Yesterday, Anna came over because we haven't seen each other in a looooong time. We went to the mall to walk around for a bit, she had some dinner (I didn't), and then we went back to my place to hang out. We did our usual thing which is go on Habbo and hit on random people or do stupid stuff just for jokes, and we were peeing ourselves laughing, like we usually do. Everything was fine until she started t get ready and lost her phone and started searching for it in my room. When she found it under my blanket, I told her to make sure it wasn't mine (we have the exact same phone) and she said it wasn't because hers says "virgin" on it. "Pfft, your phone's a virgin, haha" I laughed while I walked her to the door, and she said, "But I'm not". I was absolutely shocked. She always talked about finding the right guy, and waiting, and we had even been talking earlier about how she wants to be safe and not catch anything. But what REALLY confused me was, who was it with? I didn't know she had a boyfriend, or did she just screw some random guy. Here's the conversation, and please tell me if I'm being unfair in being a little upset at this:

A: "well, you know how I'm dating Chris right?"
S: "WHAT?!"
A: "yeah, didn't you know?"
S: "no!"
A: "oh. I thought I told you..."
S: "I wouldn't be having this reaction if you did"
A: "well, now I don't know if I want to tell you because you'll get mad"
S: "we're best friends. even if I get mad, it won't last. just tell me"
A: "okay well. we're dating. and we had sex"
S: "okay wait! WHAT!? Chris is so like, a goody good. he wants to wait until marriage. that's what he said to me...."
A: "well, he said that at first, but he said dry humping isn't getting him anywhere."
S: "uh huh.... and where did all this happen?"
A: "when my mom went away for that week. I invited him over, and well... yeah. and apperantly he loves my boobs"
S: "riggght, okay well. congrats I guess."
A: "well, I'm glad you're cool with it. See you on Monday! Bye!"

I went upstairs and cried myself to sleep. Not to mention that I saw a picture from when Chris and I were dating, and I felt like vomiting. They both promised they'd never do that to me. She's my BEST FRIEND and she knows that I'm still completely in love with him, and so does he! It just really hurt. I'm still crying actually.... I don't know if I'm over reacting or what, but, UGH!

the damage:
B: 1 1/4 cups all bran cereal (110)
    1 cup of 1% milk (100)
L: 1 peanut butter sandwich (239)
D: 6 chicken nuggets (285)
     19 french fries (107)
    
water: [x][x][x][x][x]
green tea (including pills): [x][x][x][x][x]
multivitamin [x]
fluoxetine [x]
apple cider vinegar pills [x][x][x]

the control:
1 hour dance class [x]
1 hour at the gym with trainer []
30 minutes of yoga/stretching [x]

Have I mentioned yet that I found some stretching exercises that help you get taller? I started them on Tuesday (after I measured myself and I've grown half an inch in 3 months!) and I'm super excited! Finally, I won't be the short tubby one out of all my friends! Hurray!


I still love him with all my heart. Seeing them together is tearing me apart.

-Sharbella
xo

As most of you already know (or maybe you don't), I'm Sharbella but everyone calls me Shar. I'm 17, and am well known for two things; 1) my continuously deteriorating health which is mostly self induced, and 2) my countless number of "new beginnings". You see, I'm not your typical teenager. Not in the least. I guess it all started since the day I was born, or maybe even before that. My mom had a really difficult pregnancy and had to have an induced labor due to a pinched nerve and a lack of oxygen. Barely anybody knows this about me, but I was about two or three weeks premature. Everything from then on was fine and dandy up until I was about 15 months old, at which point my dad left us and went his own way. Of course, I didn't really know or care much about this situation until I was maybe in the first or second grade. That's when all the emotional stuff happened. Elementary school was hard for me because I was always acting out, getting detentions, talking back, ect ect. And what was especially hard was not having my dad around. All of my friends would always ask me where my dad was, or if he was dead or what not. I felt so alone, and back then it wasn't as common for the father to just walk out on the family and leave us with basically nothing.

