The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End.

**Disclaimer - Heavy post

We stood there at the airport, so many unsaid emotions hanging in the air, Dads eyes were so deep and encompassing, he told me to look after myself, and I can still feel his desperate grip on my shoulders as he said it, so protecting yet slightly distressed as his look hinted at him knowing, he seemed to be saying sorry for not confronting me while pleading with me to look after myself. I chocked back tears and told him Christmas would roll around in no time at all. I told him dreams take sacrifice and that i'd always be his little girl. We held each other in a tight hug neither one of us wanting to let go. I said goodbye to Ruby, my darling youngest sister, then to Bree the sister I am lucky enough to also call my best friend, and then finally I hugged Dad one more time, and we both just looked at each other holding back tears, biting our lips and nodding in agreeance, that yes this was it and yes I'd be fine, it was time to go.

The final call for their flight home to AKL-CHCH-IVG was called and like that, they walked to the security line, waved once more and were gone. The next ten minutes were weird as mum and I stood there, they were gone, my family whom I think the most time I'd ever spent not physically seeing them was 2 weeks, were gone and I wouldn't see them for another 5 months. Yet they were still right there, on the other side of that wall, but soon they'd be gone and soon I'd be really gone, I'd be in America.

Mum and I were silent most of the bus ride back to into Auckland's CBD, Bree was snap chatting me from the departure lounge but it felt weird replying when I knew I couldn't see her for the next half a year. We made our way up to the hotel room and just sat there for a while before deciding to go for a walk and grab dinner.

It was nice just spending time with mum, I felt living at home the past 6 months, after all my high school days at the hostel, had brought us closer together, she was my best friend, the person I could complain to about long hours and being exhausted, because she too lived a hectic life always pushed to the max. I felt like mum and I were a team, but there was, of course, one struggle I felt I couldn't tell her, food and all its tag-along demons were my own to battle.

Mum and I spent the next few days chilling out, shopping and enjoying Auckland but I felt like our goodbye came too quickly. All of a sudden we were standing in the departure lounge with Annie (My NZ teammate) and her family taking a quick photo and then leaving our families standing there on the other side.

With all the internal battles I had faced up until that point I had become a master at concealing emotions and so in front of Annie I didn't let myself cry, just turned once to wave goodbye to mum and then focused intensely on getting through customs and making small talk to distract myself from the emotions of cutting that final thread.

I sat in the gate and rang Dad just to let him know I was all ready and sorted, then I sent out a final text message to everyone, and turned off my phone before they replied. I cut the thread and now I was on my own.

A new page, a new adventure, a new Hannah.

Boarding long-haul flights always fill me with the weirdest emotions, it seems weird that for the next 12-15 hours you will be completely cut off from the world, no contact, no distractions other than the in-flight movies and your iTunes library. Completely alone with yourself and all the thoughts about what has been or what will come. It is an airy feeling and at times an uncomfortable one.

I spent the next 15 hours to Houston excited but also scared, what if this wasn't all I thought it would be, what if I couldn't hack the training, what if I wasn't fast enough, what if... Like the thoughts surround food, my mind liked to play the same comparison and 'what if' game towards perfection and outcomes that couldn't yet be controlled.

I was excited to start this new chapter I held hope that once I was in the US I could start a new eating pattern, only healthy foods and just be all right with eating that, not be all stressed out about over or under eating, I really did want to go in and start fresh to have this chapter of eating disorders controlling my every move be in my past. But intentions are not always enough to break demons that grip our minds so furiously, and inevitably American and all its food and glaringly obvious food labels turned into my biggest nightmare yet. Calorie counting became easier and so the guilt with giving in intensified, Bulimic patterns were now a daily, if not a twice a daily thing, no food was 'safe' or all right and suddenly life was becoming very hard to manage.

I was making it through training but I was dog-dead tired, I was making it through classes but they weren't enjoyable and exciting like uni was supposed to be, they were draining and time consuming, the reading was dense, I felt dense trying to sift through it all and I was paralyzed by the fear of not being perfect every day.

I fell asleep exhausted and hungry and woke up ravenous and determined to make the next day a better one. But the patterns were so ingrained in my daily routine that inevitably every day seemed to become a repeat of the last.

As the semester started we had to complete incoming physicals. This was my worst nightmare, you got lined up and weighed. It was like my secret was out, the fat girl, finally her number revealed to the world... I felt such shame standing on the scales as someone else saw my 'number' what judgments, accusations, assumptions would they make about me based on that one number, would they think the same things I thought about myself? Would they think I was a failure, that if I really put my mind to it I could be a bit thinner, a bit better, a bit more of a "distance runner"?

"They" of course would not think any of those things if anything they would think the complete opposite, but for me, at that moment I felt grossly exposed to the world.

Training continued and we soon found ourselves at the first race of the season. I was completely dead, I hadn't really eaten anything for two days prior, all I had was my normal race food, oatmeal, 4 hrs before and that now felt like it was going to explode in my stomach. I wanted to race well for my coach, her appraisal and approval meant EVERYthing to me, if Coach said good job then I was happy. If she didn't then I spent days analyzing why??? and yes, I would usually come to the conclusion that being more disciplined with food would fix this next time.

The race went ok, but had I been fueled, it would have gone a lot better. I was the third SMU runner home and 5th overall, I was happy but felt like I'd let myself down. I rationally decided in a moment of clarity an perspective that the food deal would stop and I would sort it out. But like previous self-promises, this was not something I could do on my own and so the next day patterns driven by perfection continued.

I continued to hold this secret the best I could while silently screaming for help until a whole SMU student-athlete "welcome back" function.

There was a lot of food.

Like other times I felt it was 'all or nothing,' I knew with teammates watching 'nothing' wasn't an option so I ate a reasonable sized meal knowing full well what would come next... but this time as I hated myself and all I had become in a public restroom, I was not alone, a teammate was there and knew what was going on.

And within the next 24 hours, my world would seemingly implode.