Infestation

You're Really Something Else, Huh

(soz, forgot this part too)

 So we get into seventh grade. I switch from the comforting environment of elementary school into the great unknown. At this point, I was really into Pokemon and anime. You know, like every seventh grader. I guess at this point, things began to sort of change, I began to realize something was off about my body, as if it wasn't right, I felt cursed.

Thoughts began to go through my head. I had eaten normally all summer long, but going back to school brought all the thoughts back. I began to feel this need to lose weight. I started to try to restrict. I wasn't very successful because I didn't understand the notion that because I was moving more, it required more than 500 a day. As August moved to September I began to exercise more because I wanted to build muscle for gymnastics. I would do a set routine every night and morning of squats, ab exercises and back exercises. I began to build leg muscle and arms. I didn't hate my body as much. I hated my stomach but that always been there.

I do remember when the whole building up muscle thing got pretty bad. This was the first year I began to get sick. I remember once getting sick, and spending the day in bed, barely able to eat. I felt good, really good, but then once I could move again, two days later, I felt bad because I knew my muscles had atrophied a little bit.

That year was the only once, since I had cognizant thoughts, that I wasn't obsessed with just my body and losing weight. Gymnastics distracted me from the thoughts.

As the year went on I began to hate myself more in a sense that didn't make sense. I began to bind my chest because having a chest scared me. It felt like it wasn't supposed to be there. This is when my dysphoria started. I didn't know what it was, I just wanted it gone, as well as any other features that weren't androgynous. I remember once a doctor telling me that I had high testosterone and I was so happy. I began to use exercise to get rid of those features. It began to manifest into more. I didn't know yet what would happen, but this started the thoughts that I was in a body that wasn't mine, or at least wrong. I began to plan that when I was 18, I'd get top surgery, without even knowing what it was.

It's also kinda funny, because around this time I started to become a major weeb.

Weird. I know, but we all start somewhere. I used cosplay as a means to distract from the dysphoria, so I started to cosplay male characters. I began to go to conventions to, so I began to really delve into it. I was going to as many conventions as I could, because being in male cosplay made me feel good.

I began to excel in gymnastics by January. I was winning first in every event and even got first at the biggest meet I had ever competed. I was getting better. Gymnastics had taken over and my eating disorder was on the backburner. I had found my calling, I thought.

Meet season ended in March. I had gotten good enough to move up to a level much higher. I was excited to be at a place more of my level. The problem was my coach. She wanted to push us much further than I was ready for. It was starting to bring my mental health problems back. I started to restrict again. I began to self harm again. I found my first razor, and that made it 10x worse than it already was. My skin began to scar. I wasn't that scared, honestly. I loved it, honestly. I was beginning to feel worse dysphoria than I already had. I wasn't ready for the year that was about to happen.

That summer I was at my cousins again for six weeks. This time I came back much better than before. I trained with my cousins, who were pretty much elite level. I trained a lot throughout the summer and it was intensive. I did get a lot better, but it all came with the cost of my mental health. This started to feed my disorder. I began to stop eating past six. I lost weight that way. I began to feel good, empty, happy. This is where I began to realize that it was easy to just, sort of not eat.

Once I came back to the States, I started that summer's gymnastics camp, which is just an intensive 5-hour practice. On the first day, during the first event. I sprained my ankle, pretty badly, and spent the next few weeks out. Which set me behind everyone else. It was the most frustrating thing, and just made me even more depressed.

It set everything up, that was going to occur once school started.