Chapter 1: Double Life at 13

Addiction doesn’t start with a drink—it starts with the need to belong.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel different.
In kindergarten, I was the kid terrified to step on the scale in front of the whole class. By first grade, I knew what it meant to be left out of birthday parties because I was “the fat kid.” I learned early that food could be a comfort, and that shame could be a teacher.

Addiction doesn’t usually begin with a drink in your hand—it begins with a need. A need to fit in, to numb, to belong. For me, it started long before alcohol ever touched my lips.

My parents were working hard, doing their best to give us the life they never had. They taught me about grit and perseverance, but they didn’t see the loneliness that lived in me. Or maybe they did, but didn’t know what to do with it.

By ten, I’d found my people—friends who became my chosen family. We laughed hard, we played hard, and as we grew, we partied hard. Many of us would go on to battle addiction in different ways, but at the time, it just felt like freedom.

And then came thirteen. My double life. By day, the chunky girl who made the dance team. By night, running with the Black Jacket gang. Somewhere in between, I discovered a way to make myself sick after eating. I didn’t have words for it yet, but I was bulimic. I was also reckless, lost, and desperate to be noticed.

That’s when the “star” of the basketball team noticed me. Me. The invisible girl. It felt like everything I’d ever wanted—attention, validation, proof that I mattered. I didn’t know then that it was the start of both the best and the hardest years of my life.

I thought I had everything I wanted at thirteen—friends who felt like family, nights that felt like freedom, and now the attention of the star player on the basketball team. For a girl who always felt invisible, it was intoxicating. But looking back, I can see it for what it was: the beginning of the best and the worst years of my life. The double life I thought I was in control of would soon start controlling me.

Stay with me. This is only the beginning.