A Step into the Life...
**My name is Cassi and I am a 16 year old sophomore in High-school. I maintain a 3.7 GPA, I am a student-athlete scholor, I play basketball, volleyball and softball for my high school while I also play softball on a Junior Olympic Team outside of school. I enjoy spending weekends with my friends at parties or at the movies. In my spare time I volunteer in the community by coaching a youth softball team and I also enjoy writing & running. My life sounds great right? Wrong.

**I am going to summarize the last three years of my life to you in a couple paragraphs. If you would like to know the details of my story you can email me for information about my upcoming book.

**I sound like miss perfect right?The "everything going for her, happy little girl right? Wrong. I have battled anorexia, bulimia, suicidal attempts and a couple years of self-mutilation. Why you might ask. Why would you do this if you had all those positive things going on in your life? I don't know if I even have an answer to that. But here is my story, or what I have of it so far:

**Up until 6th grade I was a normal kid, atleast what I thought was normal. I guess I got in trouble a bit too much but oh well, it was just minor stuff like talking back to teachers. Nothing horrible or violent or anything. I had a sassy mouth on me that was all. And since I was getting decent grades (3.0 gpa) nobody really seemed to mind. I mean yeah the teachers would send notes home but my parents would just sign them and tell me to do better.

**During my sixth grade year I became very defiant and mouthy. I would talk back to anyone in authority I could come in contact with. It was getting to the point where I was getting a tally board going where I got sent out of the class each day. I didn't care.

**During the summer of 6th grade my best friend who I did everything with asked me to come with her to a softball try out for a Junior Olympic team. I didn't really want to go but since she was going and I wanted to go with her I said OK. I went with her and once I got their I decided to try out as well. It was for an older team . We were only 12 and all the other girls were 13 and 14. I eventually made the team and after the summer of playing with that team (my friend did not play) my behavior changed. I was more serious about things now and more respectful of people in authority. I still got in trouble occasionally and shot of my sassy mouth at the wrong times but it wasn't as bad as it use to be.

**In the middle of 7th grade I started feeling emotions I had never felt before. Even though I had been a student who was sassy and got in trouble, I liked to voice my opinion and didn't mind when I got in trouble. I never felt sad or anything when I did. Now all of a sudden I started feeling these feelings of hopelessness and despair and I didn't know what to do with them.

**Thinking back I guess there were things I can place blame on to tie these feelings in with. My best friend wrote me a nasty note (that I still have to this day) I started my period, I lost a boyfriend, my family was having hard times... but at the time I thought that the feelings were emerging from nowhere.

**Another important feeling that started happening in 7th grade was my conciousness of my weight. Right around the time the cutting was starting I became very aware of my mirror appearance and my scale weight. I didn't care that I was only 110 pounds, I looked fat in the mirror and I couldn't stand it.

**I told myself that I would get back down to 100 pounds. That is a good round even number. From that day on I started dieting. I guess you could call it that. I didn't eat. I was playing volleyball at the time and after a few days of not eating and getting really weak, the coach asked if something was wrong. I said no but knew I had to fix something. I ate an apple before the game the next day. After realizing that not eating would get me in trouble in sports I started eating only before games. I did that for awhile but one day I couldn't handle what I ate and I had to get rid of it. I didn't want to have my body digest it. I ran to the bathroom and stuck my finger down my throat. That was the first of many in my continuing cycle of bulimia. I finished 7th grade year with two athetic awards for outstanding performance or something like that. Hard to believe I accomplished that while starving myself.

**I started 8th grade year eating big meals once a day or every other day and then purging them. I was also still cutting on myself 3-4 times a week or when ever I felt my emotions were too much for me to control. I wouldn't do deep cuts unless it was a crisis, I would do somewhat shallow cuts right over each other so as not to scar up my whole arm. I also did some on my ankles and stomach. I also didn't know how to cope with the emotions that were overflowing my head so one day to relieve all the cooped up tension inside I made a 2 inch cut on my left arm. I can't tell you how much that made me feel better. I started doing it about 4 times a week just to release all my "bad" feelings inside. The ones caused by my family, my friends, my teachers, my coaches but most importantly ME.

**Besides my negatives habits, my life was improving so why were my cutting and bulimia getting worse? I dunno. Once 8th grade hit, I became the Editor for the school yearbook, I got a 3.7 GPA, I didn't get in trouble at all, my teachers all liked me, and even the principal commented on how well I was doing.

**I bet they were all just as surprised as me when I got the call slip In January to see the counselor. She had found out about my cutting and wanted to see me. That started a process of Mental Health personel and CPS social workers coming to visit me. I spent 9 hours that day trying to convince people I was OK.

**After everyone was finished talking to me they decided to call my mom. She was shocked. She had no idea that any of this was happening. Neither did my dad. They searched my room and found my suicide letters and razor blades. They also found notes to my teacher who had known about all of this the whole time. (Nobody knew about my eating disorder still)

**My parents refused to take me to counsling so the Mental Health people made them. My dad still refused so my mom took me secretivly. We went for about 6 months and they put me on Zoloft. I stayed on that until 10th grade when I asked to be reevaluated.

**Between the summer of 8th grade and the beginning of 10th grade everybody thought I was "cured". That nothing was wrong with me anymore. I held everything inside again and started cutting on my stomach again so nobody would notice, or I wore long sleeves. I kept my emotions completly covered so nobody could even peek in.

**In October I asked my mom to let me go back to counseling and she said no so I found my own couselor. I loved her she was really great. They also reevaluated my meds and upped the zoloft. The day after Thanksgiving I was admitted to California Speacialty Hospital for suicidal reasons and my builimia. The doctors thought that I was on the zoloft too long and I shouldn't have been given the upped dosage. They changed my meds to Paxil, Zyprexa and Benadryl to make me fall asleep. I stayed at the hospital for 11 days and I was released back home.

**Home was hard, constant fighting and arguing. My parents didn't care about anything. A month later I tryed to commit suicide by slicing my wrists. I told my counslor a day later and I was again admitted to CSH. I stayed for 12 days. There was a battle batween my parents and me arguing about my counselor when I first got home. They thought I should give up Alicia (the counselor who I really like) and I wouldn't do it. I had the legal right to consent to my own counseling. It was worked out and I won. But then my parents really set into me and I had to give up Alicia as my counselor.
Since the hospital family therapy has begun, and
**I have been put on many medications. I was put on Trazadone, Aderall, Remeron, Topomax, and Paxil all at once. In May, I decided to go off my Adderall, Remeron, and Paxil. Unfortunatley, I did not let my doctor in on this decision and I got many people mad at me.
**For the month of May I have been living away from my parents. We were not getting along and one night when my dad grabbed me, I got sick of it and left. From that day on, I decided to stay here at my grandmother's house.
** My eating habits have also decided to come back in a not so lovely form. From the first week of May to the third week of may I lost 15 pounds from not eating. I went back to starving myself...

**Please understand that above story was just very quickly scribbled down and the indepth emotional details will all be included in my book that will hopefully coming out as soon as I finish writing it. Check the "My book" link to get more info or email me at SOFTBALLCHICK111@AOL.COM


to be continued