In a lot of ways, I was-and still probably am-very, very lucky. 

 I realize now my eating disorder probably started as early as I started running. I am fiercely, irreversibly competitive to a fault. It was never enough to just win, or just PR. I had to win, PR, and beat the second place runner by twelve seconds. In middle school, before I really put in any effort to running, I still wanted to win, though I rarely did. Many car rides home were spent sweaty and sunburnt and filled with that tangible disappointment of a poor effort on the track in my hand-me-down Asics, staring out the window as my faster siblings compared ribbons. 

My story was similar to many other young, fresh high school female runners. Start off freshman year, run a few good races, work hard, get a taste of success, and start thinking, how else can I get ahead?

I had done two major changes before my freshman year, where I was first on the team, became the school record holder, and made it to state and got top 15 in the cross-country circuit. I’d become vegetarian (I’m sure everyone reading this rolled their eyes at that. Not very original of me.) and I had trained harder. Looking back, it was one HUNDRED percent of my new training that got me to the state meet and nearly on that podium freshman year. Steady runs, a little bit of core, a lot more lifting. But what I latched onto was the diet. 

The fact I’d cut out meat.

So I then added in a few more things. No more added sugar. Start counting calories. If I added the tiniest dribble of olive oil: “well, it was basically two tablespoons of the oil if you think about it and better safe than sorry”. If I had one miniscule slather of peanut butter, it was immediately at least one full serving. One apple was always a set number of calories because “some of them are bigger so I’ll just average it.” The thing is, I never weighed myself. My mother refused to own a scale. So I just was restricting without a purpose but hell-bent on somehow “getting skinnier” even though I had no idea what I was doing. I thought I was eating like an elite runner. I could basically recite my meal plan from memory. 

I’d get home from practice and take a long, hot shower to try and feel anything other than cold and miserable. I didn’t eat until dinner.

Over the course of really only five months, I plummeted ten pounds, my skin literally turned yellow, my joints ached, my hip hurt, my stomach rejected everything and I had diarrhea nearly every run, I’d have panic attacks over dessert and look up menus before going to restaurants while sitting in the car. The one thing I loved, running, was miserable. I couldn’t hold an easy pace on runs. I’d be dizzy and lose my vision if I turned a corner too fast. I spent most of my runs going from one bathroom to the next, visibly crying. I was thirteen. 

I was very, very lucky I got caught. I was lucky I had a family member who was a psychologist. Who knew what she was seeing. Who knew I needed help.

I was also very, very lucky to have a coach that pulled me aside after hearing I had an eating disorder, took me into his office and spent two hours telling me, essentially, that I would not run another step, I would not put on the school uniform, I would not even be allowed to come to practice and run until I was healthy, that I would sit and watch my teammates until I was in a better place. To quote him, “I will have failed as a coach if I allow you to continue like this.” He told me, in the end, it was my choice to get better. I had to decide if I loved my eating disorder or running more. And the fact I loved running SO MUCH is what saved me. 

I loved running devastatingly. I lived for a long run in the trails, shadowed by trees and the music in my ears as I wandered through the woods. Looking into the distance and seeing the endless road ahead. Sweating and straining during a boiling workout in the sun, that satisfaction after my coach gave me a hug after a hard race. I would run if I never won a race again in my life. If I lost my legs and had to relearn with prosthetics, I would do whatever it took. My identity as a runner was greater than my identity as a person with anorexia. 

So I went to therapy weekly, I got on a meal plan, and I had a family bound and determined to keep me on the road to recovery. Over the next year, it was a lot of ice cream, a lot of screaming fits, a lot of runs I was pulled out of by my coach because emotionally I couldn’t handle not running “perfectly”, a lot of doctor visits where they told me that I would probably have been placed in inpatient if I hadn’t started treatment earlier, because my heart rate was dangerously low. 

By senior year, I had gained 35 pounds, and suddenly was running great. I remember junior year, for the first time, I felt alone in my head. There wasn’t that second, oily voice demanding that I cut more out, restrict, skip meals, there wasn’t anything but my own self. 

I won three state titles in two years. I made a national meet. But the recovery journey still wasn’t over. 

I still don’t have my period. I never got it to begin with. I was prepubescent to begin with, and three years later I’ve developed in every way a female athlete should, breasts, height, hips, but that final piece still evades me.

 In a few months, I will turn eighteen, and I still have never had a cycle. It terrified me then, when I began to learn about RED-S, and it terrifies me now. I feel like every small sprain or injury is the beginning of a stress fracture, a crack in my bone forming. I lie awake at night wondering if I’m going to be okay because I still run the risk of having a cycle of injuries due to my stupid, silly choices. As weird as it may sound, the first thing I do every morning is go to the bathroom and check, and pray that my period has finally come. I want it more than almost anything. To me, that would be the final chapter of my journey, of finally being able to give the “hey, FUCK YOU!” to the eating disorder, to show that I made it. 

All of the athletic accomplishments I have achieved to this point, the fact I am finally comfortable in my own skin, eat whatever I want and in good amounts, (yes to walnut maple ice cream!)and train unhindered by emotional crisis, mental breakdowns and feeling frankly hungry and like shit all the time, will seem irrelevant if I get a bone injury. Because I know it will have been my fault. 

I wonder if I deserve one, for treating my body like that. For letting myself fall in that trap. 

RED-S is still very real for me, even though I can say with one-hundred percent certainty that I no longer have an eating disorder. I still get occasional thoughts, but I usually respond to those by getting myself a snack. Reminding myself that from day to day I’m a new person. I alone decide what breaks me, and I won’t let it be a silly thought about an extra handful of almonds.

And I want every female runner to know that it is never worth it. You won’t run faster in the end. You might be skinnier, but you’ll be alone and miserable and so, so cold. It will be hard to smile. It will be hard to have normal conversations. You will be aching, all the time. And you never should have to live like that. 

You don’t have to look or run or eat like anyone but yourself. 

In the end, you are always enough.