Infestation

That One Awful Decision

  

 Things can creep slowly - and you never realize it, until hindsight, but sometimes things come faster than other things - and suddenly you've completely created a whole new life for yourself.

That was my 6th grade year - and it remains to be one of the more memorable moments in this whole thing I call my life - with an eating disorder.

I remember the year starting normally right, I get my roundoff back handspring, and plan to try out for competition team - It was all I wanted to do, get better at gymnastics. I had come out of the summer prior with a bit of a newfound love for the sport (as I spent that summer training hours a day with my cousins).

I had also started to grow more into my edgy phase right? I had continued dyeing my hair with a blue streak - leaving it cut at chin length. I was starting to wear darker clothes - and at this point I was also trying to be more feminine, fighting the part of me that wanted to start coming through - my true self. I was trying so hard to fit in, after being so stupidly outcasted the year before.

So I wore those stupid Justice tank tops, with sweatpants that would say "gymnast" them, and it's all I would talk about. I wanted nothing more - I'd do sick walkovers in my front yard for hours after school (along with playing the Sims 3 on my laptop).

This wasn't so good for my school work - and about a month in, I get called for a meeting, and my teacher basically calls me out for being lazy, which ok, cool, but I didn't really know what to do.

I was so used to being the good kid, the one who was easily good at school, and suddenly I was falling.

So I buried myself into projects, and I remember one on the 90s. I was in charge of the music and gaming, so I started to get more into music I liked. I remember reading that Linkin Park was in the 90s, so I started listening more to them - our teacher let us wear headphones and listen to youtube on the huge computers in the computer lab.

By the end of September I had made friends, gotten slightly better with grades, and started playing the Sims 2. Gave perfect lives, and started playing with mods.

This is where things do blur slightly - what happened when, and how things sort of existed.

I was obsessed with Monster high at one point - and went as Clawdeen Wolf for halloween - the last halloween that would be a female character.

Then I started with ice skating in November, progressed to the highest level now, before starting actual competition skating, and I really did love it.

You might be asking: "Ok but where's the juicy gossip on food."

It was normal - my mom would pack me literally super normal meals - I ate when I was home, and before school, worked out a ton, and it was all fun, until I got my first period - which was completely uncalled for and terrifying.

This wasn't supposed to happen to me, I was a gymnast, gymnasts don't get periods - or develop. They have to be as masculine as possible, right? (totally didn't quite understand myself huh).

So I freaked out. I didn't know what to do, except train more - I had no clue that periods where controllable with food - not yet.

I was proud of something in this time, though. I was later than my friend - the one who kept teasing me - she was a few months earlier, and it meant I was less developed, right? Yeah no, I had already developed a small chest and my hips were starting to grow - which was a completely unknown thing to me yet, the pain that the wrong puberty would do to me.

So it seems this whole time passes, and it passes with me fitting in - being "happy", and thoughts of my body crossed, yes, but they left, as if I was almost ok.