I remember how my mother used to make chocolate chip cookies for me and my sister every weekend. We would devour the whole plate. Warm chocolate flakes melting on tiny pink tongues. We used to spend summers in Cape Cod and walk to Emack and Bolios every evening. I remember the almond joy ice cream cone I gobbled up without hesitation. I used to consume all the cr*p that kids are supposed to, but now I’ve gone through two Halloweens successfully avoiding every single Kit-Kat, Jolly Rancher, and even peanut butter cup.
It was the winter of freshman year when I started planning out everything I put into my mouth with rigid discipline. Only the healthy, only the good, could be consumed by a track star. The slimmer, the lighter, the faster, right? Right. As I started to become increasingly competitive in cross country and track, my anxiety began to manifest itself in my running. I was obsessed with being the best-- maybe I still am. It was hard for me at first. I would stay up entire nights staring at the plastic glow in the dark stars on my ceiling, counting the hours and crying in my bed. I was confused with my competing desires, frustrated with my inability to automatically reach my goals. But then it became a simple game. I wasn’t consciously trying to harm myself. I remember thinking that I wasn’t extremely thin like some of the other girls I saw at track meets, I had bulging calves and muscular thighs.  I definitely had a few pounds to spare, and the healthier I ate the stronger and faster it would make me, right? Right, I would say to myself.
As I shed pounds, my mother would look at me with discouraging eyes and say, “Ella, you’re too thin.” She would never understand me, I thought to myself, and in frustration, I would yell at her and we would fight. Our nastiest fights always had to do with my running or my eating, two separate activities, but in my mind undeniably linked. “You’re overtraining.” “Are you seriously not going to have a cookie?” These were the jabs that hit me right in the gut. Why was this woman trying to control me? I wasn’t a little girl and I was too old to have to report to my mother what I ate everyday for lunch. Mothers were supposed to want skinny daughters. Mothers were supposed to want fast daughters. Mothers were supposed to applaud their daughters for trying to be healthy. Mothers were supposed to support their daughters’ dreams. Their talents. I didn’t understand that she was trying to support me in ways I can’t fully appreciate right now as a teenager. All it took for me to burst out crying was for my mother to look me straight in the eye and tell me to eat the pasta she made me for dinner. I thought that she would eventually give up. I hoped that she would.
When I sat with my friends at lunch everyday, my heart would race. I dreaded their attacks of “Oh my god, you’re so healthy” and “That’s all you’re having?” I dreaded their scrutinizing glances at my bowl of broccoli, apple, and banana with peanut butter.  But it was not just the skinny I wanted; it was the fast. I wanted the fast even more than the skinny. I still do. I was doing it all for the fast. I wanted to control what I was putting into my own body. I wanted to control my own speed. I wanted the power of fueling my body with pure health--fruits, vegetables, and proteins. My plan must have worked because I became significantly faster. In the spring of freshman year, my track times started dropping drastically. I was breaking records, I got a few letters from colleges. I was doing things right, right? Wrong. That spring, I thought I wanted more than anything in the world to do well at the state track and field championship.  My coach told me beforehand that I would surprise myself, that I would come in the top five and qualify for nationals. She assured me over and over again. I didn’t.
It’s funny how you can have dozens of successes, and then you fail yourself once, and those successes become nothing to you. That failure is all that matters, it’s all you see. It’s the failure that leaves you broken. It’s not the wins and the records that I remember from last spring, but the NYSPHAA Championship race. After three rigorous seasons I had not gotten a break. I had run myself ragged, quite literally. I hadn’t had a day off in months and I was consuming less than half the calories I was burning off. During that race I almost stopped running, something I’m proud to say I’ve never done before. As I passed my coach on the sidelines, lap after lap, she gradually stopped yelling that I could catch up with the lead pack. By the last lap she was mute, but I didn’t have the energy to care. All I cared about was ending the pain and getting the hellish race overwith. By the time I crossed the finish line I had completely burnt out. I thought I could get away with living on bananas and peanut butter and emerge from the spring track season an unscathed champion, and I was close to doing so. But states was one race too many.
