These are not generally kids who can scream and yell and say, “I hate you, why did you do this to me?” They’re very sweet, and they’re very kind. And they’re parent pleasers. And so they are aggressive in the sense that they are driving the knife deeper into the family as the family watches them die. But they are very sweet, and very kind, and very quiet about the process.

At age twenty-one, Eleena Melamed has also paid a heavy emotional price. A gifted dancer, she was told to lose weight at age twelve.

I remember having a teacher come up to me and pinch my back, pinch the skin on my back and say, “What is this? Are you drinking milk? You know you need to lose weight.”

Eleena eliminated fat from her diet. In time, she became anorexic .

“My anorexic year,” I call it. I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I was getting all the good parts in our performances at the school. I was getting all the attention. I was not being ignored anymore. When I was heavy, I was ignored instead of nurtured. And when I was really thin I, you know, all of a sudden, was nurtured and taken care of. And the teachers loved me, and they cared about me, and it was like I was a whole new person.

After starving herself for over a year, Eleena lost control and began to eat.

Gaining weight was for me the worst thing. I was just so ashamed of my body. I felt like I was the biggest failure and the weakest person, just the worst person. I remember picking up a knife from the kitchen and starting to cut myself on my arms, on my legs. I had so much pain inside of me, and so much hatred and animosity towards myself. That feeling the pain and making it real pain – as far as being able to see the blood and see the cut – it was calming. I did that for a long time.