I saw my weight today. A healthcare provider who didn’t take my history of an eating disorder into account put my
weight on my visit summary, completely unaware that her subconscious act would terrorize me
for the rest of my day. In a more hopeful vein of my recovery, I finally found a therapist who specialized in eating disorders, ending a months-long search for the recovery holy grail: an ED-trained therapist who also accepts insurance.

I always thought self-confidence had more to do with your outside beauty, your physical appearance, than your inner beauty, your personality. In that respect, I knew my grades were stronger than my looks. Which now I recognize as a form of self-confidence, but at the time, I didn’t see it that way. It all came down to what I saw in the mirror.

I walk troublingly late. None of the doctors know what to make of me.

“You came out of the womb singing your ABCs, but you didn’t walk until you were two-years-old!” my mother jokes. “You were just so smart. You wouldn’t even crawl. You’d just roll everywhere, like a little log. You were very efficient.”

A very expensive doctor on the Upper West Side finally steps in and fits me for special shoes with arch support. They are pink leather and make my feet look comically large for a child so small, and I wail when they are strapped on to me, wriggling as the velcro crunches into place. I detest the process of learning to walk. I fall constantly. My little knees remain perpetually bruised.

Once I finally get the hang of it, though, I am unstoppable.

The head of the Communications Department, Janine, fixes her big eyes on me and says, “I want you to think about whether you are really sick, or just tired.”

From October 2020 until February 2022, every Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. until 11:15 a.m., I dedicated my time to taking a shower. My weekly Wednesday ritual also included my virtual therapy session at 1:00 p.m., so I began my day changing out the week-old unwashed pajamas to shampoo and deep condition my hair, shaving my legs, and exfoliating my body. As I undress, starting with my crew socks, I focus on my parent’s medicine cabinet. Although not my bathroom, this is my childhood bathroom, as there is one shared shower. Next, my black sweatpants and long sleeve-stained John Mayer tour shirt from 2017 hit the blue tile.

I was sitting upright for the first time in about a week. I’d tried a few days earlier, but very soon my head pounded, and I vomited down myself. They said the lumbar puncture could do that. Now though, I could use the bed remote control to sit myself up. Under the white sheets I could make out the shape of what was supposed to be me.

The problem with sleep paralysis is that no matter how much you know about it and how easily you can dismiss the things that happen as a side effect of coming out of REM sleep the wrong way, when it’s happening it can still feel like a ghost attacking you.

In school, people always assumed I was in a wheelchair because of an accident. And whenever I spoke up, the conversation stopped in its tracks. Like most girls, I had insecurities, but my insecurities are ones I could never hide from. I remember just wanting to fit in like everyone else. Especially when I hit middle school. Up until that point, I had felt like every other kid my age.

My name is Juliana Ruggiero. I’m eighteen and have Spastic Cerebral Palsy. My story begins in 1999. I was a fragile preemie who weighed only 3.10 pounds. My parents were not able to hold me. Instead, I was taken away to the NICU. I was on a breathing machine and closely monitored by a team of doctors until I was stable enough and my lungs were developed enough to function on their own.

I learned pain at the bench of the piano.
My shoulders taut with tension, black pulses pushing up the back of my neck,
knotting around my eyes as I sat upright, practiced my scales and arpeggios