i.

My mother told me that when I was born, the first thing I did was vomit blood.

I cried hysterically for months before they could figure out what was wrong with me. She says the lining in my stomach was weak. Doctors tell her I have gastro-esophageal reflux. My grandmother tells her it’s nothing. She’s a colicky baby; it’s normal.

Statistics show that out of four million babies, 35% will have gastro-esophageal reflux (GERD) in their first year. The thing is, human beings are helpless and some do not automatically adjust to their new living conditions. Science says not to worry; she’s supposed to outgrow this.

As a first time parent, my mother didn’t know what to do with all the crying. Somehow, she’d conditioned my baby brain into thinking that the easiest way to feel good was to let it all out, baby burp-vomits to make it all better.

The truth is, I don’t remember when it started.

I do remember growing up always complaining of stomachaches, my dad constantly teasing me that it was just a little bit of gas in my stomach. I never liked bubblegum, but because it was supposed to give you gas and make your stomach feel funny, I wasn’t allowed any of it.

Stomachaches were stomachaches until they started getting more frequent; until they started getting worse; until they started feeling like you’d swallowed a knife and it was stabbing at your gut, trying to force its way out; until rushing to the bathroom meant your lunch would be in the toilet before you could enjoy it and still, the urge to vomit lingers even after you’ve purged everything, when all that are left are bubbles you learn later on to be acid.

The problem was, as a child, they could never get me to eat. What it took was spoon-feeding by force: my sister’s nanny carrying me to the dining table on several occasions. Sometimes, my dad threatening to ground me. Even then, they could only get me to sit still for three bites and then I ran off to play.

Eventually, I was diagnosed with hyperacidity. My understanding of that was: no iced tea. No soft drinks. Nothing too acidic. Sour mangoes to a minimum. Don’t skip meals. Don’t over eat. These days, I take three sips of soda and feel my insides burn. By sixteen, the hyperacidity has developed into a full-blown ulcer. I take Zantac for the pain.

My mom says I’ve had this since I was a baby.

ii.

As of 2011, experts have categorized four types of eating disorders.

The two most popular and officially recognized ones are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The other is the binge-eating disorder. Of the four, the one unknown to most people is EDNOS: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.

EDNOS, not be confused with anorexia or bulimia, has symptoms of the two combined. It’s easy to mistake one for the other or as a combination of the two. Experts say the signs to watch out for are almost the same — but not quite. It’s severe, but the key word is almost.

Watch out for people with distorted body images. People who restrict eating or compensate by purging and/or too much exercise. It’s easy to fall into the trap of mistaking these people for every other teenager on this planet. There is a need to be wary of that.

Because the eating disorder is not widely recognized, people suffering from EDNOS may not know that they are.

They aren’t always overweight; they aren’t always underweight. They don’t intentionally vomit as often as those who are suffering from bulimia do; they starve themselves on very rare occasions; sometimes the closest thing they get to it is entertaining the thought.

On the surface, they are obsessed with eating healthy, sometimes putting themselves on diets that are “doctor-approved.” More importantly, people suffering from EDNOS always feel the need for exercise, but don’t necessarily follow through with it. A person suffering from it could look as healthy as an athlete but never really feel that way.

Recent studies show that in 2012, EDNOS has become one of the most prominent eating disorders, occurring in people of all ages.

If left untreated, people suffering from EDNOS are at a risk of developing long-term psychological and physical problems that are closely related to the eating disorder to which their symptoms are closely related. Some of these long-term effects include: irritability, self-loathing, anxiety and depression.

iii.

You are 107 on a good day.

#1: When you wake up in the morning, everything is still. You get up from bed and you stare at yourself in the mirror — nothing. Your heart is not pounding fast against your ribcage and you don’t feel the need to rush to the bathroom because you can’t breathe. You ate too much the night before; there were too many options you just had to try; it was your best friend’s birthday; you told yourself you were going to burn it the next day — so what? The good news is, you don’t feel anything.