After States, I cried for days. I had fallen, and my mother was there to catch me. Only I didn’t want her to catch me. My 15th birthday came and went in June. I remember the pink strawberry shortcake my mother brought out for me and my sister, the knife waiting eagerly in her hand. Her eyes were so hopeful. My heart broke a little, and I let her cut me a small slice. She watched me intensely and I ate it for her. It tasted bitter-sweet in my mouth. That night the guilt devoured me; I crawled into my bed and licked salty tears off my cold cheeks. The next day I made up for the cake. I ran seven miles and made sure to only eat trail mix and fruit.
When I had my 15-year-old check up the next week, my mother heard everything that she was waiting to hear. I was 85 pounds and more than 20 pounds lighter than my shorter twin sister. With pitying eyes, Dr. Melbourne said, “Honey your bones are very weak. You’re bound to get stress fractures if you continue like this.”  But all I heard her say was that I wouldn’t be allowed to run more than three days a week over the summer, and that I would need monthly weigh-ins. In order to go to running camp in August and get clearance for the upcoming cross country season, I would have to gain some weight. On the car ride home from the doctor’s office, my mother asked me why I didn’t want to look like my friends. She asked me why I didn’t want to get my period and turn into a woman. I never answered her, but I could see the tears in her glassy eyes out of the corners of mine. I didn’t understand why my mother and Dr. Melbourne were making such a big deal about my weight. There were plenty of girls at my school and at my track meets who were much thinner than I was, and most competitive athletes didn’t get their periods. But I didn’t have power over the situation. I had to get that doctor to sign off on my running camp and for the cross country season. I had to think of gaining weight in the same way I thought of reaching my running goals.
At first I thought it would be easy. I liked being skinny but not as much as I loved running, but I was proven wrong, it was so hard for me to change my habits. That summer was the hardest summer of my 15 year old life. I was tortured. I wanted more than anything to be able to compete. As it was, I was missing out on a whole summer of valuable training. That June we went to Italy. The land of bread, and pasta, and cheese, and pizza, and gelato-- yet, I spent the trip living on granola bars. I got into more fights with my mother during that two week time span than I ever have in my life. We argued at every single meal and I made scenes at public restaurants.
“You can’t keep having chicken and salads at dinner! You need to order pasta.”
“Mom are you kidding me, this is the same amount of calories it’s just healthier! Why are you trying to make me slower? Why are you picking a fight with me?!”
My mother would give me snacks three times during the day, but I would sneakily throw away the crackers and quarter sandwiches when I had the chance. Every opportunity I had, I stole glances at my legs in bathroom mirrors and storefront windows, wishing there was a bigger space between them. I thought my legs were mannishly muscular. How could my doctor call me underweight when my thighs were bigger than one out of five of the European girls I passed on the streets of Rome? Yet simultaneously, my body began to feel my doctor’s warnings. We would walk for hours every day, but my tired legs could barely sustain it. I couldn’t keep up with the rest of my family.. I stayed awake at night listening to my parents whisper my name in the room next door.
  I was weighed after the trip to Italy and my mother’s head hung low when we discovered I had gained nothing. I had let her down. She wanted so desperately to believe I could do it. And it was only after that trip that I realized she was on my side. I always thought that she didn’t support my passion, that she would be glad if I stopped running. Only then did I realize that her constant harassing was enabling me to continue running. She didn’t enjoy fighting with me at every meal any more than I did. She didn’t enjoy coming up to my room constantly to nag me about eating. But she knew that it would shatter me if I was told I couldn’t compete that year. She knew me better than I knew myself.
From that point in the summer to the start of the cross country season , as uncomfortable as it made me, I set my sights on gaining weight. I was able to gain enough weight to compete but I still have more to gain before my mother and my doctor will be satisfied. But whenever it becomes difficult, I simply recall how I felt after that race at States. How I felt during that trip to Italy.
I hated my mother for fighting me tooth and nail. I hated her for making me drink fatty chocolate milk everyday I got home from school, for not letting me run seven days a week. Sometimes I still do. But I love her for not giving up on me. It would have been far easier for both of us if she did. But now I know why she didn’t. Because years from now, if I still look like a prepubescent twelve year old, if my brittle bones break into pieces, if I want children and am unable to have them-- I will never forgive my mother, and I will ask her why. Why she didn’t rescue her daughter from herself. Because isn’t that what mothers are supposed to do?