You could say eating disorders run in my family. 

My aunt jeanie's teeth are black and falling out of her head. They've been this way, and getting worse, each day for a long time. There's just been no money to fix it. My aunts and uncles are each going to pull together a couple hundred dollars each into a savings account towards getting them fixed. Which will basically involve pulling all her teeth and getting dentures. She's in her mid thirties. She's starved herself to this state and continues to do so.

Every time I see aunt jeanie I want to tell her how much it hurts me and her young children to watch what she's doing to herself.

It's always an ugly wake up call to me when a close family member who has had the same issues is so bad off. It's a big slap in the face and a siren screaming, "THIS IS REAL! IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU!"
I'm sure my tooth enamel is horrible anyway after almost six years of purging. But that number is not getting any higher, I've promised myself that. It's going on six years but it's not going to make it to that.

The last time I saw my auntie barbara she wouldn't get off my case. I remember getting off the plane with my family and her face falling. I remember hearing her take my mom aside and say, "Do you see how skinny she is? What is that girl doing?". I remember perfectly clear that I had had half a bagel to eat that day and was freaking out about dinner with the relatives and how I could get out of it. I think I was 102 pounds then. I remember when that seemed so huge to me. I think I range around 110 to 115 now. But it doesn't matter, I have muscle on me now too so I'm not going to bother to check.

Anyway, I remember that summer auntie barbara followed me around like she was my mother. It was actually really annoying but in the back of my mind I loved it. I loved the attention and she was treating me with the concern my mom never did. It's messed up. She told me one day about how she had for about a year gone through a really bad period of eating disordered behavior. She said she would only have a bottle of iced tea every day and that was it. She got down "to the ninties" and then woke up and got scared. I really wish that it were as easy as that sounds.

I'm really thankful to her and how much she cared for me. I don't know if I would have been able to make it without knowing she was there. She's still a really small woman but she eats really healthily and goes jogging. I want to be like her which is kind of ironic when you think of how all my life people would tell me I came out looking more like my aunt than my mother and before I always used to resent it. As I learn more about my auntie barbara's life, I become more interested and feel more like she'll accept me if and when I'll need her to talk to. She's really done some amazing things, some terrible things, and some brave things. She is my hope of getting out of it.

My grandmother used to teach my how to hide my food in my napkin so that people "won't bother you about what you ate". I still don't understand what that one means. I want to be angry at her for telling me things like that at such a young age, but I can't bring myself to feel anything but pity.

My mother has had a really hard life, and has always been put down about her weight growing up. When I look at pictures of her, she was beautiful, she was like Marylin Monroe beautiful. Big lips and eyes and a curvy shape. I didn't know it but she hated herself. Knowing all of this really was painful for me. I guess I was naive to think that my mom's teenhood was like a fairy tale, but I was just hoping there was someone in our family who loved themselves when they were younger. My mom said that when she was little that her mother told her she was "the fat one". Imagine growing up like that...having your mother tell you that. It's no wonder that my mom says she went through her own "phase" of an eating disorder.

It's got me wondering if everyone hasn't.

It's got me feeling small and sad and helpless. I wish I didn't know these things...they make me feel so, so sad. But I'm glad that I can't lie to myself anymore about what bad body image can do.

I don't know where I'm going with this. But I've got to break the cycle.