My name is Sherri. I’m 17 years old. Right now I’m one of the skinniest girls in school. It took a lot of work to get where I am today. I started out just purging and skipping meals once in a while after I weighed myself and saw the number. 156. I couldn’t believe it. Stupid 14 year old me got caught “abusing myself” as my parents said. My mom started monitoring me after that. I told her not to worry about me. I said,  “Mom I’m fine. Trust me. I just wasn’t feeling good.” She believed me.

By the time I was 15 I was down to a meal a day and 134 pounds. Not small enough. I could still hear those people calling me fat from years ago. It still hurt me enough to keep me going. Soon soccer was starting. I knew that I was going to gain muscle weight, so I cut out my last meal, to balance it out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to function with absolutely no food, so  I still ate, I had a couple almonds a day. My mom was worried about me, but my friends didn’t notice anything. 130 pounds after a week of soccer. I was happy, but I knew I could be happier. Weekends were when I ate the most. I always binged on the weekends. I didn’t go crazy, but I ate a lot more than a teenage girl should at one meal. Of course I would work it off the week after anyways, so I wasn’t worried.
My best friend approached me carefully one day. “Is something wrong? Sherri you seem different.” I told her I was fine, then changed the subject. I knew if we kept talking I would’ve told her. No one could find out, they’d think something was wrong with me. 120 pounds and I was flying through everything. Soccer went too fast to remember, school seemed irrelevant, and it felt like every time I slept, it was for ages. 2 more weeks and i was at 107 pounds. I felt the best I had in a while.

I had a district game the night I passed out. I had just got subbed out and was sitting on the bench when I started feeling lightheaded. When I came to I was laying on a stretcher, with my coaches on one side, the paramedics on the other, and my team watching as I got wheeled onto the ambulance. I tried telling them I was ok, I could finish the game, but they wouldn’t listen. It was like I didn’t even exist. I decided to just sleep on the ride up to the hospital. I knew that’s where they were taking me whether I told them I was fine or not. My main coach rode in the ambulance with me. She was crying and I didn’t understand why. I was going to be ok, I just fainted a little. I went to sleep.

The next time I woke up I was laying in a hospital bed. My family was there, my mom, sister, brothers, everyone I cared about. They all looked so upset. I told them I was fine but they wouldn’t acknowledge me at all. Were they mad at me? The nurse walked in after that. My mom jumped up and asked her “Isn’t there anything you can do? It’s been 2 weeks. You said her coma would last a week at the most!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Coma? That’s impossible. I couldn’t be in a coma, I was the healthiest I’d ever been. Then I heard the nurse talking. “There always is that option” she said. “I know it’s a hard decision, but if it’s what’s best...” My family started to cry. I tried telling them “I’m here! I’m alive!” but they didn’t hear me. After exchanging glances with my siblings, my mom told the nurse ok. I was shocked. I tried to scream, tried to somehow get someones attention, but nothing worked. The nurse offered to escort my mom, brothers, and sister out of the room, but they all stayed with me. As the nurse walked towards me, I screamed. I screamed as loud as I could to get her to stop. When the nurse got to me, my mom squeezed my hand as she cried. “I love you Sherri” she said. I started to cry with her. “I lov-”