A new model is sent in to pose as my reflection at every glance. Not a single feature strikes as familiar as inconsistency becomes the only recognizable attribute. Whoever chooses to be my mirror at that moment seems more to me as my foil than my parallel. Oftentimes, I’m not even sure of what my appearance verily is. Every time I gaze at the fraud that I call my reflection my waist fluctuates by 6 inches, with no rhyme, reason, or pattern. I, now as a recoverer, look back at this flawed mindset that the bulimic seventh-grader edition of me once had and take pride in myself for convalescing.

Every day, I woke in an abyss, not aware of who I was that day. The only patterns I could suspect of my daily routine were fainting and purging. I felt trapped, restrained within a vortex. Contained within the walls of this bemusing vortex was a logical, strong, girl, but as the borders caved in, rationality faded as “skinny” became the only discernible matter within these partitions.

As the days passed I became increasingly more engulfed by the vortex. The strength of its endurance was fueled by a variety of factors that I was blinded by once more. A manipulative boyfriend who made comments to put me down, one coal. Friends, who meant no harm when they carped about their size, even if they were 3 sizes smaller than I was, two coals. Images of the “ideal body” plastered on billboards, websites, and more significantly, my brain, three coals. These factors, which seemed ungovernable at the time, charged the fire-lined walls of the vortex, omitting a smoke that sparked hallucinations.
Inside this maelstrom of a false reality, my priorities began to shift as I, an academic, favored “just one more” workout over my homework. A spiral of lies and excuses to skip meals created a whirlpool, securing my position even further. As I sunk deeper and deeper, my passions were drowned and began to vanish. My exercise and dieting trampled my love of school, makeup, fashion, volleyball, and art, as the waves of the vortex trampled me. The vortex had expanded into a battlefield of fire and water, seeming more to me as an Avatar The Last Airbender episode than my reality. Body image had made me lose contact with that of my own.

When the walls of the vortex started to crash down, the fire extinguished by the tears of those around me who I had unknowingly pushed with the walls of my vortex. The water began to drain as I admitted to my problem and let the emotions drain as well. My escape plan wasn’t accompanied by immediate action, but the steady process allowed me to break out of the prison I had been held captive in. As a recoverer, I now reject the vortex, knowing that it once confined me but never allowing it to define me. I know that I’m strong and I’m sure that I’m beautiful, and it is my hope for anyone else that has experienced an analogous struggle, to escape their own vortex, settling into their true reality.