The 3 A's; Anxiety, Anorexia, and Abuse-- my story

I don't know much about myself because I'm just starting to get to know me. For my whole life I lived in response to what was going on around me. I didn't make my own decisions, I did what was necessary to survive or be safe. My father was an alcoholic and chose drinking over his family. He hurt me, controlled me, and used manipulation to get what he wanted. It was my job to predict his moves so I could plan my existence.

I grew up silent, fearful, angry. I stopped eating in junior high for a month or two-- just long enough to realize how good it felt. Then I focused my efforts on school, bringing in high marks so nobody would know I was crumbling on the inside. In high school I started befriending boys, they made me feel good. It worked out OK; I let them put their hands on me and in return I got comfort, a feeling of safety, a feeling of being wanted. I had few friends; nobody understood, I was distant, I was distracted, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere or be social outside of my house. At home I begged for freedom and got slapped down with more restriction. I found a boy at school. He was smart, kind, and gentle. He treated me with respect, it was new, exhilarating. I defied all the rules to be with him, got punished in every way at home, but I was in love. We stayed together for a long time... then the boy moved away to college and found another girl soon after. He called me and told me it was over.

When I went to college I was scared out of my mind. I had no idea how to do anything because my whole life had been controlled up until that point. I wanted to leave home, but I was terrified of failure. I think I was depressed for that entire first year.... I turned to alcohol, drugs, sex, anything I could do to produce good feelings. I found myself attracted to intensity. I didn't care what it was; ecstasy, coke, cigarettes, an abusive relationship, it didn't matter, as long as it was intense. Intense was better than alone and unwanted.

A few years into college, and at the suggestion of my best friend who had introduced me to drugs and raves and a few boys, I started modeling. We bypassed the fashion industry and went for glamour, erotica, and alternative-styles of photography. It paid well, got us a ton of attention, and for me at least, it gave me something to fill that emptiness with, something to do. We had fans emailing us, we got free stuff, we were on VIP lists, DJs knew us, guys bought us drinks, we got special treatment, and on and on. But we were praised for our looks, our photos, and the internet persona we had each created, and nobody was praising the real me inside. My friend went on to become a pornstar sensation, but modeling grew tiresome for me. I was just a face, a body, I wasn't me anymore.

After college ended I had no plan, and so I moved back home (my father was apparently sober). Things were becoming okay at home for the first time in my life. Although I had been diagnosed with anxiety/panic attacks and was prescribed medicine, life was starting to look OK. But all too soon my father went right back to old ways, worse than ever, more dangerous than ever, less abusive but more self destructive than ever. It wasn't just alcohol anymore, it was pills, too. The paramedics knew our house-- often we would come home and find my father passed out somewhere unsure what he took or how much. We couldn't leave any pills laying around whether they be painkillers or vitamin C-- he took everything he could get his hands on. Unable to cope, I started going out and drinking, becoming social again, and after a night of too much drinking I ended up underneath a guy who was far too strong for me to fight off. I don't know if I said yes or no, but I was too wasted to make that kind of decision. I told someone about it, a girl, and she said, "Well you're fucking hot and you were drunk, what else did you expect?"

Things in the family got worse. We tried to control my father's access to pills, we tried talking to the doctors who were prescribing them, warning bars not to serve him. We set him up therapy appointments, meetings with psychiatrists. He didn't care. Nothing worked. He just didn't care. My family divided, I kicked my father out of my life. I stopped eating. Nothing in my life felt good, but losing that much weight sure as hell did. 7 months later I found myself in therapy twice a week.

A lot of my recovery has been spent talking about my father, but it's a never-ending exploration of self. I thought if I just "got over" my childhood, everything would be okay, but I now now that nothing in my life is independent. Everything is twist-tied together. I can't work on just one thing. People always want to know, "Well, what was wrong? Why did you stop eating?" And it's hard to just give a quick answer. And that's why anorexia is so hard to treat, because it's not about something tangible and it's not about one thing that happened. There's so much going on, things overlapping, things protruding outside of their cubicle into another section, things sitting in spaces you didn't even know they belonged to, things that come up you didn't even know were problems. I guess it's like they always say, "the more you dig, the more you find."

I continue to dig and I continue to find stuff, but I like to think that the more I dig, the closer to me I'm coming. And for the first time in my life I'm beginning to know myself. It's kind of scary, but absolutely necessary for me to survive.