by Teagan Stewart, Madeline Malcolm and Alyse Reimer

1. It was my first day of high school in a new town; I was an outsider, again. I’d moved 6 times in the past ten years and was always the new kid, and everyone loves to pick on the new kid. For the most part I had ignored it, my peers didn’t know me, didn’t know anything about me, therefore, how could the mean things they said be true? I really don’t know why I took the one comment to heart, especially since I had heard those same words many times before.

2. by Teagan Stewart, Madeline Malcolm and Alyse Reimer

3. I was reading one day in homeroom at Salem High, my new school, and the ‘popular’ guys came over to my desk. “Hey,” said the obvious leader of the group “whatcha reading?” “Nothing.” I replied trying to end this conversation before it started. “Where you from?” he asked, pressing. I was hoping that if I ignored him he would go away. “So you’re too cool to talk to me?” He asked, for the sole purpose to impress his friends. “No.” I said in a quiet voice; almost inaudible. “Yeah, why you talking to this porker anyway?” One of his sidekicks offered. They all laughed and walked away, completely oblivious to the fact that the one remark would change my life forever.

4. That night my parents were working late, again, so I was responsible for my own supper. I started to dial Pizza Hut before I remembered what happened at school. I pressed the off button on the phone and went to my parents’ room, where my mom kept the bathroom scale and a full length mirror. First I looked at myself in the mirror, from all angles, trying to see why those boys could think that. Then I stepped onto the scale, I did not like what I saw, the numbers were too high. I got off the scale and made the decision; no one would ever think I was fat again. I decided to take control. So that night I didn’t eat anything, no supper, no snack, nothing. The next morning when I woke for school I was so hungry, but in a weird way, I liked the feeling, the emptiness, it comforted me, it reassured me that soon I would be thin, and no one could ever say I was fat again.

5. That day was the day I started to go to the gym every day at lunch hour; I would play basketball or just walk on the track. My parents never noticed; how could they? They were never home, always work, work, work. After a couple weeks of only eating when others were around, and afterwards I either threw it up, or exercised, kids at school started to notice. They would always say nice things about how I looked. I just figured that if they were complimenting me now, after just a few weeks, what would they say next month, or the month after? And that is exactly what kept me going, but after a while they stopped saying nice things. Now they would whisper as I walked past. I always thought they were saying how I had looked good a couple of weeks ago, but I was gaining the weight back. What I didn’t know is that they were actually saying that I started looking too skinny.

6. Then one day during homeroom, those same boys came up to me. I had learned that the leader of the group was named Ethan, and the other three boys were named Josh, Michael and Matthew. “What’s up?” Ethan asked, not in a friendly way. “Nothing.” I said. I really didn’t like this kid. “Why are you always alone?” I think I heard the tinniest bit of concern in his voice. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?!” Even I was surprised at my outburst. “Whoa!” Matthew said “You’re a walking skeleton, what happened porky?” Josh and Michael snickered. “Shut up!” I yelled “Why don’t you just leave me alone!” Where was the teacher? “Hey porky, stop spazzin’.” I couldn’t take it anymore, I needed to leave. I left my books there and ran down the hallway, I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t care. I just kept running, and then suddenly everything went black.

7. The first thing I remember after was hearing an oddly familiar voice. My head hurt badly and I didn’t want to open my eyes. “Ali! Ali! Are you okay?” The voice said. “I’m fine, really.” I mumbled, opening my eyes; and to my surprise, there was my fourth grade teacher kneeling over me. She looked panicked. “I’m fine,” I said again, sitting up. “What happened?” “You were running down the hall and it looked like you fainted.” she said. I stood up. “I’m fine, really. I’ll just go back to class.” I started to walk away. “Wait! We need to talk about this.” she sounded genuinely concerned. “What is there to talk about? I fainted.” I really just wanted out of there. “We’re going to talk about your eating disorder.” she said, her mind made up. “What? How do you know?” I said a bit louder then intended. “Come on, let’s go to my classroom.”

8. Once we got to her classroom we talked for quite a long time. I confessed about what I had being doing and asked her how she knew. She told me her sister worked at a treatment center for eating disorders so she knew the signs. We talked about my family; about how my parents were never around, and we talked about pressure from the media to look good, and we also talked about those boys that were teasing me. Then she told me I had to talk to my parents, I was terrified, but at the same time I felt like I had a giant weight lifted off of my shoulders.

9. Telling my parents wasn’t easy, they blamed themselves mostly. They felt horrible that I was dealing with all of that alone. Getting better wasn’t easy, and there were a lot of times I just wanted to give up, but the whole time my parents were cheering me on. It felt good to deal with things, it was hard but once dealt with I felt much better. I learned that hiding my problems didn’t help me, it only prolonged them. And the hardest thing I learned was that; no matter what people look like around you, no matter who teases you, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, and nothing can change that.