Over the past 5 years, I have given you everything; I have given you my time, my trust, my attention, my relationships, my sanity, my mental health, and my heart. I have given you every last bit of me until there was little left for me to give. You, however, have robbed me of my happiness, my health, my mental health, my friends, my joy, and my kind heart. I am done with being your slave and I am through with letting you control my every little decision, move, thought, and word. To the memory of the boy who introduced me to my crippling best friend and said best friend: I am breaking up with you.

When I first met you, I was a typical adolescent girl; I was happy, I was in love for the first time, and I had my entire life ahead of me. You were someone I had heard of but had never been introduced to directly. What I didn't know was that you had already befriended some of my most cherished friends and had already started your dance with them. We were introduced by my boyfriend at the time, though I'm sure you remember that. I can still hear him explaining how I needed to be your friend, actually. I can still hear him telling 112 lb me that I wasn't going to be attractive if I was 115 lbs. And thus began the sickest and twisted and complicated and abusive relationship I have ever been in.

From then on out, Ed, you would control me. You would have your hand over me like a marionette master, deciding where I go, what I wear, who I see, what I eat, what I don't eat, what I say about other people. You tricked me, Ed. You tricked me into thinking you loved me and you were there for me and that I was ultimately in control; you convinced me to lie to my friends and family, you told me I wasn't pretty enough, that everyone was lying when they complimented me, that you were my only friend in the world; you had me sobbing in bathrooms at school because you told me you were the only one who cared if I lived or not. Ed, you told me I could only confide in you and you were the only one who could possibly understand my mind. I watched my friends watch me pinch myself and scowl and gripe that my 120 lb frame was too fat and "disgusting," and you fed me the words. I have lied to the faces of my mother and my sister and boyfriend and best friend in the world so that they wouldn't know that I was your friend, Ed. As a singer, I gave you bits of my voice I will never get back. I gave you my confidence, Ed. I gave you my self-image and my happiness.

However, I have also given my heart to a man who loves me and has helped heal the wounds you have caused me. I have given my trust to my family because of you. I have a stronger relationship with my mother and my sister because of your hatred. I have slowly had that happiness given back to me, and in ways I never expected. Ed, you were the biggest thing in my life for 5 painfully long years, and I could not be more thankful, really; because of you, I can see when young girls and boys are beginning their stories with you, and I can stop you dead in your tracks. I know what to say to your victims because I was one at one time, but I'm not anymore. I through with you, Ed. I'm breaking up with you for good this time, not just for a few months. It's time I stop letting the ghost of a bad relationship haunt all of the good ones I have.

April, 2011 (a few months after we met); 103 lbs

November, 2012; 93 lbs

November, 2012; 93 lbs

March, 2015; 160 lbs

June, 2015; 120 lbs

January, 2016; 107 lbs

February, 2016; 115

June 2016 (And finally happy again)