The Things You Will Overcome: An Essay by Kimberlyn

The Things You Will Overcome: An Essay by Kimberlyn - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

I had an eating disorder for 8 years. There was nothing abnormal about it to me: I went to school, I went to practice, I came home, I went to bed and I didn't eat. Sometimes it was to remedy the overwhelming sense of sadness that tightened in my chest. Mostly it was because I was alone. Nothing was more terrifying than the manic pace it continued with, day in, day out, like a broken cassette. I starved myself, binged when I couldn't stave off hunger any longer, ran until my legs threatened to give out beneath me. There's a hazy sort of indistinctness surrounding it that comes with routine, like a single 20 watt bulb casting shadows around a dark room.
I felt my best when I was empty. Strong, pure, light. I was addicted. However much I tried, I was never Bad Enough to get better. I was a pile of glittering shards on the floor, but not broken enough.
When I started improving in a lot of ways I got worse. My entire world was crashing and burning around me. This had been my life. I had nothing outside of it.
I loved the thing that wanted to kill me. Every day I would list the ways I could die: stroke. Falling and hitting my head, internal bleeding, my esophagus detaching. If you are not recovering, you are dying.
This will kill you.
How much do you want to live?
It's been about a year since I stopped. I used to miss it like a knife wound to the chest. Now it’s more like a tight ache in the back of my throat, the kind you get before you’re about to cry.
If I could have one do-over, it would be to go back in time and tell myself this: people will love me if I'm not sick. People already love me. This doesn't make you interesting or important. Someday you will be seventeen, and you will wish you hadn't spent your childhood like this.
Anyone who meets me will tell you there is no one more driven than me; there is no one more ambitious. There is no one more dedicated. It's one of my favorite things about myself, and, although in the past I may have used it with ill intentions, I'm moving on to help other people overcome the same obstacles I had to.
I want to work for a non-profit, not just in the mental health sector, but also with women's rights, LGBT rights, institutionalized racism and food insecurity. Helping other people gives me the same sense of safety my eating disorder did. The world is a mess, but I can make it better.
I will always regret how I spent those years, but if I can accomplish this, maybe it won't be in vain.