I think what I found really sad about this entire ordeal, is all the way up until 8th grade, I was happy, smart, and a little shy but Istillhad a collective group of close friends. 8th grade was a game changer for me – my cousin raped me, and I became very fearful of other's touches. In freshman year, I got bullied (though I'm not sure if they truly thought they were bullying me) about how I flinched at touch. The boys thought it was the funniest thing to poke me and watch me flinch and squirm away from their touch. They didn't realise that it only caused me to hate being touched more and more.

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I still had a collective friend group, though we never really hung out of school anymore. I found it harder and harder to leave the house, and I hated even going to school because the thought of there being SO MANY people in there made me want to die. I remember one girl clearly, not because we were truly friends (she was moreso just the friend of my best friend) but because one day, I was sitting in front of her, and she says to me, "I can't see your spine anymore. I was jealous of that, it was so pretty." Puberty, of course, makes you grow, makes you eat more, makes you gain a little bit more weight. Before that statement, the joke with my family was that I was the "garbage disposal" and "bottomless pit" because I could eat my meal, plus one or two others, without getting full. Those jokes never bothered me. I couldn't explain why at the time, but that statement about my spine stuck with me. I ate lunch hesitantly, and when I got home, and was panicked when I realised it was true. I stepped on the scale and almost cried because I had gained at least ten pounds. My family had always joked I was going to look like them at their age because that's how genetics work (they're not obese, but they're definitely more than a little overweight) and that was the deal breaker. I didn't want to be fat, I wanted to stay how I was. I already wasn't a breakfast eater, so it was super easy to skip that meal, but then I started skipping lunches at school. None of my friends really realised it because I was friends with people at three different tables so I just bounced between the three all hour and told them I had already eaten at the other table. It got worse and worse until I wasn't eating anything all day and still exercising and even increasing my exercising and stepping on the scale and still not being happy with the number. My senior year, I had what my doctor called "a vasovagal syncope" since I was already diagnosed with vasovagal syndrome, but what she doesns't realise is that wasn't it at all. I hadn't eaten in over 5 days, and even still in a two week peroid i only had two small bites of a plain bagel. I was in a play at that point, and it was practice every night and the past two nights prior I had a show. The stress was so high and I had so little in my body, that the fact that I had two ranadom seizure-like episodes is probably due to the fact that I was extremely malnourished and underweight. I was close to 97 pounds. At my age and height, (18, 5'5") the ideal weight should be around 135lb and the absolute lowest should be 120 lb. When I graduated high school, I was 92 lb. I still never was offered help from anyone, though most of the people in my life had figured out what was going on and kept commenting on how bad I looked (I was a wreck. My hair had died and was falling out in clumps, my eyes were super sunken in, I couldn't sleep, I had bruises all over my body just because my skin was so fragile, my nails just flaked off) but that is all they would do. They never asked how long it had been since I'd eaten, they already knew. They never offered me food. They never offered to help me get help. They just repeatedly said, "Wow you look like a ghost." and "Are you sure you want to look like this?" I wanted to die at that time. I was so unhappy with everything. I knew I looked bad and they were rubbing it in my face. I wanted to look healthier but the number on the scale stopped me. I did focus on eating a little bit more, but still kept myself at a strict 95lb range.

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My anxiety kicked in full gear by then. all I wanted was to be perfect, and I was so far from perfect I thought there was no going back. I convinced myself many times I was going to die, and even set different dates to encourage myself to end it. Somehow, they always got foiled (most of the time by people randomly deciding to include me in their life again and me not wanting to hurt their feelings by killing myself). I bounced from guy to guy to guy because I had this idea that I couldn't feel love even though I wanted to and I felt like the only way to have any sort of human connection was if I gave them what they wanted (which was sex). I put up with one guy for two years even though he was extremely emotionally abusive (which was how I lost all my friends coupled with anxiety and ana during my sophomore year). He even encouraged my anorexia, by constently commenting on how beautiful I looked when I was little and somehow noticing the smallest weight gain and making snarky comments about it. I was destroyed by him. I don't think my anxiety and ana would have ever gotten as bad as it did without him.

