Introduction

As a teenager I wrote a diary for 8 years regularly and odd bits thereafter.  From 1996 (age 14) to 2004 (age 22) I’ve thought about writing a book, but wondered if it would be worth reading!  I’ve also been thinking about writing a blog of my teenage years and bits of my diary.

So where do I start.  The diaries of a disordered eating teenager.  I’ve been thinking about writing this for years.  And somewhere I started before.  I’ve hunted out old computer backups and have found a few months typed up.  I’ve been trying to think of how to do this. 

I thought about changing people’s names but I think it’ll get too confusing for me as I write so I'm just going to go for it.  I very much doubt most of the people in it will ever read it!  My diaries date back to June 1996 so I would have just turned 14.  It’s odd reading back now, reading between the lines and trying to put memories to my writings.  And some of it is just illegible! 

I became a Christian when I was 11 after being brought up in a Christian family.  I have always been to church and Sunday school.  From the age of nine I went on Christian holidays. 

After the second of these I was at my church youth group when I prayed with a leader.  I decided that I believed that Jesus died for all the wrong things I had done in her life and that I wanted Jesus to be my friend and to have a relationship with him. 

Most of my diary is written as prayers and letters to God.  This may or may not come across as I type it up and edit it.  You join me just after I turned 14.  I was in year 9 at a small private girls day school. 

So at 14 school was ok ish.  Eating was pretty normal at this stage.  I went to York College for Girls, a Church of England independent secondary school.  I went there from year 7, age 11, to October of year 10, age 14.  We were told that York College was going to close down because it was getting too small and not making enough money.  I left in October as I was at the start of my first GCSE year.  I think the school closed the next July.  I moved to Bootham, a local independent Quaker school.  Some of the time it was ok, but a lot of the time I hated it.  This was one of the causes of my eating disorder that was to develop. 

My diary starts in June 1996, just after my 14th Birthday, just before the summer holidays started…