When I turned seven, my mom decided to quit her job and go back to school, so we had to move in with my grandparents. I had to leave all my friends, my school, my home, but I took it on bravely like I did everything in my life. I started the second grade and decided that this was going to be my "new beginning". This was the very first one out of many to come. I decided to go from being called (pronounced) "Shar-bell-a" to "Shar-bay-a", I stopped acting out in class and talking back to teachers, and started following the rules. I was happy with the new friends I was making, and everything was starting to seem fine. Suddenly, my family started noticing some weird things happening to me. I was suddenly becoming really lethargic, had an unquenchable thirst, was running to the bathroom an abnormal number of times, was constantly eating, losing weight like crazy and wetting the bed. Since my mom was in school full time, my grandparents took on the role of taking me to the doctor and such. We went to several different doctors, got several different medications, and nothing worked. I was 4'2 and weighed only 38 pounds, and no amount of food would make me gain weight. I started getting severely depressed. Finally, when I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with type one diabetes.

Things were fine with my newly diagnosed diabetes for a month until I met a girl in my class who was a diabetic since she was four. She convinced me that I could eat whatever I wanted and not give insulin for it and it wouldn't make a difference. She told me that it wouldn't kill to have a few chocolate bars here and there, so I followed her lead since she was clearly more experienced than I was. I started gaining weight and I hated it. I was constantly battling my weight, even before I was diagnosed and was underweight, I always felt fat. It was difficult for my family to try to get me back on track with my insulin therapy because I was constantly rebelling thinking that if I just ignore it, my diabetes, along with all this extra weight, would disappear. It didn't. I constantly had high blood sugars (well, high for me at that time which was like12-14), but was still putting on weight since I would just have to give more insulin to correct. I was starting to hate my diabetes.

When I got into middle school, my music teacher absolutely hated me, and I hated her for hating me. She would give me horrible marks, even though I tried really hard, and would always make comments when I was away from school. Eventually, I started skipping school just so I didn't have to see her, but I needed a reason, so I used my diabetes as an excuse. I wasn't actually sick, but I would claim to have been throwing up, to the point that my grandpa would take me to the emergency room. It worked every time. I had them tied around my little finger. I spent my three years in middle school skipping music class by saying I was "diabetes sick" and needed to stay home. My doctors, and eventually my family started catching on that I was never really sick, just faking it, so I had to find another way to trick everyone. But how?

When it came time to register for high school, I registered at the same school as all my friends did, but my mom was in disagreement with this choice. "That school is horrible. There's drugs and gangs, and you'll just be hanging with the wrong crowd." She wanted me to go to Catholic school, but since I had a bad experience with Catholic schools as a little girl, I strongly said no. She got everyone to try and persuade me to change my mind, and eventually I caved in just so they would all stop bothering me. My first week of school was brutal. I went the first day, came home "sick" the next day, and skipped the last two days. That weekend I decided to take action to get some attention and show my mom how desperately I didn't want to go to a Catholic school, and that I wanted to transfer. I took an overdose of over 300 units of insulin and drank a bottle of mouth wash. I was rushed to the emergency room by my grandpa that evening and once I was stable, they sent me to psychiatric emergency. I had to talk to several people and they made me go back to school.

After a few weeks, I finally came to accept the fact that I wasn't going to be able to change schools, and started trying to focus more on my work than on the fact that I hated it there. I decided to use this to my advantage for another "new beginning". I finally started appretiating my realy name and went back from "Shar-bey-a" to "Shar-bell-a", started taking more risks, pretended I wasn't a shy person and made myself look and feel confident. I made new friends, and things were going along fine. Suddenly, one day in the middle of May, I had a moment where I felt like weighing myself and seeing how I was doing (I hadn't weighed myself in years, nor did I care anymore, but I thought maybe I could do with a little lifestyle change). When I weighed myself, the number made me break down and cry. I promised myself at that very moment that I would go on a diet and lose weight.

