It was like a dream: I open my eyes and see my father and sister crying as I am moving away from my front door as though I’m floating. I’m not moving myself; I’m being moved. This is not a dream, this is happening to me.

I am being wheeled away on a stretcher away from my house into an ambulance. An oxygen nosepiece is shoved into my nostrils and makes them itchy. I call out for my mother, who answers me from the passenger seat. I have fainted from malnutrition. My mother sobs as we speed to the hospital I was born in.

My mother told me later, “You were talking to us on the couch. You just slumped over. You turned blue, and I just kept thinking if I just keep holding your hand that I wouldn’t lose you.”

I became anorexic at the age of 13. I was hospitalized twice, re-fed once, and I fainted three times. My heart basically stopped in the middle of the first night I spent in Children’s Hospital, while my mother lay on the makeshift bed next to me. I am the picture of a male anorexic: I was heavy as a younger kid, which then progressed into a virulent eating disorder that I fight to this day.

My mother considers my family situation as the “textbook example of a family of a male anorexic;” distant father, overbearing mother and sexuality conflicts. I consider this to be crap, because my eating disorder had nothing to do with my family. I am not in any stage of denial; I have been anorexic for almost eight years now. It’s not about getting attention from my parents; the psychos still won’t leave me alone, which I am grateful for.

I grew up in Foxboro, Mass. I went to Foxboro High School, a place that I am convinced is built on a Native American burial ground because of the concentrated negativity that churns within its walls.

I, like many other kids, was tormented to the point of insanity for one reason or another. I am not looking for pity. Everyone got harassed in high school on some level. I know I’m not special; I am just relaying the facts.

I was harassed constantly about my weight. Kids in Foxboro have crafted a fine skill of ruthlessness; they are amazing at making others feel awful. I was at the bottom of the totem pole, the very bottom; even the computer people called me fat.

I started to eat more healthily at the age of 12 and quickly lost weight. Although thinner and healthier, the torment from classmates continued. I would walk into a class and some kids would be mean to me for fun.

So, rather than fight for my right to be a human being, I concentrated on my weight, thinking, “they’ll be sorry when I’m thinner than all of them. They’ll be sorry when I’m dead.” My weight quickly fell into the 120-pound range. I was six feet tall at the time.

I thought I was hot stuff in my size 26-waist jeans and my extra small shirt that bowed out like a weird sail. I loved it. I thought it was the best feeling in the world. Every day was a music video and I was the star. “I’ll be the thinnest boy IN THE WORLD,” I thought.

You readers are all thinking, “You’re a psycho.” I’m in agreement. I ate two cantaloupes a day and lost more and more weight, even after being hospitalized. If you are hospitalized for an eating disorder, it’s not fun or dramatic. It’s just really boring. You sit in your bed all day and wait for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s like a hotel. You sit there eating your four grains, four fruits and three proteins and think about what kind of magic tricks you are going to pull when you get out of the hospital.

I was waiting. I was waiting for my classmates to turn around one day and say, “We’re so sorry, how could we be such inhuman beasts to you? We are truly sorry from the bottom of our hearts.” Now that is the mark of insanity. I actually thought that this event would occur. Then, when it didn’t happen, I went completely insane. It took me many years to let go of high school; I am still in the process of letting go.

I have been anorexic for eight years, and many doctors have noted that when a disorder such as anorexia is so long entrenched, it is never shed from the person afflicted. I know that I will fight this for the rest of my life. Somewhere in my head is a small boy who is still waiting for an apology. There are some things one cannot let go of. Today, I am much healthier than I once was, but there are two voices inside of me. One is my rational self, the self that wants to live. The other voice is my anorexic self, a part of me that is sometimes very hard to ignore.

Why do I want to air this dirty laundry to twenty-five thousand students? Because college students are an “at risk” group for developing eating disorders. I don’t have any enlightening mantras to tell, any statistics or medical facts to ramble off. I can only say this: It will take you over. It will take you away. It will become you.

Thomas Naughton is a Collegian columnist.