Jessica Schnaider, 41, spent eight days connected to a NG feeding tube in March. She wasn't sick. She doesn't suffer from anorexia. She isn't obese. She merely wanted to lose weight before she got married. To say I was incredulous would be an understatement.

I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when I was forty-two, although I've wondered if I didn't have at least vestiges of the disorder when I was a young adult. For a long time, I tried hard to hide my condition or at least deflect concern about me onto others . . . anyone, as long as people didn't guess my secret: that I was anorexic. I should have saved myself the trouble, because the majority people I knew figured out what was wrong with me long before I would even admit it. I often wondered what would have happened if either: a. I had talked to someone when I first began restricting at the age of eighteen, or b. If I had chose to keep silent about my eating disorder. I know — two different scenarios.

Last week, I looked down and realized I needed something I haven't needed for a very long time. A bra.

Things have been stressful for me lately, so I decided to take a mini-vacation and stay at my sister's — about two hours away from my home — for the weekend. I visited with her and her husband before they left for vacation, met with my eating disorders psychiatrist who lives nearby, and basically had a relaxing time sitting around drinking Starbucks mocha frappuccinos, reading my Nook and playing with her two large Rottweilers that act like overgrown babies. Then I decided to stop at this quaint, 50s-style drive-up diner . . . and proceeded to get into a heated shouting match, complete with expletives, with another customer. Why does food always have to complicate my life?

I have been struggling to eat normally — whatever normal is — for several weeks. It's not that I have stopped eating altogether, because let's face it, even anorexics have to eat something. It's not even that I'm in starvation mode — yet. It has just become easier to skip breakfast, because hey, it is 10 a.m. before I think about it and it is only two hours away from lunch. Then lunchtime comes and I "forget" to eat until about 2 or 3 p.m. That's too close for dinner, so I might as well make lunch do for dinner, too. Still, I am eating and I am committed to recovery. I know that I was not healthy before and that I need to continue to eat healthy and maintain my weight. I know that skipping meals, especially breakfast, is not a good idea. I thought I was doing okay. Then I drank several glasses of wine last night.

I struggled not to cry as each picture, depicting life and love and happiness, flashed on the screen during Thursday night's National Eating Disorders Awareness (NEDA) Week presentation. I thought about all the people I know who are struggling with an eating disorder; the friends who have made it through recovery and the two people who recently lost their lives to their eating disorders. Then I thought about myself and all the years I was being a slave to the scale, to weight and calories and inches, watching as I was diminished by anorexia until I almost died from it. And I wondered why I wasted all those years, but then I remembered that no one chosen to have an eating disorder; that these illnesses are, in fact, addictive coping mechanisms that run deeper than disordered relationships with food. However, knowing that doesn't make it any less painful.

There's a common misconception that eating disorders are only about being thin. This is both incorrect and harmful to those struggling with eating disorders. I talk about why in this eating disorder video.

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2012 is this week. This year's theme is "Everybody Knows Somebody." According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ten million women and up to one million men have anorexia or bulimia, and millions more struggle with binge eating disorder. That means that you most likely know somebody with an eating disorder.

Who doesn't remember the pictures of a fragile and wan-looking Mary Kate Olsen, draped in a pale lavender gown as she and her twin, Ashley Olsen, received their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? The majority of people saw a young woman on the edge of death; clearly too thin, bones protruding. Then there are those of us who were enmeshed in our eating disorders. We saw a gorgeous young woman; someone to aspire to be like. Therein lies the dangers of the media.

I was sixteen and on the edge of puberty when I realized I hated my body. I hated having breasts, and the fact that people actually noticed them. I hated the fact that my stomach was round, my thighs were round, even my hair was too round. I felt awkward and ugly, and that feeling plagues me to this day as I recover from anorexia.