Those are the words I have most regretted saying to myself: I just want to lose five pounds. I don't think one phrase could have changed my life more. I have spend endless hours in therapy analyzing why I wanted to lose those five pounds.

First I was told that I was vain. Mmm-hmmm. From a science major who doesn't wear makeup. Who chopped her hair off because braiding it in the morning was too much of a hassle.

Second I was told that I was getting revenge upon my mom for any number of things in my childhood, the worst of which was that she loved me too much. Do my mom and I have issues? Yep. And so do every other mother and daughter on the face of this earth. Yet the problem remains: if the anorexia was my way of paying my mom back for something, why did all the pain I caused her still render so freaking much guilt that some days I don't know if I can stand i.

Third I was told that those five pounds were a means of control. I am, admittedly, a control freak. I like things done my way. So I usually just do them myself, rather than have to put up with someone else's slip-shod manner. But weight? Yes I could control my weight, but that wasn't quite it.

There are even more theories, several told to me in a medical ward by a random psychiatrist sitting at the foot of my bed who had known me for all of five minutes. Let's just say it was to his benefit I was a control freak because otherwise I may have bit his head off. Oh, wait- anorexics aren't supposed to eat meat. Darn... Lucky man, him.

I can't explain anymore what triggered the eating disorder, what on earth I was thinking. I thought that losing five pounds would make me happy. I didn't know that eating salad all day wasn't that healthy for an active young college student. I didn't know that there was such a thing as too much exercise. And then I found myself in a hole from which I couldn't escape.

I have spent so long on the "why." I don't know anymore that there is a why to the anorexia. It has simply become a biological process that takes on a life of its own. I am taking my life back from it, and I want to look towards the future, towards the Carrie I might become, rather than the Carrie who initially fell victim to AN.