My diet was going well at first, I started eating healthier with only the occasional treat. As weeks went by, my dieting became even stricter. I cut out junk food completely, then pop, then I started cutting out entire food groups like meats, starches, and fats. I lost thirty pounds in my first month of dieting. My friends at school noticed something was going on when I stopped eating lunch at school and started walking 4km to school and back home (something I would NEVER do). As for my family, they were totally clueless. Mom was proud of me for getting in shape, my grandpa thought that I needed the diet and my grandma was just supportive of whatever I wanted to do. That summer, I stayed at my grandparents house because of their air conditioning. I would eat 4 grapes for breakfast, a peach, and four crackers for lunch, and usually nothing for dinner. This went on for several weeks until one day, close to the end of the summer, when I decided to fast for five days. I basically slept all day, and ate absolutely nothing for those five days. The only thing I would let pass my lips was water. I lost an incredible amount of weight and was starting to show all the physical signs of anorexia nervosa; loss of hair, dry skin, brittle nails, weakness, slow beating heart, and I was always cold even in 30 degree weather!

At the end of August, on my grandpa's birthday, and my last day of fasting, my cousins came over and showed great concern about my weight loss. My mom, who hadn't seen me all summer started freaking out and calling me anorexic in front of my whole family. She force fed me, what I thought to be an insane amount of food, and I hated her for making me eat. I hated food and I never wanted to eat again. Mom made me go home with her that night so she could make sure I would eat for the rest of the summer and get healthy. For labor day, mom had a BBQ and fed me extremely fatty foods; sausages, corn, french fries. I felt like a failure. I hated myself for getting to that point. I hated food, and wished it would just go away. The next day for the first day of school, I decided to try and stick to my diet again. All my friends who hadn't seen me all summer were making comments about how sickly thin I looked. One girl even told me that "she knew what I was up to, and that I looked gross". I hated school, I never wanted to go back again. That night, I started feeling sick to my stomach. It felt as if someone was jabbing a  knife into my abdomen and it would go through my back. I started throwing up and going into DKA. Mom thought this was just another ploy to stay home from school, but I pleaded for her to take me to the emergency room, so at that point she knew it was serious.

At the hospital, they just told me that I had DKA, which I knew already, but I didn't understand the sharp stabbing pain, and they didn't really seem to care. They put me in the ICU immediately because my blood work was extremely out of control and I was unable to answer their simple questions that they use to test you for consciousness. I woke up in the ICU the next morning and my grandma was sitting with me. I had tubes running everywhere around me and connected to oxygen tanks, IV's, heart monitors, and such. They brought me my breakfast, but I didn't feel like eating. My grandma told me to at least drink my milk, so I started sipping on it, and the sharp stabbing pain came back but this time, ten times worse. I screamed and my grandma called for a nurse who went to get the doctors. The doctor came in and told me I had pancreatitis. I got really scared thinking I was going to die, but he just explained that it was an inflammation of the pancreas and I would have to be off all food and liquids for a few days so it would heal. I was so happy. Finally, no more food. My mom came to the hospital to see me after work, and the doctors asked her if she knew of any reason as to why I would get pancreatitis, and she told them about my extreme dieting during the summer followed by a huge fatty meal. The doctors looked at each other and then at me. They asked me if I was trying to lose weight and if I thought I was fat. I answered yes to both questions, and they proceeded to tell my mom that they were going to refer me to an eating disorder clinic so they could do an evaluation.

I was in ICU for my entire hospital stay which was only the first of many to come. I couldn't eat or drink anything, but they put me on IV fluids, so I didn't lose any weight. Then, they gradually let me start eating foods like jello, chicken broth and diet ginger ale. During my hospital stay, the eating disorder doctors came up to interview me. They asked a lot of questions about how I felt about my appearance, why I was dieting, why I thought I needed to lose weight, and what were the exact events of my whole summer regarding dieting. After the session, they left and came back a few hours later with a diagnosis: anorexia nervosa. I was discharged from the ICU, but couldn't leave the hospital until I saw a dietitian, a psychologist and my own ED doctor. I denied having an eating disorder, it was impossible. How could I be fat AND have an eating disorder? When I was ready to go home, they put me on a diet so I could gain weight, which I immediately decided I would bombard somehow. Mom didn't want me going back to school because she had to take care of me and watch that I would eat, so she called my school and explained what had happened. The next day, my friends called to tell me that I was in their prayers during the morning announcements and that there were all kinds of rumors going around about me "being in a coma", "practically dying", "having colon cancer". I was so angry and vowed to never go back to that school again.

