Have You Been/do You Know Anyone Who Has Been Anorexic

How can I become anorexic?

I used to want anorexia, just so I could be skinny. Just so I could lose weight.I wanted it; until I got it.I stopped eating almost entirely, I became obsessed with counting my calories, and with exercising. If I had more than 400 calories a day I would go on at least 2 runs, and drink a fuckton of water.I would chew gum to keep myself from feeling hungry. I felt weak all the time. I got into fights with my mum over how much I was eating. I bruised easily, scars were vibrant.My body was shutting down.I lost 10 kilograms. I slept all the time. My grades were slipping, my concentration gone.Food was constantly on my mind, in my dreams. I would bake a lot of stuff, and never eat it, I’m still not sure why.I wanted to walk down that path, and so I did.And I wish I never did. It’s so hard to recover, so, so hard. A lot of the thoughts still float around in my head, when I look in the mirror, when I go to take another bite.You don’t want to walk down that path, I promise. Please don’t.

How long does it take for someone to become anorexic?

With an adequate degree of unrelieved stress, not long.In my case, I survived a motorcycle collision with a car, flipped into the windshield with my head, then over onto the pavement. This was a time before helmets. I had a concussion, contusions , the beginning of a lifetime of back problems, but otherwise luckily nothing broken. My boyfriend (the motorcycle owner) required hip surgery.My parents were driving to Vermont when it happened to visit mom's family and New York State troopers were sent to get them. They were, of course, freaked out. And then even more angry that I was not at least dying.My mother was so upset by this incident (I'm sorry, did it happen to her?) she invited her sister to bring her toddler down from Vermont to stay in our home, where the two of them delighted in the toddler’s antics and I was left to rehabilitate alone in my bedroom. I was in a lot of pain at first and didn't have much appetite, and pretty soon, it just became an annoyance for them to bring me food. The lack of attention was striking — why did my mother need help caring for me if no one was, in fact, caring for me? I became withdrawn and depressed. Why eat?My parents then forced me to swear out a deposition so they could sue my boyfriend. Apparently I couldn't sue the car driver. That upset me even more. Now he wasn't even speaking to me. He did nothing wrong after all.Mom didn't like my friends from school to come into my room. God only knows why — maybe it represented me enjoying 10 minutes out of a 24 hour day or, more likely, she feared we would find a way to have sex in that tiny 3 bedroom house with people running in and out! So there I was. Alone, isolated, depressed, ignored, hurt and miserable. Before I even realized it, 20 lbs were gone (and I was thin to begin with.) A whole new unhealthy way of dealing with stress was born. Unbidden. Unwanted. But there it was. In a matter of a couple of weeks it crept up.It became my way of coping with extreme stress and depression. An unwilling behavior that I would fight several times in life.