The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Do you guys know that song?

The first time, ever I saw your face

I thought the sun rose in your eyes

And so on.

The first time I ever heard that song was in middle school. I was watching Glee for the first time. It's somewhere in the third season, the engagement episode. Middle school was a bad time for me. I think it is for everyone. I mean, no one really likes middle school, do they? But I watched a lot of TV back then. I still do, but then it was as a distraction. It was easier to cry over Rachel Berry's issues than my own.

I've always been better with faces than names. Most people, I remember the first time I saw their faces clearly. Not my family of course, or people I grew up with. But other people I met along the way. I don't have the best memory I guess.

I don't remember my first words. Or the first song I ever loved. I can't recall my first binge. My first panic attack. I don't remember the first time I consciously choose to skip a meal. I do very clearly remember the first time I purged.

I had been toying around with the idea for a long time. One day, I just snapped I guess. I don't really remember what the inciting incident was if I'm being honest. Anger, jealously, frustration, sadness, and everything in between. Probably all of the above. I just remember feeling disgusted. That I would go so low.

But then, I looked in the mirror.

My eyes were red and puffy. My hair was wild. My throat hurt, and I was trembling. The bathroom was filling with steam from the shower I had started. I remember smiling at myself.

I felt like I had never seen my own face before. I didn't recognize myself. I was a stranger.

Now I know it was an adrenaline rush. It was my ED saying I was pretty. I know that even though I felt calm in those few seconds that I looked in the mirror, after I showered I would begin to feel the same way I had before. When I looked in the mirror again later, it wasn't a stranger. It was just me.

Scared, broken, angry little me.

Me who, instead of dealing with what I had done, went and watched TV. Got lost in the annoying drama.

This was my life back then. Anger, resentment, jealously. God, so much jealously. Happiness was there of course, but I never focused on it. What I wanted, more than anything back then, was peace. Just for a few moments. I foolishly thought my ED could give me that, so I let it take control.

I let myself stare in the mirror after those purges and see my face for the first time because I truly was a stranger. Because I would never do this to myself. How could I ever have done this to myself?

The answer was sickness. I was so sick, I didn't know I was sick. That's how far my denial went. It ran deep. After a while, that feeling of happiness, the feeling of being a stranger, it went away. It always goes away. That's how the illness traps you I guess. It's amazing and addictive. Then, suddenly, it doesn't work.

And I was left wanting to see a new face in the mirror.

And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave

To the dark and the endless skies, my love