all anyone wants is to be happy.

I don’t remember too much from when I was a kid. Of course, I have memories, but most of them are just bits and pieces.

When I was four years old, I remember I was walking out of the studio building behind my friend Lindsey after ballet class. Lindsey was my age but naturally much smaller than I was. I remember looking down at her legs and how her pink tights stretched across them. I remember thinking, my thumb and pointer finger would fit easily around her thigh. I remember looking down and thinking, not around mine, though.

When I was seven years old, it was lunch time, and my friends and I huddled around a cafeteria table. I don’t know how it came up, but we were telling eachother how much we weighed. Everyone went around the table and said a number, true or not I’ll never know, but when it came to my turn, I lied. I remember feeling embarrassed because I weighed more than what most of the others had admitted to. I remember thinking, it’s bad that you weigh more than them. Tell them a lie. Tell them you weigh less than them.

When I was ten years old, I was sitting on my bottom bunk at a sleep away camp. My friend, Hannah, sat next to me; she had just finished making an anklet for me out of colorful embroidery floss. I brought my foot up so she could tie it on my ankle, but as she wrapped it around my skin, the floss couldn’t knot properly. It was too short. My ankle was too thick. I remember feeling shameful and disgusted with myself. I remember thinking, I wish my ankles were smaller.

When I was twelve years old, I stopped eating breakfast every morning.

When I was thirteen years old, I started tracking my calorie intake everyday.

When I was thirteen and a half years old, I started restricting my calorie intake.

When I was thirteen and three quarter years old, I started using exercise as a way to earn food.

When I was fourteen years old, I stopped taking in more calories than I could exercise off each day.

When I was fourteen and one eighth years old, I started taking trips to the bathroom after any meal that was over my limit.

When I was fourteen and two eighths years old, I stopped eating.

When I was fourteen and a half years old, I made my parents cry.

I was put into a facility that worked with people like me. People who at fourteen and five eights years old, couldn’t even eat lettuce without sobbing uncontrollably. People who at fourteen and five eighths years old, forgot how to look in the mirror without seeing a monster in the reflection. People who at fourteen and five eighths years old, were at constant war with their own mind. Their own mind, infected with a parasite of delusion and manipulation, provided the “One Full Proof Way to Find Happiness in Life and Within Yourself.” People who, having no one to tell them this “Way” was a lie, followed along blindly while truly believing it was the only way to happiness. People like me.

All we really wanted was to be happy. All anyone wants is to be happy. We just had the disadvantage of believing we weren’t good enough to be happy and that maybe one day we could be if we worked hard enough.