dragons

The beginning may be fuzzy, but the end is clear. This is not a story about a prince saving a princess, but it is a story about a princess saving herself. She defeated her dragon.

And I am that princess.

In the beginning, I was like any other young girl. My heart was filled to the brim with excitement and passion for life from day one. I knew I did not want to live quietly. My world was meant to be filled with beautiful sound and vibrant colors. Creativity spewed from my hands as I danced through childhood. I experienced adventure every day through the books I devoured and the dress-up games I played. As the saying goes, the world was my oyster. There was not a single thing that could tear me down, or so I thought.

Six years into life, what I knew to be life changed gradually and as years passed, my doubts crept closer to me. I grew closer to the dragon inside my head, who insisted that there was no place for me. Over the next nine years, days passed and my mind gradually grew darker. The vibrancy that used to fill me had diminished as I withered away. Eventually, my light was gone.

My world was black and white with no allowance for anything close to a color. My world was cold and lonely because the doors to my heart were locked shut. My world was devoid of all sound, except for one resounding voice. This voice was that of something trying to bury me deeper within my sadness. It told me what I utterly hated about myself. Lies about myself were on repeat in my head. Every day was a battle to hold onto who I actually was.

By the age of fifteen, I was defeated by my dragon. My body was frail, and my heart was broken by what I did not allow myself to experience. Hair fell to the ground with a single stroke of a hairbrush. Cracked skin and dry lips were my normal. Even when bundled in sweaters, I shivered in 80-degree weather.

Then, the diagnosis came… Anorexia Nervosa. My heart plummeted to my stomach when the doctor said those two words. Every single thing made sense, from the way I viewed my body to the way I experienced food. Mirrors and calories were my biggest fear. Trivial, right?

Day after day, I went to see therapists, dietitians, and doctors. I can picture how my parents looked at me as we struggled through family dinners. I can hear the sound of my big sister crying her heart out when I refused to pick up my fork. I can feel the emptiness that inhabited my head and heart. I was terrified of what my world had become, and I was no longer calling the shots. My world belonged to my ugly and cruel dragon.

Before I knew it, I was in a corner… a hospital corner to be exact. The beeps of the heart-rate monitor. The chimes of the blood-pressure machine. The whirls of my feeding tube administering more calories directly to my stomach. My dragon hated that it was no longer my choice to take in nutrition. My team had ordered 24/7 watch, so I never had a moment to myself.

Lindsey, my favorite nurse, made the difference within my various hospital stays. Every day she was on shift, she would request for me to draw her something. It was nice to know I had someone there for me in the hospital amidst the craziness. She saw me leave the hospital, just to come back weeks later. After placing my feeding tube for a second time, she asked, 

“Is this how you want your life to continue? You aren’t living, you are barely surviving.”

I could and would only reply with cries from the deepest part of my soul. This was the part of me that did not want to be dependent on doctors and tubes for the rest of my life. This was this part of me that hated my dragon. My parents did what any parent would fear to do and sent me to a residential treatment center. I met some incredible people there, but best of all, I met my hope there. Throughout three months away from home, my main focus was discovering what I was meant to live for. The process of healing would extend well beyond those three months.

For two years, my family stood by me as I untangled an emotional web infested with frustration, guilt, and confusion. By digging through that web and seeking out ways to reverse these words etched into my brain, I saw glimpses of a life beyond the self-criticism. Despite the progress I had made, feeling anywhere close to happiness took longer than I hoped.

This process was challenging to say the least. I endured the physical pain from increasing my calorie intake and emotional pain from uncovering the root of my eating disorder. Nonetheless, I faced the rehabilitation process head-on. My body and mind were healing. From the ground up, I rose.

Looking back, I believed that what was killing me was my friend. I would not have held onto it if there was only pain, but the relief it provided is unexplainable. Being sick was not what I wanted, but it was what I knew.

After two years of healing, I have discovered myself. My heart has been filled to the brim with love, gratefulness, and joy. My dragon has been defeated, and I have returned to the vibrant life that I knew as a child, but with a different view of myself and the world.