Examples Of Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that I struggled with for the majority of my middle school years and a portion of my high school years. My classmates at Riverview High School were aware of my disorder, and it greatly affected the way they treated me. At the start of my junior year, I transferred to Madison High School. I decided not to tell anyone at that school about my eating disorder since I was mostly recovered by that time. Even though my friends at Riverview and Madison all showed concern for my well-being, their approaches differed greatly, especially in lunchroom behavior, conversation, and individual opinions about my personality and character.

At Riverview, lunchtime was usually a nightmare for me. I would enter the cafeteria,

No one knew that I had an eating disorder, so they did not care what I ate. This lifted an enormous amount of stress from my life. I finally had the freedom to eat what I wanted without being harassed. It was still hard for me to eat in front of other people, which is common for anorexics, but I was able to put some of my fears aside. I began to enjoy lunch instead of disposing of

Girls would follow me into the bathroom, and instead of styling their hair, they would check to see if I was throwing up. We never got to gossip together like normal middle-school girls because we had to focus on anorexia instead. All I really wanted to talk about was how cute Mike Reynolds looked that day.

I was totally shocked to find that all the life-and-death conversations disappeared when I went to Madison. It was so much fun to talk about the little things that occurred in everyday life. The subject of eating disorders rarely came up, and when it did, I was not the focus. I loved having the freedom to go into the bathroom without being followed. High school is meant to be filled with frivolous chatter, and at Madison I participated in more than my fair share.

I found that the students at Riverview had made many generalizations about my character, and their behavior was guided by those generalizations. Their natural instincts told them to help me. I appreciated their concern, but they never took the time to find out who I was as a person. They knew me only as an anorexic. My friends cared about my health, but they failed to care about me. Truthfully, all I wanted was for them to love me for me and not to obsess over my