I wasn't going to write any Morganville stories for a week or so, as a time to relax and actually do some homework but I had a meeting on Monday that really shocked me… it made me realise that these are huge issues in the world about these diseases, so I had to write it now… screw history!

Although I've had about four hours of training on the subject, I am by no means an expert, I just wish to bring these issues to light and how they can go by so unnoticed.

I don't own anything.

Claire's POV:

"Come on, CB, eat up," is what I hear most of the time from my best friend, Eve Rosser, at dinner. Approximately 95% of the time she is telling me to eat my food, rather than picking at it on the plate.

"I had a really late lunch," I lie, as I usually do, and she smiles before shaking her head.

"CB, you need to stop having these late lunches when it's my turn to cook; when it's Shane's that's ok, since his chilli blows your brains out, but not mine!" she laughs and we all join in, but I don't feel like laughing on the inside.

It's been like this for me and food for the past three years. For three years, I have struggled with food, unable to stop myself from obsessing over the calorie content of even a lettuce leaf or thinking that if I eat it then I'll get fat. Nobody seems to notice because when I do eat, I eat an absolute tonne… its called anorexia binge eating type, and I have suffered from it for three years.

It all began in school, when some girls (who were three years older than me) began to pick on me. They called me fat, insinuated that I was way too big for my age, made me feel worthless. So I took on board what they thought and began to only see the fat girl that I see today. My mum and dad realised that I was losing a dramatic amount of weight and took me to the GP, who told me that I was suffering from anorexia nervosa: it isn't a condition, it is a disease of the mind… my brain does tell me, in a part, that I need to eat to be alive and healthy but the larger portion of it tells me that I am fat and I need to stop eating to loose the weight to make me look like the perfect girls…

Yet sometimes, the normal side of me won out, and I would binge and binge on food, eating sometimes enough for six people. I would wait till my parents had gone out and I would eat and eat, carbs, fatty foods, anything that made me feel better: the sugar rush helped me as the serotonin levels in my brain increased… until the high ended, and I had to begin the purge. I was sickened by what I had eaten, so I would force myself to be sick time and time again until I knew that every single morsel of the food was gone from my body. Then the starvation would begin again, and I would eat five cornflakes a day and drink a sherry glass of water…

So I began to lose more and more weight, until my BMI was less than fifteen and they decided that I didn't have a chance of getting better with just the therapy; I needed immediate emergency hospitalisation. So that's what happened to me. I went to hospital and was intravenously given potassium to fix my irregular heartbeat, and I began to eat because I didn't want to die. I was too clever for that; I knew my potential and I wanted to achieve it… but when I got into MIT, my mum said no. she said I had to stay local because I could relapse easier without her being close by – she may not be in Morganville, but it was easier for her to get here… so I agreed, feeling pleased that I was actually getting away from the situation that had made me be so ill.

For a short time, I seemed to be on the up again… just before I came to Morganville. When I came here, I realised that I still had the feelings inside of me, that I still thought I was a colossal monster compared to everyone else. Then when Monica Morrell began to pick on me that cemented it in my mind. There was a beautiful, perfect, person picking on me once again and I knew that it was because I was fat. Then when I moved in here and I saw how skinny and perfect Eve was, without even a single drop of effort, it made it worse… someone who wasn't traditionally pretty was so much better looking and skinnier than me, and she didn't even try whatsoever…

So the anorexia nervosa began once again. However, this time, it seemed harder… I had to eat to appear normal. This meant that it sort of turned into a cross between the two – when possible I wouldn't eat, but if I had to, I would excuse myself from the meal as quickly as possible to go and be sick.

That's my plan now… as soon as I can, I'm going to go upstairs and make myself be sick because otherwise the food will make me fatter.

"Hello, CB?" Eve's hand is waving in front of my face and I realise, in the middle of my inner thought tracking, that she has been talking to me.

"Sorry… I was thinking about my homework," I manage to pull a smile that hides the already fast corrosion of my teeth from the excessive acid exposure caused by the sickness…

"Well, go off and do it then, but be back in like an hour for the film!" Eve says with a grin, taking my plate of barely touched food and handing it to a hungry looking Shane… I've been living here for three months now and I keep expecting him to ask me out (Eve seems to like Michael but he hasn't asked her out, since he thinks it is too hard for the whole ghost issue, and I know I like Shane but I don't know if he likes me) but he doesn't… to be honest, with the whole issue I have with food, I don't have time for a relationship.

I smile and rush up the stairs, pulling out the diary I keep in my bag for the food I eat per day.

Friday 1st April

Breakfast

1 x coffee

Lunch

3 x grapes

Dinner

5 x glasses of water

3 x mouthfuls of pasta

½ x meatball

So I've eaten too much today.

I sigh slightly, berating myself for eating so much, and stand up before heading to the bathroom. It's a good thing I drank so much at dinner; it means that it is easier for me to make myself be sick. So I slam the bathroom door shut and kneel by the toilet, thrusting my hand down my throat and catching my knuckles on my front teeth.

I gag and feel the food coming up, the acid cutting into the rawness of my throat, before I spit it into the toilet. I feel a sense of relief before doing the same thing over and over again until there isn't a remnant of my meal in my body…

I want to be better… but when nobody knows that you're ill, how do you get that help?

So, what did you think? I used all facts, I think.

Please review and tell me if you want me to continue… this was like a setting the scene chapter…

Vicky xx