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Going into college, I met my current fiance. I was attracted to him not only by looks, but his straightforward attitude with everything. We had the same 6 hour break, in which we hung out in his car and took a nap and watched harry potter over and over and over. He used to walk me to my car after class (because it got dark out and I was terrified of someone kidnapping me or raping me or both) and I remember one night, maybe a week or two weeks after we started talking, he said, "You're anorexic." It wasn't a question, or a positive or negative comment, just a fact.

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He learned many facts about me over the course of the month, each time just stating it. He didn't try to change me, he didn't try to make me feel bad about it, he just would tell me that he knew and that I could talk to him about it. It was very reassuring, knowing I had this option of actually talking to someone about it without getting judged or having them try to tell me that I was this awful person and that I shouldn't be like that (like my parents had when I tried to talk to them about it. They literally told me when they found out that I wasn't allowed to have depression, anxiety, or anorexia and that I waasn't raped because "It wasn't in the parenting manual when we signed up for this."). Eventually, when we started dating (which is a funny story in and of itself because he assumed we were dating and I didn't know if we were dating and we always just danced around the subject even though we went out on dates and hung out all the time and held hands and stuff), he started to encourage me to eat more. He didn't try to force it, he didn't try to make it seem like it was my only option, he just did it little by little. Encourage me to take one extra bite. Had us share plates so I didn't realise I was eating as much as I was. Anything he could do to help. I won't say I'm cured, I don't think I ever will be, but now, if I'm hungry, I'll eat. Whether I eat a lot or a little depends, but I at least don't agonise about it. I'm getting a little worse now, not in that I am not eating, but that I am micromanaging what I eat, constantly checking the ingredients and always going for the "healthier" option, which isn't bad in and of itself but knowing my history, it could turn into obsession. We live together now, and he promised that we will never have a scale in the house because he knows I'm get obsessed with that number. I'm happier not knowing the number, even though I'm extremely curious (last time I was able to check, I was 103).

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Anyway, anxiety overran my life with that, making it so much worse. Now with school, it is literally affecting me to the point where I had to drop one class because the thought of going to the class gave me anxiety (not because I wasn't doing well in the class but because there was so much homework I was so far behind and I was panicking) and I just took a test today in which I knew all the material, where I was the one who, during our lectures, gave all the correct answers and worked ahead on the worksheets and got everything correct, and I probably failed it because I had so much anxiety or being perfect on this test that I felt as though I knew nothing and then fumbled through the entire test.

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My doctor knows about this, but avoids talking about it. She encourages me to talk to others, but doesn't recommend me a therapist or give a prescription. I have never gone into great detail about it with her, but perhaps I should. All I know is that it is actually ruining my life, to the point where I'm failing classes because I panic on the material that I already know. I still don't have any friends besides my fiance, and actually one more person mainly because we were always aquaintances and then just actually started talking out of the blue (i actually had to ask him if we were friends because i had so much anxiety about that and was worried that if we weren't friends that he was going to just disappear and I was going to go back to only having my fiance to talk to).

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I just feel as though I am nothing but a huge pit of anxiety. I can't say no to work even if it interferes with my general life because I feel like if I say no then they'll fire me. I can't call off of work because I feel like if I do they'll fire me, so I go to work sick all the time. I can't go to my teachers for help even if I actually don't understand something because I'm afraid they're going to get it in their head that I'm stupid and just going to fail their class anyway. It's even so simple as to I can't even order anything different at a restaurant or the cafe because I'm afraid I'm not going to like it and then I won't eat it and then they'll be offended and I don't want to waste the food so I'll just panic and pretend to eat it whenever they walk by instead and just tell them I wasn't insanely hungry and get a take-out box even though I'm never going to eat it.

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i'm just frustrated and done with it all i feel so stupid especially since now I have to work 3 times harder at school not only because I'm taking harder classes than high school but also because anorexia probably is the one who destroyed my short term and long term memory because i have almost none. If I don't write it down so I can look back I won't remember it. I've had to reread this twelve times while I've been typing it because I forgot what I was talking about, or what I had already said. I just want to be normal and have friends and just do even okay in school. anything but what I am now

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