. You cannot focus on much, or you focus too much. There is no gray. No in between. You are constantly flirting with death, testing the waters and seeing how little you can get away with not eating. You see the number on the scale and feel your heart sink even though, deep down, you know it is ridiculous to be upset when you weigh two pounds more than a wet cat.

Now you are losing control over this. This first started as a way for you to lose three pounds; now you have lost ten. Fifteen. You are in it too deep now and you are becoming scared. What if it never stops? What if you continue to hear those voices telling you to keep eating less and less for the rest of your life? You do not know how to stop and you can feel yourself slowly spiraling downward and you do not know how to get help. You start to wonder if it is even worth it to continue living like this. The control you once loved is now the enemy. You are practically standing with one foot in the grave.

Eating disorders are dangerous. They are painful and recovery is hard. There is a social taboo about them, a social stigma, just as how all mental illnesses have one. People tend to sweep issues such as this under a rug and pretend they do not exist, which is more dangerous than the disease itself.

Unless if you have a mental illness, you have no idea how hard it is to get help. How scary it is. How embarrassing it is to have to go to someone and tell them that you have this problem you do not know how to stop. And even when you have the courage to tell someone, there is the possibility that they will not believe you. Or they will think you are making it up for attention.

A lot of people tend to follow along with society when it comes to eating disorders; they glamorize it and make them seem romantic. They make eating disorders seem devastatingly beautiful. Hauntingly alluring. In their minds, you are delicate. Made of glass. Easily breakable. This makes them scared to help you or unable to fully understand the mentality of what is really going on.

Let me tell you something from the eyes of a recovered anorexic:

Starving yourself is not beautiful. Eating disorders are ugly and hurtful. They bring years of depression and anxiety. Many people who get trapped in one can never fully escape. Eating disorders are one of the only mental illnesses that literally have a mortality rate because the malnutrition and the starvation can actually kill you. And I say “people,” not just women, because it is not a gender specific disease. Approximately 20 million women and 10 million men in the US have an ED at some point in their life; that is 30 millions too many. Eating disorders kill. Educate yourself on eating disorders before it is too late.