#2: It’s eleven in the evening. Your running shoes are on the floor, the sauna suit and cling wrap already laid out for use but you are already comfortable. You are already settled in your four-poster bed, watching the brand new parakeets from your window, the ones your brother’s best friend gave him for his birthday. The urge to run is dwindling.

#3: There is a pack of instant coffee on your desk and a glass of hot water filled three-thirds from the rim that remain untouched. You don’t move from your seat and proceed to work without coffee. You tell yourself coffee has high levels of acid which means coffee is bad for your health. Coffee will have you rushing to the toilet, half-regretting the fact that you had next to nothing else to eat. Coffee will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth and a petrifying lack of remorse for consciously choosing to have it that way, so you have none of it. You tell yourself you don’t make room for the things that make you feel bad about yourself.

You are 107 on a good day. And by good day, I mean, ideally.

iv.

My best friend has a habit of squishing my arms when he sees me, making sure to emphasize the loose skin from my once toned triceps, calling me fat. It’s his show of affection — almost a greeting.

Every so often, exasperated, I tell him that if I ever get an eating disorder, it’s his fault. We’ve rehearsed this exchange a million times, perfected it. I complain. He laughs and tells me it’s impossible. I love food too much. I tell myself he’s right.

When he’s around for our twice-a-month catch-up sleepovers, he brings cake and ice cream and peanut butter kisses. He pays for our meals. He says it’s because he has a new job, that it’s his way of giving back for having housed him for almost our entire college life.

One night, while examining himself in front of my mirror, he asks if we have a scale. I took out the batteries, I tell him. He doesn’t ask why.

There was a time where that glass, digital weighing scale was my first thought of the day. The first thing I did in the morning was stand on it, mentally taking note of my “starting value.” If I were home and proximity allowed it, I’d run back to my room just to check if I’d gained anything after every meal, stripping down to bare essentials and sucking my stomach in every time I had to.

The weighing scale, now stashed away with the rest of my unused things, used to sit comfortably in front of my mirror before I decided to remove the batteries, before I decided to put it away.

Every time I had to check my reflection, it was impossible not to step on it. The only way to get a good look at yourself was to take that step and to pray that the numbers don’t go past 110.

I can’t recall the last time I stepped on a weighing scale. In my head, I call that progress, but the truth is: I’m just scared.

v.

By the time my mom gave birth to my little sister when I was five and a half, I had already spent a good enough time alone that adjusting to someone else was completely out of the question.

For the rest of my prepubescent and adolescent life, this unspoken pressure to be better, this imagined constant competition will hound me like a guard dog trained to react to an exploding bomb — always waiting for it, dreading it, my existence secretly revolving around it.

At five and a half, my sister joined gymnastics — recruited into junior varsity for our school after a couple of sessions. Because of that, for years I jumped from sport to sport to sport, one varsity after the next — fencing, softball, firing, tennis, flag football, and occasionally (much to my regret and embarrassment) my batch’s cheerdancing team. Where my sister managed to stick to one sport her entire life (thus far) and excel at it — her bedroom’s walls lined with medals and her bookcase with trophies — I floated along. I tried everything, never really sticking long enough to one, always refusing to compete. Regardless, I’d like to think that one point in our lives we were both equally athletic.

It wasn’t until I hit fourteen and had turned into a walking temper-trap that my parents thought it might be smart for me to take up something that would aid my anger management. There was a boxing gym near my place, and it got to a point that at the height of my anger, I hit my sister one too many times that they figured it might be funny if one day they left me at the door of the boxing gym to fend for myself.

Much to everyone’s surprise, I went along with it and found that I really enjoyed myself. It was there I learned that if you stay long enough, the coaches would eventually take a liking to you. That lost, angry girl who walked into the gym alone and intimidated would soon become a crowd favorite: sparring in the ring occasionally, despite her father’s protests, lifting twenty pounds instead of the five she started with, training religiously, every day after class instead of once or twice a week.

At the time, 115 on the weighing scale was never problematic, it only meant muscle weight, and for a long time, because your body is constantly building muscle, it needs the energy; your brain will be conditioned to thinking that weight gain is a good thing, even when it no longer is.