Note: If you suffer from an eating disorder this post could be triggering. Discretion recommended.

I was nine years old when I stopped eating unconsciously as a way to cope. I was fifteen years old when I first thought I was fat. I was sixteen years old when I consciously skipped my first meal. I was seventeen years old when I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa.

In my experience people has a misconception about eating disorders. Adults think they are just a phase and an attention seeking behavior. Teenagers think they are a fast way to lose way and something romantic. But let me tell you the truth, also from my own experience.

Eating disorders are not beautiful, nor glamorous; they are not a crash diet or a lifestyle; they are not a cry for attention or something you do because you want to; they are not your friend or a pet name. They are a scary and life-threatening mental illness.

Anorexia is not just saying that you are fat when you are not; it is thinking that you are beyond obese when you are medically underweight, it is feeling and seeing nonexistent fat rolls falling down from your stomach and thighs when the reality is that your stomach is not even flat but concave and your thighs are the same size of your calves.

Anorexia is not just disliking a few things about yourself; it is hating yourself so much that you gag when you see your reflection in the mirror because you cannot stand what are you seeing, which is not even how you really look.

Anorexia is not just refusing to eat; it is the inability to do it even though it is actually all you can think about, even though the hunger pains are waking you up at two in the morning, even though you have been fasting for the last ten days and still counting.

Anorexia is not just wanting to be thin; it is wanting to be sick. It is watching your goals getting lower and lower; it is considering normal meals a binge; it is being 500 calories too much, 300 acceptable, 100 good and 0 perfect; it is believing healthy weight means fat, underweight means skinny and dangerously underweight means perfect.

Anorexia is not just refusing food politely and sweetly; it is snapping at others for even offering or saying no with a sad face, it is lying to everyone about everything; it is spending hours cooking a meal and then throwing it away only to pretend that you ate.

Anorexia is not becoming prettier; it is becoming ill, it is having bruises everywhere, blue and brittle nails, dry and pale skin, chest and stomach pains; it is your hair falling out in locks when you brush it; it is feeling weak, tired, dizzy, lightheaded irritable and cold all the time; it is not being able to lie down for too long because your bones start to hurt.

Anorexia is not crying for attention; it is turning down every invitation because you rather stay at home exercising than enjoying an evening with your family, or not going to a party with your friends because you know there will be food there, or refusing to go to the pool or to the beach because you feel so insecure about your body and only imagining it makes you anxious; it is not leaving your home for months because you are too ashamed of your body.

Anorexia is not choosing to be like this, it is actually wanting so badly to recover but not being able to because the voice in your head won’t go silent, it won’t stop yelling and telling you that you are not thin or sick enough to recover.

Anorexia it is failing at school because you cannot concentrate when you are thinking in food and counting calories 24/7, because you stay up until three in the morning doing cardio, because you go to bed at 4 pm without doing your homework or studying for the test you have next day because you are so exhausted and you want to skip dinner.

It is crying yourself to sleep every night feeling guilty about what you ate, crying over a plate of salad, crying in the shower because touching your body makes you disgusted, crying and praying to God to take your life because anything must to be better than this.

It is having 966 photos in your photo caret and being 830 photos body checks and thinspo, it is ~~fat~~ body checking every time you find a mirror, it is weighing yourself at least 3 times per day, it is counting every single calorie you eat and burn, it is debating over 5 hours if you should eat breakfast or not.

It is writing with Sharpie all over your body reminders like “FAT”, “DON’T EAT”, “STARVE”; it is cutting your skin open or hitting yourself with a hammer as a way of punishment for eating too much.

It is hating yourself more than you love others, it is isolating, it is losing control, it is losing your identity, it is losing yourself.

It is pain. It is suffering.

This is the truth about eating disorders, the one no one talks about, the one no one tells you. Or at least the one no one told me.

I was fifteen years old the first time I found a pro ana website that told me all the wonders Ana would do for me. But Ana didn't do wonders for me, Ana got me sick. I am eighteen years old now and I still have an eating disorder. And every day I wish someone would've told me the real truth about ~~Ana~~ Anorexia.

It took my life to discover that they lied to me, don’t let it take yours to discover it too.