Who the heck are you?

I am a young woman with an eating disorder.

Things started going to shit when I was around 14. I was very involved with dance, and I planned on becoming a professional dancer. Puberty hit, and you can figure out the rest.

When I was in high school, I made the difficult decision to leave the dance world to dedicate myself to academics. I took all honors-level courses; in my senior year, I took six AP (advanced placement) classes and scored a five (the highest score) on all of them. I applied to five colleges, three of which are in the Ivy league, and was accepted at all of them. I went to one of the Ivies and graduated at the top of my class (literally).

The purpose of the above paragraph is to demonstrate that, despite my pathetic desire to be unique, I'm a "textbook" case. F*ck.

Anyway, I went nuts during the fall of my senior year and was sent to the psycho ward of our local hospital to cool off. In all of that chaos and stress, the only thing that gave me something to focus on was hunger. It was my crutch.

Later on, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (at the time of my hospitalization, I had just began a medication regime for depression--any folks with bipolar out there know what that does!). Having an ED when you have bipolar is great. When I'm manic, I'm too fatigued to do much. When I'm depressed, I feel euphoric due to the hunger.

I haven't been actively restricting during all of this time. There were times when I felt in control of my life, well, enough to loosen my grip on my crutch. I've never put down the crutch, though, and I wonder if I ever will.

{sigh} ok, for all of you out there with EDs, here's the stuff you really want to know: ED-NOS, restricting mostly. I haven't purged since 2004 :-). HW = 137; LW = 105; CW = I don't have a scale (not going there!). GW = I don't f*cking know anymore. I'm generally obsessed with 108 and count my calories in tens. For all of you without EDs, now you really think I'm nuts! :-P

Enough depressing stuff! I live in New York (not the city). I have a boyfriend, and we've been together since our first week of college (we met at school). We live together now. He knows about the ED; he doesn't know about this little side project. What else. I like to do crafty stuff (knitting, making clothes, decorating our apartment, stuff like that).

Overall, life is pretty good, well, except the mental illness stuff. And a bunch of family stuff. And some other personal stuff. All things considered, though, I've really been lucky in my life. I'm thankful for that.