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When I was 15, I started binging and purging. I didn't know it at the time, but what I was doing would soon evolve into bulimia. l was so young, and I still am so young, and I've fought so many battles, mostly with myself. My bulimia triggered a landslide of sorts, because one day I was bulimic, the next I was bulimic and manic depressive, and then somewhere in there social anxiety came out. I was in what were supposed to be the most exciting years of my life! But I didn't want to go to any football games, dances, nothing. I would have rather stayed at home and laid in bed. Going from this point to now, three years later, I've learned a lot. I haven't binged and purged in two years. I almost killed myself a few times along the way, but thank god I didn't—I would have missed so much! I learned how to cope with my social anxiety, and although it affects my speech I'm learning to work through it.
I have something really important that I didn't have three years ago: self love. I may be a gay, depressed teenager who's recovering from an eating disorder, but I love it. 
My illness taught me a lot of lessons, lessons I couldn't have learned any other way. I'll be attending college in the fall, most likely a community college because my grades suffered while I was in the midst of this illness, but that's fine, education is education. I'm going to become a teacher, and help kids who slipped through the cracks like I did. I'm proud of how far I've come, but in the grand scheme of things I know I have so much farther to go. I can connect with my past self in a lot of ways, but one way I can't connect is that now I have something really important that I didn't have three years ago: self love. I may be a gay, depressed teenager who's recovering from an eating disorder, but I love it. I've accepted everything I can't control, and I change what I can if I don't like it. I am proud of my downfalls and uprisings, of my successes and failures, and nothing can take that from me, especially not a disease that doesn't control me anymore.