Can you please proofread this and tell me what you think about this essay for a college class?

Fresh from shower I stare on forlornly at a reflection I have come to hate. Running my hands slowly down my body, I feel the ribs the have begun to show, and the hips bones that lovingly protrude. I smile at this touch, for what I feel is what I long to see in the mirror. I flex the muscles in my stomach and I hear the acids moan back at me as they swirl around in their emptiness. It is a sensation that has come to comfort me. It numbs everything, and numbness is the preferred emotion in my life. At the bottom of the stairs my father calls his 15 year old daughter down for dinner. He has made my favorite: pot roast with roasted potatoes. I wrap myself up in my warmest outfit and strut out of my room to put on the dog and pony show I have learned to put on, and will put on for three years.

Everything is perfect: the table set, everyone is sitting down at the table, the food sending wafts of delicious scent my way. I sit down to join my family, and my brother begins to bless the food. As soon as he says , “Amen,” I dig in and savor every delectable bite. I haven’t eaten all day and my appetite has reached ravenous proportions. I finish two plates in 10 minutes flat. My father looks at me with an odd expression as I excuse myself and mumble something about having a paper due in the morning. Moving away from the table I return to my room upstairs to feel the disgusting bulge of my belly in front of my mirror. It sickens me to feel how round it is, how full my stomach is. With this feeling of self-disgust I take myself to the bathroom and hunch over the toilet. With a habit that has become all too easy my fingers go down my throat and the dance with my tonsils has begun. I feel the pot roast and potatoes come up, and up, and up. Feeling a little bit more than light-headed I brush my teeth and smile at how well I had emptied my system this time.

My father never noticed my timed trips to the bathroom: exactly 5 minutes after every meal, nor the sounds of the shower running for only 6 or 7 minutes at a time. He never saw the broken blood vessels in my eyes nor how swollen my cheeks would get sometimes. All of my ways of concealment were learned from the person who had taught me everything. Lindsey had lost 40 pounds in 4 months and I begged her to let me in on her secret. With an air of pride I never quite knew her to have, she shared her secret with me, showing me step my step everything that she knew. From the water running, to how to gag without a sound, she was paving my three year road to hell without either of us ever realizing it. It took a lot out of us. We had learned how to lie about what we ate, and had gotten very clever about hiding all of the candy wrappers throughout our living areas.

One day in my junior year, as I was on my way to 1st period my friend Serene was sobbing by her locker, and I felt inclined to stop to talk to her. As her words came out in broken sentences, my world came to a jarring stop. I stood there, not wanting to believe what Serene was trying to tell me, not wanting my best friend to be gone. Lindsey, my beautiful friend, had succumbed to an end I wasn’t prepared for. Tears I didn’t know I had in me began to roll down my face as I felt myself allow Serene’s arms embrace me. She whispered to me that they found her passed out on her bathroom floor. Her heart had stopped beating.

During the funeral I didn’t hear the words of the minister, nor the music that they played in her honor. All that I heard were the echoes of, “Bulimia is what killed her,” in my head, over and over again. It wasn’t bulimia, it was just a diet. Something that her and I could have stopped anytime we wanted. It wasn’t something that was supposed to end life before we had ever graduated and moved on to bigger things. Yet here I was at Lindsey’s funeral, saying good-bye to someone I wasn’t ready to bid farewell to just yet. I saw her mother sobbing in the arms of her husband as they lowered Lindsey into the ground, and felt Serene grip my hand tightly as she herself fought back tears. Then everyone moved from the graveyard to the church to eat and remind each other of how much Lindsey would be missed.

Walking through the doors of the church, the scent of food hit my nostrils, and the familiar cravings of my stomach come to the forefront of my mind. Picking up a plate I set about the table filled with table and deposited on my plate : a roll, potatoes, steak, pork, a few pieces of fried chicken, and a few brownies. Too much food for a girl of my size to consume in one sitting. I felt the binge come on, and within minutes the food that was in front of me was gone, the plate licked clean. The corpulent feeling of my stomach became too much for me to handle, and without me even realizing it I made my way to the restroom. The only other friend I had left came into view , and I threw myself over it to begin to what I had done for so long. My fingers were a welcomed visitor in my throat, and all of the contents came up, burning acid and all.

“Don’t you know that she died from what you are doing right now?” a voice in the back of my head seemed to whisper. “Do you want to end up on the floor just like her?” The cold realization of my existence came over me at that moment, an epiphany of sorts. Here I was, sitting on the ground of a bathroom at the church where my best friends funeral was being held, and I was puking out my guts. I was doing exactly what drove Lindsey to her death. What for two years had seemed as just a diet Lindsey and I did together, now stared back at me as my worst enemy. I stare at the chewed up food floating in the toilet, as I try to think of the last time I actually let food digest the tears well up in my eyes. With the terrifying thought of not knowing the last time I digested food, I fell to the floor sobbing. I got up a few minutes later to gaze on into the reflection in the mirror. My hair had become dull, the protruding hipbones could be seen through my dress, my eyes seemed so distant, a stranger was staring back at me. This was my breaking point.

I had deified this disease for so long, the thought that it actually was a disease was so indiscernible to me. On my way back home from the funeral these thoughts swam through my head. I couldn’t see life without it, and for some odd reason I didn’t want it to leave. I had come to adore the gaunt appearance of my ribs, how sharp my hips were to the touch. I loved the euphoria I felt each time I stepped on the scale to find that I had lost a pound or two that week. Bulimia had become my only friend. She was the only one I ever wanted or needed. Life would be tough to adjust to after Lindsey, but I felt confident that with Bulimia on my side I’d make it through. Oh, how wrong my way of thinking had become.

That summer after Lindsey had passed on, I had come home to what would day that my world came crashing down. After a long shift at work I walked into the living room to see my dad sitting with a pile of my laxatives beside him, his head in his hands. I stopped in my tracks, not knowing what to say or how to react. I looked up at me , and I could see his eyes were swollen from tears. “Babygirl, how long?” was all the he asked. As I was about to tell him that it had been 2 years, it shocked me that it had really been two years. Two years of lying, of stealing, of wasting away, and fading away from everyone who had ever loved me.

“Daddy ,I think it’s been two years,” I whisper back.

He took me into the bathroom down the hall and demanded that I stare into the mirror, asking me how I could like what I saw. He grabbed my shirt and lifted it up a little to show me just how much fat wasn’t there. It was then that it dawned upon me that there truly was nothing to me. I put my hand to my heart just to make sure that it was still beating. I felt the hot, salty tears sting at my eyes as my poor Daddy pointed at how painfully thin I was. He ushered me to the scale that for so long had been my only source of happiness. I stood on it and waited painfully for it tell me that I only weighed 96 pounds. My Daddy’s worst fears had just been confirmed: his little girl was wasting away right in front of him and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Babygirl, you have to get better,” he said, gave me a hug, and left me to myself.

It’s been a year since my father brought me face to face with what would’ve eventually be my demise. I visit Lindsey’s grave at least once a week, and tell her how much I wish she could be on the road to recovery with me. Though I still struggle with the fact that I do have an eating disorder, I’m learning to accept who I am as a person. I’m learning to embrace my families love and support instead of reject it. I’ve come to understand that certain aspects of my life I can change, and others I cannot. This certain aspect of my life I’m willing to change. I can now actually recall the last time that I let myself digest food. No longer do I think that the protrusion of hipbones is lovely, nor do I adore the frailness of my body. With redemption comes courage, and I am courageous enough to beat this. The only thing better than feeling thin is the feeling that you are alive.