Since I was 9 years old, I’ve struggled with body image, OCD, and an eating disorder. Since I was 14 years old, I’ve struggled with anorexia, body dysmorphia, and over-exercising. Since I was 18 years old, I’ve struggled with bulimia and bad mental health. Since I was 19 years old, I’ve struggled with depression. Since I was 20 years old, I’ve struggled with self-harm. I have a lot of people make assumptions about me online based on the body I have from severe malnutrition, and my Instagram has spiralled out of control over the years, attracting an audience I never wanted. I post for my love of fashion. I post to connect with my friends. I post because I’ve aspired to be a model since I was sixteen. Anybody can assume otherwise, but it is I who knows what’s true. If I’m honest, a part of me does post for the attention I get, as I was never popular in high school and never grew up with people who wanted to look or be like me. I spent my entire adolescence feeling like an unlikable outcast and endured a childhood of relentless, cruel bullying, only feeding into my immense self-hatred and complex mental health. It is only since I left high school, in the past five years, that I’ve formed such close, special, and lifelong friendships that I treasure immensely, with the people who make me believe that I am good enough, special and likeable. I am saddened by the sectors of my audience who praise me for being unwell, as I want to be known for my fashion, style and life, not merely my body. In saying that, I also never planned to target the parts of my audience who only want me to get better, the people who usher, coax and encourage me to recover from my torturous co-morbid illnesses. The support and faith of those of you who are always in my comment section vouching for me are the people I am writing this post to. For the previous decade, my family has prepared to lose me, if not to anorexia, then to suicide. It was just over a year ago that I was on the phone with my parents saying my goodbyes, and my mum was on the phone to the police trying to find me, save me. I have spent a lot of years in and out of recovery from all of my demons. I have been recovering from OCD for the past year, I have been recovering from depression for the past 9 months, and for 1 week, I have been recovering, again, from anorexia. But this time, Dolls, it feels different. It feels right. It feels completely good to see the joy rejuvenate my parents from a deathly, blank space of numbness, emotionlessness and exhaustion. It feels rewarding to see that number on my scales not go down because I don’t want to reduce myself to nothingness anymore and instead save myself from starvation. It feels beautiful to not be in a hospital bed this Christmas, having to wake up without my gorgeous and loving mum, Dad and puppy being the first thing I see on Christmas morning, and instead, having my blood pressure, blood sugar and weight taken. Because now, instead of recovering, that feels like the scariest thing in the world to me. Actually, now, the scariest thing in the world is dying. I don’t want to die anymore… something I haven’t felt since I was five years old. I want to dance in sprinklers through New York with my mum, and I want to run on the beach with my dog again. I have so far to go, and this isn’t to say my battle is anywhere close to being over. But this post is a bear with me, I’m growing post to express the possibility of recovery from a girl who is one of the sickest in her state. I never thought I’d be writing this. I never thought I’d be feeling this. And I feel so fucking proud, not just because I’m a young girl chasing a future for herself, but because I’m finally not the cause of my parents crying every night, and I’m trying not to be the friend who leaves this world too soon. I’m not out of the woods, no, but I’m in there with a torch and flag, waving around, saying, ‘Come at me, anorexia, fuck you, and I’m not next!’