Text: Alisa Talasma
My life changed the day I get anorexia nervosa diagnosis in August 2013. Before that, I was a girl who was secretly losing herself. I was a girl who was suffering in silence. I was hiding my feelings. I knew I was sick but I couldn´t accept it before it was said out loud. All of the things going on in my head – calorie counting, obsessive exercising, need to lose weight and self-hate – were things that only I knew. This whole eating disorder world was my own dark paradise. Then suddenly, everyone knew about it and it wasn´t a secret anymore. The day I got the diagnosis of F50.0 totally changed my life.
I couldn´t hide the truth any longer. And because everyone knew the truth, I was constantly supervised. There was not much of privacy. My parents watched that I ate every bite that was on the plate. I wasn´t allowed to train gymnastics. I had to go to different doctors’ appointments. I fell even deeper and didn´t want to recover. Anorexia was what I had become. I wasn´t myself. I was the illness. I was a pale skeleton girl who was slowly fading away. My life was like hell. I was a salve of an eating disorder. I was a prisoner of my own thoughts.
In the summer of 2014 everything changed for the better. I finally realised that I wanted to recover. I wanted to be healthy and happy again. I wanted to be free. I fought against my eating disorder and won.
This experience has definitely had a big impact on my life. I have beaten a mental illness that kills more than any other mental illness in the world. I have found myself even though I was lost. Now I am a happy gymnast who trains hard. I am a girl who loves life. This experience has made me stronger and without it, I wouldn´t be the person I am today.