hi, my name is colleen and this is my story. i used to be “normal” and i wasn’t always like this….ok so here we go…

there was a time when i was actually happy and my biggest care in the entire world was what color i wanted the flower i just drew to be. it was amazing but i only have vague memories of it. i was 8 years old, in second grade, the first time i starved myself. i didn’t realize what i was doing and i didn’t see a problem with  it either. i think that’s where everything began. 3rd grade was the first time someone called me fat and i remember ever detail of that conversation like it was yesterday. i changed after that. i became extremely concerned with my weight and my appearance and every aspect of myself. i don’t remember anything about 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th grade other than being that girl that everybody hated for no reason. that’s when the depression started. i cried myself to sleep every night and didn’t understand what i did to have people say things like “she’s such a whore”, “she’s so fat”, “why do you even talk to her” and she obviously stuff her bra” and those were the nicer things said too… things got better in 8th grade…kinda. i was still lonely and didn’t feel like i could be me. i had to put on an act so that people wouldn’t go back to saying the hurtful things to me. toward the end of 8th grade this girl lost her pair of sneakers and like 2 months later my mom brought home a pair for me just like hers. she is still to this day convinced i stole them. she called me a kleptomaniac and harassed me about it for months and then we graduated, she came to my school. i made a tumblr the summer before sophomore year and she found my url. she looked at my blog every day and posted my link to someone i wrote about’s wall. i eventually changed my url to avoid further harassment until she tried to get every single one of my friends to give it to her.whh? “because i like to make fun of it” there is an album on her best friend’s facebook called “i wish i was skinny” which is based off of one of my posts which brings me a little bit closer to my current story. 

i started to develop an eating disorder in 3rd or 4th grade but it wasn’t professionally diagnosed until early 2011. i would go for day without eating and when i did it it was rabbit sized portions. i started seeing a therapist in may of 2011 and it helped for a while but at that point my depression was so bad all i could think about was dying. 

fast forward to august 2011. disociation ever day, starving myself for weeks living off of vegetables, excessive exercising, daily panic attacks, and abuse of diet pills had become my life. we went to visit my grandparents one day and my emotions were so out of control. when we were leaving my brother said “bye troll” and i lost it. i broke down and started hysterically crying. my dad and my pop pop got into a fight over i don’t know what. we left the house and my dad punched me, que the panic attack. i’d be clean of cutting for about a month or two and i hadn’t had a panic attack in almost 2 weeks. he screamed at me the entire ride home saying “save that bullshit for somebody that cares” every time i gasped for air. i had 37 scratches on my right leg alone (because i had nothing to cut with)  by the time i got home. then the child protective services came into the picture and when my dad’s reply when he found out was “thanks. now i’m going to lose my guns.” more crying, more panic attacks, more cuts. about a week and a half later i wrote a suicide note and planned on taking whatever pills we had in the house. i couldn’t find the pills because my mom had to hide them again. i panicked and called my therapist. lots of crying from my dad, my mom, and me that night. the next morning at around 8am i found myself in the car on my way up to the zucker hillside out patient program for evaluation. about 2 hours later i was on my was to the adolescent program at zucker hillside. i was being hospitalized for depression and was out on suicide watch. i was lucky and only had to stay 5 days there where as there were others who had been there for 3 months. i was terrified. i couldn’t see my boyfriend, my best friend, or my little sister. every time i thought of that girl i broke down hysterically crying when i thought that she almost had to go through life with out me. to have e one day and be gone the next. how could i be such a horrible sister? the next 5 days i was pretty much baby sat by people who thought the worst i everything. no pants with strings, no shaving, supervised showers, no shoelaces, no jewelry, and asking permission for literally everything. it was scary and i hated it. i saw my parent every day during our 2 hour visiting periods and i saw my grammie once. other than that it was 15 min phone conversations with my boyfriend or best friend. i was scared and alone. i was put on and anti depressant and an anti anxiety medication which i still take daily.

i’m still not 100% ok but i am getting better. i’m still concerned with my appearance and have a self esteem of like 2. some days i wake up wishing i hadn’t others i’m ready to take on the world. little things still get to me and i do have days where i want to swallow a handful of pills or cut myself open and scoop the fat out with a spoon. it’s a long hard road ahead of me and i know that. i’m more than grateful of the people who recognized something was wrong, acknowledged it, and stayed by me through all of it as if nothing had changed. it’s hard but i’m getting better. 

this is only a portion of my story but it’s one of the bigger things. july 28th i was hospitalized, august 3rd i was released. those days forever changed my life.