I feel the need to make a disclaimer: I am not anorexic, bulimic or suffer from any other self-image diseases. The purpose of this essay was to attempt to see the world through the eyes of a young girl, suffering through so much.

Staring out the barred window I looked back on the past few months. They have been a blur of hospital visits, injections, and many judgmental looks. People think that I can change the way that I am, but they haven't been inside my head. They don't know what its like to be me.

Back in middle school, the long and painful awkward phase, I was dubbed Mrs. Piggy by the oh-so-perfect cheerleaders and their incredibly thin waistlines. I was chubby. I knew it, and the insults kept eating away ate my self-confidence. Surely, Katie and her friends didn't know the consequences of the wounds they inflicted.

I saw the magazines, and the diets. I tried to fit in, to be myself like my mom said, but teenage girls aren't so accepting. No one could stand to be associated with Mrs. Piggy. But I've changed. They'd all love to be my friend now. I just know it.

As my eighth grade year passed, and I moved on to high school, I vowed to myself that I would never let that happen to myself again. I was moving a new school, with new faces. Why couldn't I start fresh? So, I tried every diet, every workout, and every weightless program, but I always gave in to the food. It tempted me so with its temporary pleasure.

Finally, when the weeks drew nearer to that first day of school, I did it. I gave into the idea that had plagued my mind since the first time Katie called me Mrs. Piggy, and I forced myself to throw up.

At first it was hard. I felt guilty, and the consequences seemed to outweigh the rewards. But the weeks dragged by, and I became skinnier and skinnier. My very image was changing, but I was still that self-conscious chubby girl at heart.

I told myself that I could stop at any moment, that I was in complete control over my body. But I didn't want to stop. I felt beautiful for the first time in my life, not one person even thought to call me fat.

But soon enough my body could no long keep up with the lack of nutrition. My friends cast worried looks at my frail frame, and people started calling me a different name: anorexic.

My parent tried to force the food down my throat, but they did not know that it never hit my intestine. Life seemed normal until that day, the day of my first hospital visit, the first of many. It was a day like any other day, but I woke feeling weak and sick. Rising to slap on the mask of makeup I use to hide my face I pulled my fingers through my ratty hair pulling out patches. I just stared at the hair in my palm, unable to believe that my formerly lustrous auburn hair could be reduced to this pale and tangled patch. It wasn't until later that day, in the middle of the lunchroom, that I fainted from malnutrition.

My hazy memory brings back the sounds of sirens, the sobbing of my mother, and the complete pain that racked my tiny body.

I promised that I would get better, a promise that I never intended to fulfill. I had underestimated this disease's hold on me. It was only after five more visits to that hospital that the doctor told my parents that I needed to be sent to the Correctional Institution.

And now here I sit, staring out at the dark grey sky, wondering why I went through all that pain and suffering for mere Image.