In a post dedicated to the memory of Karin Bauman, who passed away last week after years of battling anorexia, Perla Danoch spoke about the darkest period of her life, when she deliberately harmed herself out of self-hatred. "I would lie in bed for days, not eating or drinking, to the point of kidney infections and hospitalizations."
"I admit it's very hard for me to expose this, even though I'm very exposed online," Danoch wrote. "In adolescence, I experienced severe crises and depressions. I was a very thin girl, flat, not pretty, and socially unacceptable. All my life I suffered from insecurity due to my exterior, and I couldn't show the world how much I was worth on the inside, maybe it was because it took me a while to discover for myself what I was worth. I would hang on to destructive relationships, ones that emphasize to me more how unworthy, unworthy, and unbeautiful I am. I remember starting with severe self-starvation, I just stopped eating."
"I didn't starve myself at all thinking I was fat, I didn't look in the mirror and see someone who needed to lose weight," she clarified. "I just saw myself, and I hated what I was seeing, so I just wanted to disappear, not be. How do you do it? Stop eating. I felt like I was losing control of my life, and the only control I had was what to put in my body, and when, if ever. I'm the boss."
Towards the end, Perla turned to web surfers who may identify with what she wrote. "I call on every child, teenager or person reading this – the solution lies within us. You can use therapists, pills, friends, parents, siblings, in the end it starts and ends with you. It's important to bring up the hard stuff."
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