Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Mental Health Issue: Eating Disorder Rough Draft

Ginny, my 16 year old sister wrote this for class. 
The prompt was to address a mental health issue.

Mental Health Issue Addressed: Eating Disorder 



          Meet Amber Lynn Williams she is a seventeen year old girl struggling in high school, with issues no one knows she has. She laid in her bed staring up at her ceiling as her mother called her down for breakfast, she sighed inwardly as she dragged herself out of her room and walked down the stairs to see plate of food staring her in the face. She hated her body she felt like she couldn't eat without the guilt gnawing at the pit of her stomach. She slowly picked up the piece of toast and began to eat it knowing she was just going to empty her stomach of it very shortly after. She had eventually finished all the food on her plate and began to leave for school.

          Amber was driving to school and she couldn't wait to get there so she could throw her food up, it killed her every minute it was inside of her. As she arrived at school she quickly said hi to her friend and rushed to the bathroom, claiming she had eaten something bad and it was messing with her stomach. She quickly went into a stall and bent down in front of the toilet forcing her finger down her throat making herself gag until her stomach released its contents. She kept cramming her finger throat until she was sure she had thrown absolutely everything up. As she was throwing up the last off it she heard someone walk in and she quickly flushed the toilet and walked out of the stall to see her best friend Abigail Mitchell standing in front of her.           
          
          Amber usually had a tin of mints in her locker to hide the stench of puke on her breath but she didn't have the opportunity to do so and there was a very good chance she'd have to make up some lie to tell her friend. She wiped her mouth off saying that her mom had made some bad eggs and that's why she got sick. Her best friend didn't buy it since this had been her fourth bad food incident within a month that she had walked in on. Amber still denied that she did it on purpose since she didn't want to fess up to what she had been doing for several months now.               

          After another month of throwing up her every meal, she begun to feel weak it was taking a hold of her everyday life. Sores on her hands slowly began to develop along with a now irregular heart beat. She was starting to look ill and there was nothing she could do about it. The people around her finally begun to notice and started to ask her questions about it and she would still deny it. But one day she fainted in the middle of class and had to go to the nurse, they soon realized that she was dehydrated and was showing many symptoms of bulimia. The school called her parents as they showed up shortly after and immediately went to the nurses office, saying that they would do anything they had to do to help her get better.

          After three months of being watched over making sure she ate everything and didn't throw it up she was beginning to look better and everyone was starting to finally back off a bit. She felt better than she had before but she still had the urge to throw her food up she had to fight with the issue everyday. She still hated her body but was slowly starting to accept it but every once in a while she would throw a meal up. She tried so hard but sometimes her everyday battle won and it would almost send her back into the constant throwing up and starving herself. But she didn't fear because she knew she would have the support of her best friend and family along the way to keep her on the right path.

1 comment:

  1. I thought this was a very good post. I just wanted to add that people often see anorexia as an addiction that is usually suffered by young females. However it applies to all ages and both sexes. In particular there are increasing numbers of over 70s, especially women who were always appearance conscious and diet attached when younger. Because of the mental confusion of bad anorexic bouts this often gets misdiagnosed as dementia and the anorexics often play along with this diagnosis because it gives them an easy way to get out of eating, unbelievable but true. Not helped by suggestions that starvation diets make you live longer. As those of us who have watched close relatives unstoppably slowly kill themselves due to anorexia, despite all our efforts to save them, will tell you, they don't!

    ReplyDelete