NEDA Week 2022: My Story

 It started out safe. A lap around the circle outside my Livingston home, eating one burger instead of two. Then somehow, it all went downhill from there. The positive comments coming from my ballroom champion, miss Baton Rouge 1960 grandmother, my clothes fitting looser than before. It all stirred up the perfect storm. One lap turned into ten, 20 crunches turned into 400 crunches, and one burger turned into a spoon of peanut butter every two days. I was anorexic. I was addicted to the appearance of bones, thin. I remember going to see someone and their baby with my family, but before that we stopped at BabysRus and telling my sister I couldn't feel my thighs rub together when I walked. I was so conscious of my thighs. She looked at me so confused. From there, I don't remember much else besides the notebooks filled with scratches of a pen to stop me from self harming as much as I could because 16 year old me hated myself. Crying at night while I did wall sits because everyone else could throw up so easy and I just couldn't. Sitting on the counter chugging green tea three times a day. The foul taste of unsweet green tea trying to mellow the taste of epsom salt water and laxatives that I would force down my throat. All because I wanted to have a body like my idols on pinterest or in a vogue magazine. "Why can't I look like that" I would sob as I pinched the fat around my torso after endless ab exercises, criticizing my body as it cried out for nutrients. My brain was comatose and my depression raging in its newfound environment, feeding off the negative and intrusive thoughts that I would create just to keep myself away from food. On Wednesdays at church they'd have dinner, everyone would eat the sandwiches and cake while I slipped away with a diet coke, chugging it to feel full for the next few days. My weight plummeted as well as my will to live 127...124...120...110...105...100 pounds. The scale would frown at me if I even let a gram show. I was sick, my body was shutting down, the ribs and hips, and vertebrae bulged out . My eyes were heavy, sunken in, my already sharp jawline sharp enough to cut rocks. My cheeks, shells of the former bright, full and innocent little girl I used to be. Lily was dead. What was left was nothing but a skeleton that had a heartbeat that kept on going, but slowing each day. 

until the day I looked in that mirror, I saw a girl. A girl with light brown hair, a button nose with knee high purple zebra striped socks on. Her eyes were weak and red from crying, but there was an ember in them. Something was fighting back. The will to live. I put on my jeans and boots and brought that mirror outside and on that Louisiana fall day and smashed it in until every shard of glass was nothing but sand. The frame was nothing but splinters. I was the girl who I wanted to live. I was the girl who lived. 

Cutting an extremely long story short, I want to encourage every one of you to believe you have a will to live, because you do. You are so loved. No matter what comes into your mind, know that there is someone out there- me- who loves you and is proud of you. 

Oh...and by the way...that little girl turned into a woman who can deadlift, squat, and hip thrust more than her own body weight, has thunder thighs and biceps that put some guys to shame. I am strong, I am resilient, I am alive. 

- Lily Gayle, Miss Red River City 2022.