4-20-13

Hello everyone :) There may be some "triggering" things in this entry for those of you with eating disorders. However I can promise you I didn't say any weights or numbers of calories. Just some of my past behaviors.

As I said in my last entry I would  start off at age 12. So I am going to jump right into it. At the age of 12 I was in 6th grade at a private school, I played soccer for the city rec league, and my best friend since 3rd grade had moved to Italy (her dad was in the military). I am trying to recall the things which I now think had a great affect on me but at the time I may not have realized it. And my friend moving to Italy was certainly one of them. I was heart broken. But I have grown up in military life so why was this such a big deal? All I know is that after that I started trying harder in soccer, I tried running the annual "1 Mile Run" better, I tried touching my toes in PE like some of the girls could do. All of these things are absolutely normal. However for me, and a small amount of the population it became a compulsion. I went for my annual checkup at the pediatrician one fine day in 6th grade and of course I got on the scale, and I don't know what it was about that particular number but I absolutely flipped a whale. I was not overweight, I was simply a young kid and I was growing. But after that day, things were different.

I am going to pick up at the age of 13 now. I am in 7th grade at the private school, but in this school 7-12 is in a building all together. So my transition from the elementary school to to "secondary school" was nerve racking all together. I was with the big kids. Yeah that's right, 13 year old Marissa was going to be as bad ass as the rest of the pack. That meant cross country in fall, Junior Varsity Basketball in the winter, and soccer in the spring. Well the reality was I was not good enough for cross country although I had been conditioning for it all summer, and by the spring I was too sick to play soccer. But basketball worked out okay in the winter. Our basketball team was extremely young and we lost every single game. Go lady sea hawks.... But for me I was winning; the disorder was taking over every last piece of that innocent 13 year old child. I was waking up at 6am and running 1.5 miles every morning, doing squats, sit-ups, push-ups, (but gawwd dammit Marissa why can't you do a pull-up like girls in the military). On top of all of that taking my dogs on walks and participating in PE at school. It would have been one thing if I was fueling my workouts, but sadly I was consuming little more than egg beaters, vegetables, and bread.

The end of the school year came around at June of 2006. I won the award for the most participation in PE class, as well as Principals honor role. I look back now at myself then and see a sick little fool. In approximately 1.5 months from 7th grade graduation I will be admitted to Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore County/Towson Maryland. At this point I was seeing a Pediatrician weekly at the Naval Hospital as well as a consulting pediatric cardiologist. I was supposed to be going wth my mother and sister to visit some family friends in New Hampshire this summer. I remember the Pediatrician had some concerns of me going because of my health, but they decided I could still go. And we went and I had a fabulous time. We went hiking in the mountains of Vermont and swimming too. Well....I didn't go swimming, I was far too cold. If there is one reason alone to pursuad someone not to become anorexic I would say because of the feeling of always being cold; actually let me rephrase that- bone cold freezing. Let alone the mental agony people with eating disorders go through.
Well when we came back from out trip to New Hampshire my Nana (grandmother) from Michigan was coming to see us. While she was visiting I was participating in basketball camp, (my poor parents at the time had not learned the eating disorder lingo of not letting your anorexic daughter do strenous excercise). Soon enough the world of eating disorders and termonology would become all too familier.

During the course of the last month the Pediatrician and my parents were telling me that I was getting really sick, and that I might have to go to a "hospital" to get "better". I had not the slightest clue what this actually entailed. My parents had started threatening me saying that I would be forced to drink "Milkshakes" (i.e. ensure plus bleehhh) in the hospital and if I didn't drink them, the doctors would hold me down and put it down my nose. This kind of talk absolutely scared me. Up untill recently I had been used to 100% control of my intake and body and I had not considered the scenario that medical professionals would force anything upon me. Well I did not take the warning that my parents and the doctors had been giving me for the last couple of months. I do not remember the exact day but towards the middle of July of 2006 my parents put me in the car and drove me up to Sheppard Pratt Hopsital for the first time. My 74 year old Nana was still visting us and had to stay at home with my 10 year old sister. Little did I know that would be the last time I ever saw my Nana again....

*Tune in next time to get a personal account of what 13 year olds experiance on an eating disorder unit**