The next year was very difficult. I kept my secret from my friends because I was embarrassed and didn't think they'd understand. I threw a halloween party and they saw the collection of books my mom brought from the hospital about "Your Daughter and Her Anorexia" or "How to Help Your Teenager Battle an Eating Disorder". I was horrified and tried to explain that I didn't actually have an eating disorder and that my doctors were just exaggerating, but they didn't buy it, they could tell by my weak, rail thin body that it was true - I had anorexia. Since I couldn't go to school, I was referred to a special school for kids with medical issues and anxiety where they had fun activities, group and individual therapy and a school. It helped me feel a little more confident about talking to other people, but I skipped lunch every day and went off for runs with another anorexic girl I met. A few more months went by and my mom was really struggling to feed me. I would refuse to eat even a few carrot sticks, or to get off my stationary bike and would throw tantrums until she called my doctor, who in turn called the Catholic Children's Aid Society. I was horrified! The CCAS people came to my house and explained that I needed to eat, or they would classify me as "unsafe" and take me away. I was so angry and scared that I agreed to eat, but only 800 calories, no more. They were fine with that as long as next week, I would eat more. More weeks went by, and I started gaining weight. I was scared. I didn't want to be fat again, and then I remembered the day I was diagnosed with diabetes. I remember being so thin, that even walking up the stairs would make me feel like I was dying. My ribs were sticking out and I was flawless. I remembered that the reason I looked like that was because I didn't have any insulin in my body, therefore, I could eat whatever I wanted and still lose weight. At that point I felt like the smartest kid in the world. I finally had a way to trick the doctors into thinking I was eating, but yet still lose weight.

By October of the next year, I had lost a dramatic amount of weight by dieting and restricting little bits of insulin here and there. One day, I went to my regular eating disorder appointment, and my doctor freaked out at me. "You've lost 12 pounds in the last week!" After a year, she finally put two-and-two together and realized that I wasn't giving my insulin. She admitted me into hospital and told my mom that she would have to call my CCAS worker to try and find me somewhere to live where they could watch me 24/7 and make me eat and get my insulin. I started living in a foster home on November 8th - my mom's birthday. As my mom fell into a deep depression from cause of not being able to see me, and I fought with my foster mom about calories, weight, exercise and food, my body continued to deteriorate at a fast pace. My doctor was sure about herself that she had done the right thing by putting me in a home, but yet she was confused as to why it wasn't helping me gain weight, so she stepped in again. I got a call from a counselor in Toronto saying that my doctor had referred me to their day treatment program and that I had an orientation before starting there the next week. I was so angry that I was never told about this, and I refused to go. My foster mother and CCAS worker however, promised that if i went for one month and still didn't like it, they would take me out, so I agreed.

I woke up every morning at 5am to take the bus to Toronto to be on time for the day treatment program. I thought this alone was a reason for them to pull me out, but I guess not. At the end of the month, I started playing with my insulin in the program which lead to a relapse. My foster mom drove me to emergency, called my mom and told her to "come see her daughter in emergency because she can't handle her anymore and doesn't want her back in her home." Great, yet another person to give up on me, and also, my CCAS worker didn't keep her part of the deal and made me stay in the program. I made new friends with whom I could relate to, but I hated it there - we all did. We felt like we were being tortured and like they were just making up rules for the fun of it. I endured the torture for 6 whole months in which I gained almost all my weight back, but at least I got a certificate saying I graduated the eating disorders day program! *says sarcastically*

