Water Polo was a significant part of my life. I loved it because of the challenge, the effort required to improve every single practice each day. In the fall of my freshman year I was not having it. This sport requires me to practice every other morning from 5-6am and everyday after school from 3-5:30pm. There were literally no breaks for me, and we were expected to work as hard as possible. I had sacrificed so much for this sport I loved so much! The pressure of being on this team was insane. I barely had time to eat and had no time for sleep. I would get home from practice and start my homework. My life flipped from here on out. The sadness came and it never went away. The depression overpowered me. This included a persistent sadness, anxious, or “empty” mood, and the feelings of hopelessness or pessimism that lasts nearly every day, for weeks on end. I felt like I was nothing. I could not control my feelings. I felt everyone hated me, including my parents. I would come home and just sleep away my sadness. I was insanely rude to my family and friends. I shut everyone I loved out of my life. Everyone would ask me “what's wrong” and I would just fake the smile and tell them “I am great”. Telling everyone I was just fine made it worse. I saw everything wrong with myself. I would look in the mirror and say how fat I was and imagined myself skinny with abs. All I thought was what if I got thigh gap. This thought sounded amazing to me. If I get skinnier I would get a boyfriend and everyone would like me. I was always naturally a build girl throughout my whole life. I found myself desiring an 

unhealthy weight. I had heard about eating disorders through my life in the past and never would have thought I would myself would have it. I'm just an average normal person. The journey all started August 2018 after I weighed myself and had a goal of losing weight. I thought maybe 5 pounds would be great, that would make a difference. However my mind set was, if I am super sad right now, if I lose weight people would give me more attention. I wished I would feel great about myself, and all the depression will go away. Suddenly my weight dropped tremendously. Couple of weeks past and already lost about 10 pounds. I not only loved the feeling, I was obsessed. I continually weighed myself on the scale. When you don’t eat for a while, your energy goes away because you do not have any nutrients in your body. At this point, my parents started to realize how sad and unenergetic I seemed. They knew something was up. I knew I couldn’t tell them the way I felt. I didn’t want to be disappointed in my family. I didn’t want them to stress over me and always have their eyes on me 24/7. I decided to keep it a secret for a little while longer. Until one day I weighed myself,  December 2018 and in total lost 30 pounds. I had to tell my parents because at this point I was obsessing and I needed help before it got worse. I came to my parents and they set an appointment up for me to get checked out. I went to see the doctor and they came to tell me I was on the verge of being “anorexic”. I was speechless that my one action came to take a turn and tore my life. If I kept it going I would have been in big trouble. They prescribed me medication for depression and eating disorder. It definitely took time to heal but overall to this day I feel great. I came to realize I am beautiful no matter what and my sadness isn’t a forever thing.