<p>We are practicing writing college entrance essays in my history class, so I know I've got some time to work on this, however I want to know how this essay is for starters, just to get an idea. I don't want it to seem like an essay all about self-pity, but it is very raw...not something I tell to anybody off the street. Anyways, any advice is much appreciated. Thank you!</p>
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<p>In the first grade, the whole class was asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. There were firemen, a ballerinas, and clowns. When it came to be my turn to share, I honestly had no idea what to tell the rest of my peers, waiting anxiously. Everybody seemed to know exactly where they were going to do for their careers, except for me. That remained the cases until about two years ago. It was laying on a hospital bed that I discovered what I want to do with my life--or rather, what I need to do with my life. </p>
<p>When the doctor sat me down and I told me she thought I had a problem with my eating, I didn't want to believe her. I was infuriated and scared out of my mind, not because her diagnosis wasn't true, but because I wasn't ready to face the harshest truth anybody could have told me. </p>
<p>All the "white coats" told me I was "broken," a figure skater who had lost thirty pounds in two months, seemingly unwillingly. The problem wasn't simply what I ate, wanting the be thin, or bouncing around between fad diets like all of my friends. The solution wasn't merely to eat. Inside that hospital, the more mashed potatoes the nurses shoved down my throat, the more feeding tubes that were prodded into my body, the more resistant I became. </p>
<p>The journey through recovery is even more difficult and exhausting than my three weeks at Seattle Children's Hospital. I can't count the nights on my fingers and toes that I spent sobbing in my room, wondering if my eating disorder had become who I was. Weekly visits to a dietician, therapist, and pediatrician seemed to take over my life, draining me both physically and emotionally, however the ways in which I have grown as a person throughout this voyage are staggering for myself to wrap my head around. </p>
<p>I have now been medically stable for eight months, and have since been able to return to the ice, the place I feel I have been able to most freely express myself for the past ten years. Recovering from an eating disorder is a marathon, not a sprint, and unfortunately no person diagnosed can have their disease cured for the rest of their life through a course of antibiotics. The doctor that diagnosed me with anorexia when I was in the hospital finally made me face the issues that had been eating away at me since before I was able to realize. </p>
<p>Now and then, I happen to come across articles about girls that die from eating disorders in shocking numbers, and I thank the doctor who diagnosed me, whom I used to mentally throw daggers at, for saving my life, giving me the opportunity to break away from my disease before it became who I was. If I could go back to my first grade classroom, I would raise my previously timid hand with conviction, because after that moment in my hospital bed, I can confidently say that I am going to become a pediatric doctor specializing in adolescent medicine; I am going to change the lives of teenagers who are sitting in their rooms, just as I was, wondering if their voice can overtake that of their eating disorder.</p>