After graduating from the day program, I went back to my special school, and my old ways, which I told all the doctors there would happen, but they said that "all girls who graduate the program say that, but rarely do". They seemed so sure of themselves, that when I went back for a follow up visit in three weeks, they were quite concerned about my dramatic weight loss. I started school the week after and only went for a month before I dropped out because I couldn't handle it. I spent my days at home in my apartment working out and planning meals and my next insulin shot and whatnot. I went back to school in February, but the same thing happened. The counselors in my special school kicked me out because I wasn't attending my half time at regular school. I claim that "the crazy school kicked me out for being too crazy". Now, my mom has been put on a diet by her doctor because she's overweight, and I've joined in, although she doesn't know it. I've stopped going to my follow up appointments because I hated seeing those people every week, so basically, I'm seventeen years old, and my life is going no where. Once again, I'm starting another "new beginning", who knows how many of these I'll have, but here we go again...

Sorry I couldn't post yesterday, I went to the funeral and got home pretty late and was super exhausted. I wasn't able to fast yesterday, but I did stay under 800 calories, probably less cuz mom didn't watch me eat lunch or dinner, so that's good. As for today, I was able to fast because mom's been out all day, and I basically just slept all day, YAY! I've lost 3 more pounds, which makes me really excited and more motivated. So, no intake at all today, but some exercise. Hopefully no intake or very little tomorrow too.

the damage:
none
    
water: [x][x][x][x][x]
green tea: [][][]
800 calories max [x]
multivitamin [x]
fluoxetine [x]

the control:
30 minutes of wii fit [x]
1 hour walk or run [x]
1 hour dance class [x]
100 crunches, leg raises, squats [x]


I'm thinking it's time for a home spa treatment. Take care lovelies.

-Sharbella
xo

I think I did quite well today considering I was home all day, and usually that's what triggers me. I'm freaking out about tomorrow though because I'm seeing my friends that I haven't seen in two years, and the last time I saw them, I was almost at my lowest weight, and now I've gained a lot of it back. I don't want them to be like "well, you've gained weight, so I guess you're cured from your eating disorder?" cuz that's just how uneducated people are about EDs. I wish I was skinnier when I had to see them again, but oh well.

the damage:
B: 1 slice of toast (90)
    1 hard boiled egg (75)
L: 11 baby carrots (35)
D: Mrs Vanelli's small garden salad (220)
    
water: [x][x][x][x][x]
green tea: [][][]
800 calories max [x]
multivitamin [x]
fluoxetine [x]

the control:
30 minutes of wii fit []
1 hour walk or run [x]
1 hour dance class [x]
100 crunches, leg raises, squats [x]


Let's reminisce about the good old times we used to have laughing at absolutely nothing in complete silence.

-Sharbella
xo

Hey everyone! Sorry I couldn't update or comment yesterday. I had a super busy day with going back to school and all, but I'm back, and I'm doing great! I FINALLY was able to keep something down yesterday at dinner time when I had a slice of toast with peanut butter. I felt so sick afterwards just because I haven't been able to keep anything down in about a week, but I was fine. I went to school and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. My vice principal gave me a note to take to my teachers and they were all really nice about the whole situation. They're even willing to just forget about all the work I missed and start me off fresh (although I really do want to do some catch up work....)

Today's follow up appointment went well. They were a little concerned about my weight loss, and my suicide attempt, but said that as long as I promise to call someone if I feel that way again, then everything should be fine. They were glad that I've been getting all my insulin and didn't have ketones. Yay!

the damage:
B: 1 slice of toast (90)
    1 tbsp of light peanut butter (90)
    1 juice box (80)
L: 1 whole wheat tortilla (180)
    1/2 a tomato (12.5)
    1 lettuce leaf (1)
    1 tbsp of mustard (15)
D: 10 mini melba toast (80)
    1 portion of light cream cheese (45)
    
water: [x][x][x][x][x]
green tea: [][][]
800 calories max [x]
multivitamin [x]
fluoxetine [x]

the control:
30 minutes of wii fit []
1 hour walk or run [x]
1 hour dance class [x]
100 crunches, leg raises, squats [x]


I need to find someone who will make me smile for no reason at all.

- Sharbella
xo