My eating disorder ultimately is what led me to want to die. I became so wrapped up in trying to make my body more fit and muscular, but I ended up doing the opposite. I was decreasing the amount of food I was eating while increasing the intensity of my exercise, only causing me to become weaker and more irritable. I was not seeing the results I wanted, which only intensified the feeling of not being good enough. So, I believed the lies that were circling in my head.

"Cut out the sweets, it will help you lose weight."

"Increase the amount of weight you're lifting at the gym, it will make you more muscular."

"If you become muscular, you will love yourself."

"You are only worth the amount of time you put in at the gym. Make time for it no matter what or else you are a failure."

"If you eat less, you will look better."

Every single day those lies filled my head, and I believed them. It wasn't long until the lies started becoming darker, cutting deeper into my heart and soul.

In the fall, I had begun working at a women's shelter in Duluth, along with taking 18 credit hours. In the spring, I took on another job, working as a language tutor at my school. In total, I was working two jobs, going to school full time, staying up late to finish homework and waking up early every single day to get in my workout. At first, I handled everything well. I kept up to speed on my homework, kept my jobs straight and felt good after my workouts, but, after the first two weeks of spring semester passed by, I found myself losing more and more control.

Quickly, in order to keep up with my insane schedule, I stopped living life and instead just went through the motions of what my life had become. Wake up, go to the gym, shower, go to work, maybe eat, go to class, go to work again, maybe eat (but only something small and "healthy"), come home, do homework, go to bed, repeat. I repeated this cycle every single day, until I went to Birch Tree the second time, and as you would imagine, it did not take long for me to lose sight of what was important: me.

I don't remember when the suicidal thoughts started to happen exactly, but I know that, once they came, I couldn't stop them. They became a small stream, constantly flowing in the back of my mind, only discovered by the ones who looked for it.

By the end of January, I had become my own worst enemy. My obsession with "fitness" became so extreme that I would lift up my shirt and insult my stomach every single morning as motivation to eat less and workout more. I began to eat the same meal every night: a salad, no dessert and definitely no snack after I had finished supper. I began to weigh myself every morning that I went to the gym, and I was only satisfied if the number was less than it was the day before. If it wasn't, I told myself that I didn't deserve to eat, or if I did, I would have to work twice as hard the next morning to work it off. I became addicted to destroying myself, and there was really no stopping the monster inside of me.

To be continued.