If You Are Reading This, I Love You.

‘Ello love, Meg here. Where should I begin? I’m a teenager residing in the hill country of Texas. I’ve traveled to twenty-two different countries, lived in nine houses, and have attended seven different schools. This is my story.

At the age of four, I developed obsessive-compulsive disorder. It began with violent images I don’t care to explain, which haunted me day and night. It drove me to worry about everything, and life became tedious, yet no one knew my pain. I thought I was insane. Life continued on, droning and torturous.

Summer before freshman year, I developed anorexia nervosa. I’d been teased throughout my school years for various imperfections: my glasses, my freckles, having braces, and being slightly overweight. It became my way to control the world, to numb out the pain, to become perfect. Suddenly, nothing mattered to me but the number on the scale. I wasted days away running and weightlifting, at night, I’d stay up and exercise some more. Rather quickly, I began wasting away as well. I adopted a nasty temper as the result of my lack of sufficient nutrition. My entire being was numb, none of my mother’s crying or dad’s begging could budge me.

Now, I’ve got some of the best parents out there. I can’t blame them. The disorders run on both sides of the family, my mother’s has OCD, and my father’s had eating disorders. I was bound to happen. Anyways, June 2010, my parents threw me into treatment. Now, at this point, I was rather shocked, believing that I was completely normal, even overweight. Why were these physicians and therapists telling me I was on the edge of death? It was a matter of days before my heart would give out completely.

So during the summer of 2010, I had no summer. By the time I graduated from day treatment to intensive outpatient, I’d been in groups and sessions and meals for a good eight weeks. I didn’t go easily, it took months to finally accept that the people around me were not placed there to make me fat, they were there so that I may reclaim my life.

September of that year, I was finally diagnosed with OCD. I recognized that these thoughts were not my own, and that I was completely irrational in being frightened. So, I entered another treatment program, and dropped out of school for the month of October. By the end of four weeks, I was almost completely cured.

Fast-forward to now. I’m still not “recovered” of these issues, I still have some quirks and whatnot, but I am fighting. Fighting not only for myself, but for my family and friends, for my future, for you. And that is why I started this project. If you are reading this, I love you.